Israel/Palestine

If you’re involved in political campaigns, you know there are always a few people on your side whose heart is in the right place, whose dedication is absolute, but who are absolutely the last persons you should trust to argue your point of views, because they will fuck it up. Gretta Duisenberg is one of them.

For those who don’t know her, she campaigns for Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories and for the right of the Palestinian population to self determination. A cause which has my sympathy as well. Unfortunately, she has an incredible tin ear, lacks tact and has a tendency to speak before she thinks. She first came in the news when she flew a Palestinian flag from her Amsterdam home, something which her Jewish neighbours took umbrage with. In her attempts to resolve the situation, she showed herself to be less than tactful.

Recently, she canalised her unease with the situation into real action and went on a mission to Israel and the Occupied Teritories with the Dutch Stop the Occupation action group and again became the centre of a row. In an interview with a Dutch newspaper, she stated that “with the exception of the Holocaust, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian areas is worse than the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands“, which may not be the stupidest thing you can say on the subject, but certainly comes close.

It’s not that Gretta Duisenberg is an anti-semite –at least not as far as I know– it’s just that she has a poor impulse control and doesn’t think before she says something. Quite apart from the inherent tackiness of Nazi comperisions (especially in this context!), it just isn’t true. Taking the Holocaust out of the equation is as silly as saying that with the exception of the WTC attacks, Al Quaida has not managed to kill many Americans.

Furthermore, the best way to get neutral people to stop listening to you and think of you as either a kook or an anti-semite is comparing Israel to the Nazies. It is borderline anti-semitic, it denigrates the Holocaust and it makes you look like an ahistorical dork. Israel’s occupation is awful and the suffering it causes innocent Palestinians is wrong, wrong, wrong, but it’s not genocidal. Israel is comparable to Apartheid era South Africa, not to Nazi Germany, like South Africa it can change. But it won’t happen because of Gretta Duisenberg, if she continues this way.

What also irritates me is how she, just because she’s the wife of the president of the European Central Bank gets all this media attention. If she was more competent it wouldn’t be such a problem, but because of her antics she’s doing quite a lot of damage to the cause she supposedly supports.

You may have heard of Wim Duisenberg, the first ever president of the European Central Bank. You will probably not have heard of his wife, Gretta Duisenberg. Even I hadn’t, really, apart from her being “the wife of”. However, she is more then *just* Wim Duisenberg’s wife, as she’s herself involved in political activism. The Palestinian question has her special attention, so much so she took part in the big demonstration against the Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories on April 13th this year. For this demonstration she bought a Palestinian flag and walked with it in the demo. So far, nothing serious.

Her troubles began when she hung the flag from her balcony of her house in the posh Amsterdam Rivierenbuurt. Her next door neighbours, Ron and Rosa van der Wieken did not like this, especially when it became clear she wasn’t going to take it down soon. Understandably, since those neighbours where Jewish and had family living in Israel. To them, the flag was a symbol of “a bloodthirsty regime” [1] so they complained to Gretta. She however found this to be an overreaction: “Palestinians have to look at the Israeli flag and in the barrels of Israeli tanks every single day. In the freedom of Zuid-Amsterdam you must then not be so sensitive.” [1] Since Amsterdam-Zuid was also the place where during the War many Amsterdam Jews were deported to the camps, this did understandbly not sit well with her neighbours.

Then, when Gretta Duisenberg called on the van der Wieken to talk about the case, a fierce argument started up, during which she supposedly made anti-semitic remarks. Ron van der Wieken was supposed to have said that “she was a salon bolsevik” and “was partly responsible for what happens to his children. She from her side was to have said that “rich Jews” [1]were partly responsible for the repression of the Palestinian people.

So far, I would say, and so would most sensible people I hope that both parties were ummm not at their most intelligent so to speak. They let their politics and their emotions get the better of them. It happens, *i*’ve had it happen. But of course it didn’t stay with that.

The van der Wieken were not satisfied with the outcome and complained in an article in Het Parool, the Amsterdam evening paper. This was read by H. Loonstein, the chairman of Federatief Joods Nederland, who immediately pressed charges (presumably based on article 137 of Dutch criminal law which forbids discrimination and is overtly broad in its reach. Loonstein stated that Gretta Duisenberg’s remarks were “a classic anti-semitic image“: “making rich Jews responsible for the suffering of the world” [2].

If you ask me, slightly over the top. Yes, it is an anti-semitic stereotype, but that does not mean Duisenberg was antisemitic or even made anti-semitic remarks. But the most bizarre twist is still to come. To combat this anti-semitic behaviour, what did Loonstein also do? He pressed charges with the World Jewish Congress, requesting if Wim Duisenberg could not be declared a persona non grata in the US! This is not confirming an anti-semitic stereotype? Let’s call in extralegal pressure to be sure we win? Oy gevalt.

[1] These quotes are from the NRC article ‘Dát bedoel ik met joodse lobby’ (“this is what I mean with Jewish lobby”).
[2] These quotes are from another NRC article Aangifte tegen vrouw Duisenberg (Charges pressed against wife of Duisenberg).