Among other charges, the Dutch claimed that the religious nationalist ministers “called for ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.”
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The Netherlands banned entry to two of Israel’s religious nationalist ministers on Monday due to their alleged incendiary rhetoric regarding Palestinians and the Gaza Strip at a time when much of Europe is blaming Israel for withholding needed aid from the coastal enclave.
“The situation in Gaza is intolerable and indefensible,” Foreign Minister Caspar Waldekamp wrote to members of the Dutch parliament.
As such, Amsterdam now considers National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich persona non grata.
Mixing disparate reasons together, Waldekamp explained in the missive that “they have repeatedly incited violence by settlers against the Palestinian population and called, among other things, for the expansion of illegal settlements and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
Both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have loudly declared their support for U.S. President Donald Trump’s idea to resettle in other countries all Gazans who want to voluntarily leave the war zone, a basic human right of all refugees.
They have also been firm proponents of militarily destroying all Hamas fighters and their supporters in Gaza so that Israel would never endure again an invasion of its territory that Hamas-led forces instigated on Oct. 7, 2023, when they massacred 1,200 people, including by raping and burning them to death.
Hamas officials have repeatedly threatened to make Israel suffer “many October 7ths” in the future.
Several countries preceded the Dutch in this particular diplomatic slap-down, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia and the UK.
Smotrich dismissed the move, saying, “What the Netherlands and other European countries don’t understand is that it is much more important to me that my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and all Jews in the world, can live in the State of Israel safely for decades and centuries to come, than it is for me to enter the Netherlands.”
Ben-Gvir attacked the ban as a show of support for terrorism.
“Even if I am banned from entering all of Europe, I will continue to work for our country and demand that we collapse Hamas and support our fighters,” he said.
“Those who are violent, murderers and rapists are our enemies, but in Europe, as in Europe, whoever is attacked is guilty,” the minister continued. “In a place where terrorism is tolerated and terrorists are welcomed, a Jewish minister from Israel is unwanted, terrorists are free and Jews are boycotted.”
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof has also threatened to support efforts to suspend Israel’s major participation in the innovation sector of the world’s largest scientific research funding program, Horizon 2020.
Several EU countries have charged that Israel is not meeting its commitments in the program’s association agreement regarding humanitarian rights in Gaza, a claim that Jerusalem vociferously denies.
A vote on the issue is scheduled for Tuesday, with a majority of 15 of the 27 EU countries needed for it to pass.
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