A well-known rabbi from the Netherlands said he would leave his political party of 20 years to protest its leader’s praise for “Judeo-Christian society” – which the rabbi says excludes Muslims.
Lody van de Kamp, a left-leaning activist for Jewish-Muslim dialogue, announced in an interview published on Wednesday by Het Parool daily that he was leaving the Christian-Democratic Appeal, or CDA. Earlier that day, the centrist party signed a power-sharing deal with three other coalition partners on the formation of a cabinet, which would work toward having illegal immigrants leave the country.
The agreement in the Netherlands, which is one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Western Europe, also spoke for the first time in such a document about the need to create an “independent” Palestinian state.
“Suddenly we’re talking about our ‘Judeo-Christian society’,” said van de Kamp, referencing a speech that CDA leader Sybrand Buma last month delivered at a school. “It obscures a hidden thought, that we don’t want the Muslims here, and that makes me uncomfortable,” van de Kamp said.
Buma, who said during the school speech that his party will stand up for “ordinary Dutchmen” suffering from the effects of immigration, has received criticism from other prominent members of his party following the speech and his insistence on tougher language in the coalition agreement against illegal immigration and criminal phenomena that many associate with Muslim immigrants.
Hirsch Ballin, a former justice minister whose father was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, earlier this month penned with another prominent CDA member a letter criticising Buma, accusing him of “abandoning refugees” and offending Dutch Muslims.
Buma on Wednesday said he was “proud” of the coalition agreement his party co-signed. It marks a rightward shift from the previous agreement, which Dutch Labour in 2012 co-signed with the centrist People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy of Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
The 2017 agreement contains no mention of increasing absorption quotas, asserting there will be “counter-measures to irregular immigration” and that “whoever is not allowed to stay must soon leave.” The agreement also contained a reference to antisemitism absent from the previous accord and a new assertion that many observers see as connected to radical Islam. “Freedom of opinion is no free pass for inciting hatred and radicalization,” that passage states.
“Our society has no place for hatred of homosexuals, antisemitism, hatred of Muslims, genital mutilation, child marriages, forced marriages, incitement of hatred and violence against people for their opinions, or against minors,” further states the agreement. In its foreign relations policy, the Netherlands will uphold universal rights “especially of vulnerable groups like LGBT communities and Christians,” the agreement reads.
In addition to Rutte’s party and the CDA — two parties with highly-placed and strong supporters of Israel — the coalition’s other partners are the Christian Union party and the liberal D66 party.