AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A Dutch Muslim politician who has prayed for Allah to “exterminate the Zionists” said that a day of fasting on Yom Kippur will not suffice to atone for Israel’s sins.
Arnoud van Doorn, a lawmaker of the Hague’s city council for the Islamist Party for Unity, wrote on Sept. 18 on Twitter: “Israel celebrates Yom Kippur tomorrow. I’d make it a month. One day to reflect on all its errors and regret them is not enough.”
Separately, the mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, who is Muslim, last week announced he has ordered prosecutors to look into calls that referenced killing Jews during a demonstration in July 2017.
Van Doorn’s tweet was denounced as anti-Semitic in the Dutch media, including De Dagelijkse Standaard website, and on social networks, where dozens of users mockingly asked him whether the month-long Muslim daytime fast of Ramadan was a response to the volume of moral sins performed by followers of that faith.
Responding to his critics on Twitter, van Doorn reminded them that in Israel “one politician after another is being tried for corruption.” But this prompted fresh ridicule by users who pointed out that corruption trials are preferable to their absence in Israel’s corrupt neighbor states.
In May, the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, which is the Netherlands’ main watchdog group on anti-Semitism, filed a complaint for incitement to violence against van Doorn after he wished for Allah to “exterminate the Zionists.”
He wrote on May 14: “It’s busy in heaven,” talking about more than 60 Palestinians shot and killed that day by Israeli troops during Hamas-organized attempts to cross the border between Gaza and Israel. “May Allah exterminate the Zionists.”
Last year another lawmaker of the same party, Abdoe Khoulani, called Israeli children “Zionist terrorists in training” and “future child murderers and occupiers.” Dutch prosecutors dismissed complaints against Khoulani, saying that his remarks did not constitute incitement to hate.
