Dutch panel picks author accused of anti-Semitism as keynote speaker for Holocaust memorial commemor

[Behind the Aegis]

Dutch panel picks author accused of anti-Semitism as keynote speaker for Holocaust memorial commemoration

The national commemoration committee of the Netherlands named as its keynote speaker a Muslim author who has called Gaza a “ghetto” and is accused of making anti-Semitic statements about Dutch Jews.

The National 4 and 5 May Committee made the announcement Monday of Abdelkader Benali to deliver the annual address at the main memorial ceremony this year in Amsterdam on May 4, the date when the Dutch nation remembers its fallen soldiers and victims of Nazism, including 102,000 Dutch Jews. The king and other dignitaries attend the event.

According to a 2010 article published in the HP de Tijd weekly by Harald Doornbos, one of the Netherlands’ best-known war correspondents, Benali went on an anti-Semitic rant in July 2006 in Beirut, Lebanon, during a conversation they had at a party.

“Benali let loose,” wrote Doornbos, a former reporter for the NOS national broadcaster and a correspondent who specialized in the Muslim world. Doornbos quoted Benali as having said that southern Amsterdam “is full of Jews. And that’s annoying that there are so many of them. Amsterdam Jews. Makes you feel uneasy as a Moroccan. It looks like Israel. So many Jews, it just feels crazy.”

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Sounds about right! I am sure we will soon be treated to how he is the real victim!

[TexasTowelie]

1. Seems like the panel that picks the keynote speakers

has some previous controversial selections. It appears that the board has yielded to pressure before, so maybe there will be sufficient feedback that they will go with a more conventional speaker.