Dutch Party calls Holocaust commemoration racist

The Netherlands’ far-Left BIJ1 party has called for the cancelation of the country’s annual Holocaust commemoration ceremony, calling the event “inherently racist,” according to a Dutch report picked up by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“The BIJ1 party, which defines itself as devoted to ‘antiracism and decolonialization’ and advocates for ‘official apologies for slavery and colonial occupation and bearing of the legal consequences,’ made the call in a draft of its program in the March 2022 municipal elections in Amsterdam, the news site Jonet.nl reported last week,” the JTA wrote.

The BIJ1 draft said it was “inherently racist” that “Indonesian, Surinamese, Korean, Iraqi etc. victims of Dutchmen (or violence supported by the Netherlands) are not commemorated.”

Party member Jazie Veldhuyzen told Dutch broadcaster RTVNH that BIJ1 doesn’t really want to cancel the Holocaust commemoration, just “make it more inclusive.”

Holland has ruled numerous overseas territories in South East Asia, Southern Africa and in the Americas. The South East Asian countries cited by BIJ1 were all places where the Dutch were defeated by Japan during World War II.

Critics argued that while there’s nothing wrong with commemorating other peoples killed during the war, only the Jews were singled out for death by the Nazis with a network of death camps.

According to the Anne Frank House website, the more than 100,000 Dutch Jews killed by the Nazis represented three-quarters of Dutch Jewry. Most were deported to the Auschwitz and Sobibor death camps in Poland.

An estimated 57,000 Jews live in the Netherlands today.

According to Dutch websites cited by the JTA, BIJ1 supports a blanket boycott of Israel. In 2018, BIJ1 members of Amsterdam’s city council were the only members of that body not to sign a multi-party declaration against antisemitism because the statement endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.

BIJ1 holds just one seat in the Netherlands’ 150-seat House of Representatives and has no seats in the Dutch Senate.

Antisemitism made Dutch headlines at the beginning of November. Taco Dankers, a top executive at a right-wing television network, resigned after he was linked to a think tank promoting antisemitic propaganda and conspiracy theories.