Ritual slaughter bill?
Photo: Avi Roccah
Ending the Anne Frank myth
Op-ed: Proposed ritual slaughter ban may finish off myths about Dutch war behavior
When the Dutch Parliament began its Easter vacation at the end of April, there seemed to be a huge majority to support prohibiting unstunned ritual slaughter. If the private law proposing this by the Party for the Animals had been brought to a vote then, the likely result would have been 122 in favor, 28 against.
The Leader of the Party for the Animals, Marianne Thieme, had supported her proposed law with many false claims, quite a few of which have been revealed since. The latest to be unmasked is that the Rabbinical Assembly, which groups the Conservative Rabbis in the United States, is favoring stunned ritual slaughter. A few days ago, this body requested an apology from the party for this untruth.
Religious Freedom?
Associated Press
In one of Europe's first countries to allow Jews to practice their religion openly, unlikely alliance of animal rights party and xenophobic Freedom Party spearheading support for ban on ancient tradition. Jewish, Muslim groups protest bill
In the meantime, some cracks have started to appear in the positions of the major parties which support the bill. In Labor, which draws more Muslim voters than any other party, there is strong opposition in the Amsterdam branch. A Labor provincial parliamentarian of Turkish origin has already said that he may not support the party in the election of the Senate which is held by the provincial parliaments.
There are fears that other Muslim provincial parliamentarians may secretly do the same. If a few do so, this could lead to a right-wing majority in the Senate. According to unconfirmed reports, Labor Leader Job Cohen is looking to find a compromise on the ritual slaughter bill to avoid this risk. Also in the largest Party, the Liberals of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, there seem to be opponents to the bill.
There were also newspaper reports that there is substantial dissent in the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders. This anti-Islam Party had not understood that orthodox Jews would be the main victims of the proposed law. The great majority of Muslims are willing to consume halal meat from stunned animals.
Several PVV Parliamentarians are very pro-Jewish and fight against the manifestations of anti-Semitism in the Netherlands. Wilders’ ambitions may be directed more toward building up an international organization against the advance of Islam than in trying to become Dutch Prime Minister at some point in the future.
Wilders probably understands that the many negative reactions to the proposed law from foreign Jewish organizations may have an impact on his international projects. When speaking abroad, he doesn’t need questions about why he supports a major anti-Jewish measure at home.
‘Future doesn’t look good’
However, even if a compromise is found, some damage to the Dutch image abroad has already been done. The long list of foreign Jewish organizations thathave approached Parliament or the government with criticism of the bill has no precedent in Dutch history. They include, the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the American Jewish Committee, the World Jewish Congress, the European Jewish Congress, the Conference of European Rabbis, the Assembly of Italian Rabbis, the Board of Deputies and CRIF, respectively the umbrella organizations of British and French Jewry, the Austrian Jewish community, SPI, the umbrella body of the Dutch Jewish immigrant organizations in Israel and many others.
In addition, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Lord Sacks and the Chief Rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt, have written to the Dutch Parliament. The latter mentioned that under the totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union, Jews were hoping for the day when they could exercise their religious rituals freely. They saw in the Netherlands a land of tolerance. Rabbi Goldschmidt added that he was shocked to hear about the proposed law prohibiting ritual slaughter. It was clear from his letter that this would put The Netherlands behind Russia.
Also in the Netherlands itself, official Jewish voices are heard that are probably stronger in tone than anything ever said by community leaders since the Second World War. The only resident Chief Rabbi, Binyomin Jacobs, stated on National Liberation Day on 5 May: “Many Jews think back to the prelude of the Second World War….the psychological danger is major…. There is fear.”
Jacobs added: “If I walk on Saturday afternoon to the synagogue, people yell out insults to me. Not only near the mosque, but near the hockey field by the autochthonous Dutch. A Jewish man who studies on Saturday afternoon with me doesn’t dare walk alone in the street. The board of our organization has prohibited me to travel alone on the train late at night, or to be near a station.”
Jacobs referred to the debate on the possible prohibition of ritual slaughter. He said: “Hitler also started with a prohibition of kosher slaughter.” He mentioned that frightened non-religious Jews also call him because the proposed bill has opened old wounds. Jacobs predicts that the next attacks will be to forbid circumcision and that the Jewish schools will be forced to close because of a shortage of students.
In a recent book of mine, “The Decay: Jews in a Rudderless Netherlands,” the former Dutch EU Commissioner and Liberal Leader Frits Bolkestein was quoted as saying that conscious Jews would do well to advise their children to leave the Netherlands for the US or Israel. Jacobs referred to this saying: “Of course I try to reassure people, but the future doesn’t look good….I hope that the Jewish people do not have to be liberated from the Netherlands in the future like our ancestors in Egypt.”
The proposed law on prohibition of ritual slaughter, whether accepted or not, may finish off the international myths about Dutch war behavior fed by the romanticizing of the Anne Frank story. One Dutch journalist, who at the end of the 1990s had been involved in the investigation of the shortcomings of the post-war restitution of looted Jewish possessions, said to me that he then understood he did not live “in the country where Anne Frank had been hidden, but in the land where Anne Frank had been betrayed.”
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld has published nineteen books, several of these deal with anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism
- Follow Ynetnews on Facebook
