"Jew lover and Zionist", Geert Wilders: Europe's Most Dangerous Man?
While you were making yourself look beautiful for your Valentine on monday evening the BBC was showing Geert Wilders: Europe’s Most Dangerous Man?.
Someone sent me an email stating that he had “just seen the most disgraceful attempt to associate Jews with extremism and hatred against Islam. This programme is an utter disgrace, as ever trying to delegitimise us. Frankly, I fear that we have no future in Europe”.
He is not usually one for polemic like this, so I had a watch on iplayer.
We see Joost van der Valk following Wilders trying, and failing, to get interviews with him.
van der Valk interviewed Dutch Muslims, who blame Wilders for stirring up race hate in Holland. One woman, a Turkish teacher, says of Holland today:
“I’m thinking of the 1940s when the Jews had to wear a star of David and had to ask at a shop if I can come in or can I enter the swimming pool. It’s almost the same as back then. The country is in a bad state and (they say) Islam is the culprit.”
The film forcefully sets out the case against Wilders. The prosecution in Wilders’ trial for inciting racial hatred, which has been adjourned, provides some of his alleged words:
“There is no such thing as moderate Islam, because there is no difference between good Islam and bad Islam. There’s Islam and that’s all there is. The Quran is the Mein Kampf of a religion that intends to eliminate us”.
van der Valk then went off in search of Wilders’ admirers.
He interviewed people who want Holland go back to its roots. One woman says “I want my children to feel they live in Holland”. A man says “There’s going to be a world war between Muslims and non-Muslims. We will have a Bosnia effect here within five years.”
Then he interviewed two Kahanist Jews. One was ‘Robert’, the other was Chaim Ben Pesach, who apparently served five years in prison for an anti-Soviet bombing campaign in New York. They were described as being “more radical than Wilders” and as espousing an extreme form of Zionism.
They belong to the Jewish Task Force and ‘Robert’ said:
“Islam is a global threat. They say we will take over Europe with the wombs of our women, so they are breeding Jihadis everwhere. They have more and more kids. Then they get more women to come here from the Moroccan mountains to bear children. They want to be in the majority so they can take over.”
Not content van der Valk did a google search of “Wilders Israel” and found half a million references. Some references suggest Wilders is a spy. van der Valk concluded, “It was obvious that Wilders was being informed by the Israeli Embassy”.
At the beginning of the film we were introduced to Shaykh Khalid Yassin, who is described as an “American Muslim teacher extremely popular among young European Muslims. He has embarked on a mission to deradicalise them”.
But when questioned about Wilders Yassin said:
“I think he has taken and embraced the idea of Modern Zionism. And he is using the idea of Modern Zionism to espouse the same concepts about Muslims in the world and the Quran that the Jews cannot afford to say in Israel. But Mr Wilders can do them a favour. He can go outside of Israel with those same feelings and then he can characterise the way that the Zionists characterise the Palestinians, to legititimise (sic) their power. Mr Wilders can characterise Islam in the same way.”
Although the film stated that “many Israelis would take issue with Wilders’ ideas”, van der Valk, nevertheless, went to Israel to see where Wilders spent his youth. We heard from Wilders’ old Israeli friends and admirers.
We were told that Wilders had a Jewish grandmother and married a Jewish woman and he “makes no secret of his affection for Israel and its people”.
The whole thesis of the film seemed to be that Zionism, Israel and Jews are the inspiration for Wilders’ alleged incitement to race hate.
Two weeks ago the BBC showed Louis Theroux’s The Ultra Zionists, which portrayed Jews as religious fanatics.
The Promise, by Peter Kosminsky, currently showing on Channel 4, can be best summed up as ‘rich European Jews came to Palestine after the Holocaust, stole the Palestinians’ land and murdered British soldiers’.
For his research Kosminsky consulted the International Solidarity Movement about Israel, which is like basing your views on immigration on interviews with the BNP.
Last night’s film War Child, also on Channel 4, was, basically, about ‘Jews’ killing innocent Palestinians and blinding and disabling Palestinian children who cannot, now, wait to grow up to kill ‘Jews’.
And now the BBC have shown a documentary which started out as a valid investigation into Islamophobia in Holland but, which, degenerated into a gratuitous attack on Jews, Israel and Zionism.
RichardMillett's Blog 
I muchly dislike Wilders, and I dislike it when people try and associate him with the pro-Israel movement. Not only is he a hatemonger, he has also flirted with an antisemitic party in Belgium.
Interesting post, anyway. I think you are harsh on the Louis Theroux documentary. It was far more fair and balanced than I expected. He showed that settlers have a range of views and motivations, explained that the Jews were driven out of Hebron in the 1920s by an Arab pogrom, and showed that for many Palestinians the issue is not about settlements, but about the existence of a Jewish state per se.
As for The Promise, I list some of the distortions episode one peddled here: http://www.oyvagoy.com/2011/02/05/the-promise-or-lack-thereof/comment-page-1/#comment-62977
I take your point about the “rich European Jews” in reference to the main Israeli family featured in the modern half of the show. However, again you’re not telling the whole story of the programme. It also showed ships full of emaciated Jews, arriving straight from the Shoah, with nothing to their names but the tattered clothes they stood in.
Yes, it showed British soldiers being killed (which did happen) and it also showed a cafe full of Israelis being blown-up by a suicide bomber, for instance.
I am not defending The Promise overall. But writing a misleading, one-sentence review of a programme like that is always likely to be as guilty of misrepresentation as the programme itself.
Yes,there is a lot of antisemitic stuff in the media,but don’t worry about
the Van der Valk picture,considered in Holland as a failure even by haters of
Wilders and …the maker.
Greetings E.
Thanks, Chas. I have been wanting to write about The Promise but haven’t had a chance to get round to it. But I am not sure that showing emaciated Jews helps anyone’s cause. The argument goes that it wasn’t the Palestinians’ fault, which it wasn’t, but the argument is extended to suggest that the Palestinians suffered due to the Holocaust as the Jews took their land. I agree on Theroux as it did have some good factual stuff, but it still painted the settlers as mad and dangerous.
On the suicide bombing you pointed out yourself that the implication was that it made the security wall look useless.
The fakestinians often ask why they should have suffered because of the wave of Jewish immigration as a result of the Holocaust. I can answer that question for them. Because they supported the Final Solution and collaborated with the Nazis . Indeed, had the British not halted the German advance across Egypt, death camps would have been established in Palestine with the help of the Arabs, and solution would have been as final as the Nazis and Arabs desired it to be. So what goes around comes around and what happened to those emaciated Jewish refugees was in fact also the fault of the Arabs via complicity, support and collaboration.
amazing, there I was reading not everything but quite a lot about Wilders and only now I learn that he has such terrible horrifying frightening family connections.
We were told that Wilders had a Jewish grandmother and married a Jewish woman and he “makes no secret of his affection for Israel and its people”.
no wonder he is pro-Israel – maybe I should have a closer look at my ancestors in order to also find a “genetically” explanable reason for my bias.
The Dutch parliament btw took an as best I can tell very nice pro-Israel resolution these days. Thank you, Mr. Wilders! Le’s hope that the Dutch will succeed in saving Europe from madness
Do you really think that your ridiculous portrayal of these documentaries as manifestations of ‘Jew-hatred’ impress anyone but your coterie of the usual imbeciles, including w/o a doubt including the execrable Jeremy ‘Obsession’ Havardi? What you’re doing here is further diminishing the value of the term antisemitism, up to a point where people will increasingly dismiss any such accusations as the screams of a few in the lunatic fringe.
Take for instance:
… is basically almost slander. Theroux’ programme, like all the others he made before, is at best light entertainment, at worst ‘docutainment’. As always he approaches his subject respectfully, almost deferentially. The Jews portrayed in it were indeed religious fanatics because they were religious Ultra Zionists. It says nothing about ‘the Jews’ in general.
One would have thought that with Zion’s main flank now seriously exposed and the rest of them soon to follow, that Zionists like you would start calculating a decent peace plan to salvage what might be salvageable but no: instead followed another exercise in navel staring…
Point taken on Theroux, Gert. I agree. But i don’t mention “jew hatred” or anti-Semitism like you suggest.
No, you just imply it very, very strongly, then deploy plausible deniablilty.
I think you should rewatch the Theroux documentary. It didn’t paint all the settlers as “the settlers as mad and dangerous”. Some of them, yes. But possibly some of them are.
I agree with your overall take on The Promise. I just meant that your review of the first two episodes is selective and misleading (as is the programme itself of course!)
True, i didn’t feel too comfortable mentioning Theroux, especially with a one-liner. I agree my review of The Promise is selective but i don’t think it is that misleading. It is like an extended version of Seven Jewish Children, except it is 6 hours long. Churchill also mentions the Holocaust but then goes on to slam Jews anyway. That is what Kosminsky is basically doing, i think.
@Gert
What is a religious ultra -zionist or did you come up with that title all by yourself?
Nitwits like you will be nitwits…
Dummies will be dummies …Still what is a religious ultra zionist or did you make that one up yourself? You may answer in words of one syllable (you know what they are I take it) if that helps.
‘van der Valk, nevertheless, went to Israel to see where Wilders spent his youth. ‘
He didn’t spend his youth there. After high school i.e. in his ‘gap years’ he lived a in a moshav and travelled around the middle east.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders#Personal_life
In this Sounds Jewish there is a discussion of The Promise which is worth hearing for its rarely heard criticisms.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/audio/2011/feb/15/sounds-jewish-egypt-israel?INTCMP=SRCH
So, basically, the BBC ended up saying Wilders, the most dangerous man in Europe, is an agent of the Israeli government.
Great. A lovely Valentine’s greeting to the Jews of Britain and Europe indeed.
well, that is what it seemed to be suggesting in one part. have a look at it youself. yes, sorry, he spent part of his youth there, not all of it.
They are such idiots. The more they demonize Israel, the more uncomfortable they will make life for Jews here. And will that damage Israel, or thwart the Zionist thesis?
No.
And why is that Conchovor: Because in your paradigm Jews must goosestep behind Zion or be excoriated as self-loathers and worse? Criticism of Israel should be illegal on the grounds that it makes Jews ‘uncomfortable’?
I hope you realise that the many Jews whom I know only suffer laughing fits at the likes of you… Think about it.
Ah I am relieved
Gert only KNOWS “many Jews”
He doesn’t have Jewish friends – if he had claimed he had, that might have given me déjà écouté or déjà lu discomforts.
“I am not sure that showing emaciated Jews helps anyone’s cause.”
I agree, particularly because if you say The Promise is anti-Israel or anti-Jewish, the defence will always be that it was sympathetic to Jewish Holocaust victims. As though any problems that present day Jews or Israelis have were brought on by themselves.
This post on the Geert Wilders documentary is disturbing, like we don’t have enough problems with the Left, we also have the extreme-Right who, if they really wanted to help Jews and Israel would just shut up.
I cannot explain it better than this: in the last couple of weeks alone, I have felt very unsettled and saddened by the barrage of anti Israel distortions and what I see as antisemitism on mainstream British television. One can mitigate every detail of each of the programmes if one wishes to. Even where they make valid criticisms of Israel, they are presented in an aggressive context which exaggerates their importance. They suggest that Israel, Jews and Zionists are all bad. They’re the problem. Look at all these sad situation… they’re all caused by Jews. Do they come out and say it, point blank? No, of course not. But they imply it and suggest it in every way they can. And cumulatively, it has a dreadful effect.
The producers are of course careful to ensure they tick the right boxes: Holocaust survivors–tick. Mention a pogrom in Hebron–tick. But this doesn’t stop the overall mounting nastiness aimed squarely at Israel, Israelis and Jews. The fixation on Israel feels extreme, because it is. Just look at the Wilders programme: long interviews with the most reasonable Muslims they could find, compared to only short interviews, spliced to pieces, with the most extreme people they could find on the other side. Say what you will about Wilders, but this was not a reasoned look at the issues in the netherlands which created his popularity.
I feel thoroughly depressed by this latest trend in UK TV. It makes me worry. It makes me scared. I can’t give you a list of reasons. It’s an emotional response. I won’t apologise for that. Popular movements are prompted by moods and feelings. And I and others seem to share this mood of worry and uneasy sense of foreboding.
These TV shows make me so worried. I don’t know what else to say on the matter.
Thanks, Jonathan. I totally agree. That is exactly what i wanted to say. It is the cumulative effect and they say just enough in these programmes to try to sound unbiased. The cumulative effect is to paint Jews as extremists, racists and warmongers.
The liberal establishment position seems to be this:
“We like Jews as long as they are pathetic underdogs, within an ace of being exterminated. As soon as they start to take charge of their own destiny, we hate them. It is an affront to nature for Jews to become empowered unless they have first embraced Christianity/Islam/Marxism [name your poison].”
A propos Geert Wilders, I’m not surprised he ‘deserves’ protection here:
Source:
Same source (scroll down): Wilders about his exploits in Israel’s Ministry of the interior:
Herr Wilders, the Über-Islamophobe of Europe seems to know his way around the place, huh?
Go on, Rich, be honest and declare yourself a fan, he got chutzpah, no?
Gert is back – just this morning when I realized that his furious pace of posting on his own blog had stopped I said to myself it is not going to take long for him to show up at Richard’s again.
Just because a few days of trying to promote himself as a literati have not produced any commenters i.e. people who want to talk to him unincentivized by anything else he is giving up again. Amazing since he once claimed to be the guy who was in for the long haul. But he claims a lot our dear sweet Gert, doesn’t he?
As this blog is concerned I still think his intention is to drive off Richard’s readership by spreading the virus of boredom and predictability, so please you others keep coming and don’t let him succeed.
And while I am at it, here’s a quote that another blog of the worthwhile kind quotes and which I think is worth thinking about. I am not sure about the honest Jew haters especially when they’re good at swinging a baseball bat but I agree on the danger posed by the sly ones. In Germany we are convinced that the f.rts you don’t hear stink most …
“The Tom Friedmans of the world are much more dangerous than the honest anti-Semites. I prefer an honest Jew hater to Tom Friedman’s “more in sadness than anger” animus any day of the week”.
http://www.treppenwitz.com/2011/02/another-memo-to-thomas-friedman.html
I too watched the Wilders documentary. Yes it did include all the elements Richard writes about. However, there are undertones there that you are all missing. An ordinary observer, not as involved as we are with Jew hatred and anti Israel bias would have seen that all talk of violence emanated from the Liberal-Islamic element – Liberals hypocritically espousing freedom and democracy, labelling all who don’t follow them as extremists and Muslims with their “religion of peace”, both trying in vain to have Wilders silenced by calling for him to be “smashed” and threatening to kill anyone who speaks out against this “religion of peace”.
Ignore the commentary and watch what took place. Look behind the rhetoric.
The only person whose life is threatened, is forced to wear a bullet proof vest and have security cover 24/7 is Wilders. The only dead people are Pym Fonteyn and Theo Van Gogh and the only person threatened at Van Gogh’s death was Hirsi Ali, Wilders political colleague, all people who identified the folly of “multiculturalism” and the dangerous uncontrolled flood of Islamic immigration into Europe well before Merkel and Cameron (Hirsi Ali of course was born into Islam and was herself an illegal immigrant into Holland). There were even snitches of FITNA. Despite efforts to make out that Wilders had distorted the facts, snippets of this too hot to touch documentary has now been seen on our national TV station. I guess there will be some who never heard of it who are now curious as to what it shows, particularly after the Dispatches programme the same night showed the beating of Muslim children at Islamic schools, actions that would result in arrests were they taking place in non Islamic schools. Finally someone will have to pay attention to the crimes perpetrated on children by adherents of this “religion of peace” and the silence of their “liberal” friends about these crimes. Much care was taken to film over a period of time so this habit of beating the kids whilst teaching their “religion of peace” cannot be excused as a one off as has been the case in the past.
At last ordinary decent folk can see who is violent and who is peaceful and they will understand the replacement history and theology that is being seeped into our society by stealth.
So whilst it is clear the BBC did not look for balance, neither could they hide this information from the ordinary viewer. Unintentionally the BBC is helping the arousal of middle England and its equivalent in Europe who increasingly feel they are losing their identity. People are rubbing their eyes as though waking from a nightmare, amongst them those who feel threatened by the growth of Sharia law and its influence in the UK and the rest of Europe, people who are tired of having their streets hijacked for prayer meetings every Friday, those who are afraid of the increase in people walking the streets incognito in “no-go” areas of their cities, draped as they are from head to foot in robes alien to our native society. These people will see this propaganda to delegitimize Jews and Israel and they will begin to understand that what starts with the Jews becomes their threat as well.
Thank you for these observations, Sharon.
As a self proclaimed masochist – as opposed to as a Jew – I went to Gert’s website – I wasn’t disappointed!
Norman
as I have made it my self-appointed task to watch just in case he should find admirers one day I feel for you and know what you have suffered …
Richard, have you complained to the BBC?
well, no. not yet anyway.
Richard – see this:
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/02/bbc-geert-wilders-hit-job.html
…and an update here:
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/02/khalid-yasin-update.html
May I direct you to the following.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/02/bbc-breaches-its-charter.html
It contains an excellent protest letter sent to the BBC about the scurrilous attacks on Geert Wilders. All I can recommend is that others use the whole or extract parts of the excellent text to construct complaints of their own and send them them in their hundreds to the fixated folk at the BBC.
Richard, I don’t know whether you allow links here but I urge people to read Sultan Knish today on the revolution in Egypt. Whatever the BBC and other antisemitic organs do to demonise Jews and Israel, close to Israel it is playing into massively murderous antisemitism. According to one blogger I think is against the hatred and chaos there the police are afraid to go to work because so many have been murdered and beheaded.
Sorry, I see lots of links above!
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/02/real-egyptian-revolution-will-not-be.html
Thanks for the great links Adam, Norman and Ariadne.
By the way, here is an interesting Australian documentary about Khalid Yasin:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4527969281260848764#
The BBC call him an “American Muslim teacher extremely popular among young European Muslims [who] has embarked on a mission to deradicalise them”
This documentary of course shows the truth, with Yasin himself sharing his view that AIDS was invented by the US (and other) governments and spread maliciously across Africa; that 9/11 was a US government inside job; that there has never been an attempted Muslim terrorist attack planned in Australia (which the interviewer points our is false).
Does anyone have any idea how the BBC can get away with using him on their programme without mentioning his extremism? In fact they suggest he is some sort of reformer.
A thorough fisking of the Wilders program here:
http://hurryupharry.org/2011/02/18/bbc-wilders-documentary-promotes-extremists-and-members-of-extremist-groups/
re the Promise: Can anyone tell me if there is any truth in the statement by one of the saintly Arab characters who told the open mouthed young English girl that after driving them out of their homes, the Jews put them in camps? I have no knowledge that the Jews were instrumental in interning the Arab refugees.
Among the ecstatic reviews for this programme (Caitlin Moran in the Times, and others who clearly had no prior knowledge of the history) there was an excellent disparaging one by AA Gill in the Sunday Times (paywall, alas) and a sceptical one, I don’t recall which, where the orientalising of the Arab characters is pointed out- the critic talks of her adventures in Arabland where all the Arabs are kind and gentle.
“The fakestinians often ask why they should have suffered because of the wave of Jewish immigration as a result of the Holocaust. I can answer that question for them. Because they supported the Final Solution and collaborated with the Nazis.”
Roger,
In my opinion little is to be gained by making up names for your opponents. They call themselves Palestinians; many Israelis call them Arabs who used to live in Israel.
Regarding your substantive point, I do not believe that history would agree with you. The Palestinian refugee situation did not come about as a punishment for Emir Feisal’s collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. Indeed, had the Palestinians accepted partition in 1948, rather than rejecting it and launching a war to prevent its implementation, they would today be living in a state of their own.
The refugee situation was caused by many Palestinians leaving or being evicted from their homes as a result of a war that they initiated. By 1949 Jordan was in full control of the West Bank and chose to illegally annex it and keep the Palestinians in refugee camps. In 1967 Jordan launched a war of aggression against Israel and lost these areas that had been illegally annexed.
Never at any point was there a suggestion that Israel was seeking to punish the Palestinian people for the crimes of its World War II leadership. Furthermore, to make such a claim wrongly accepts the Arab view that Israel could have done more to aid these refugees, but chose not to, and leaves us open to the logical question as to why a Palestinian 6-year-old today should carry on being punished for the sins of his great-grandfathers’ generation.
Finally, the suffering of the Palestinian people has never been an Israeli or Jewish interest not only for reasons of real politic, but first and foremost because as Jews we have a moral and religious obligation to guard the interests of the stranger who lives among us. In short, we are not in the business of punishing other nations – that is G-d’s job.
I wasn’t saying that Israel was seeking to punish the ‘palestinian’ people (aka Arabs) for supporting the Nazis. I was simply pointing out that they are not in a position to complain and that any suffering on their part is the price they have to pay for their hatred of the Jews and their collaboration with genocidal evil. Crying wolf is the name of their game. And yes, the punishment is G-d’s job.
Daniel Marks do you know the answer to my question re the Promise assertion of Jews in setting up Palestinian refugee camps?
Hi Amie,
The only refugee camps that Israel established, at that time, were for Jews of mainly Eastern origin who had run away or been expelled from Muslim countries. These were set up by force of circumstance and their population was resettled in normal accomodation as soon as possible. Needless, to say that the grandchildren of those who occupied these Ma’abarot today all live in decent housing.
It’s a strange charge as usually Israel is accused of expelling this population or driving it over the border, so the idea that we would establish camps to hold them against their will is bizzare and begs the question as to why we’d do so. Cameras existed in those days and so I would challenge anyone making such a claim to produce a single photograph of such a camp.
As is well known refugess camps were established by Jordan in the West Bank and by Egypt in the Gaza Strip. In both cases the Palestinians were illegally annexed without rights of citizenship and basically left to rot. Both of these areas only began to enjoy clean running water, electricity, telephone lines, etc after the Israeli “conquest” in 1967.
As a child I believed that the Arab leaders left these unfortunates in terrible conditions in order to ferment hatred against Israel. Today I believe that they just didn’t care. It is one of the tragedies of the Palestinan people that while many of their brothers are prepared to argue their cause, few seem to care about them as the human beings that they are.
As a footnote, it goes without saying that the “setting up” of refugee camps, in and of itself is not a bad thing. Such camps usually provide temporary shelter for the homeless. It becomes a crime when they are no longer required are are turned, effectively, into incarceration camps.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2009/09/three-left-wing-myths-about-israel.html
This is essential reading. ”4 left wing myths about Israel”. The best article I’ve read on the history of the region.
Daniel
I have read somewhere that Israel offered to build decent housing to replace camps (I think it was Gaza) and that the inhabitants or their overlords refused.
Could it be that “amie” is confusing her facts?
There is this recent talk a German journalist had with a somebody living in a camp near Bethlehem. As best I know Cicero the German magazine the journalist wrote the piece for is aiming at being read by the educated center-left but culturally conservative at the same time Bildungsbürger.
(translation here http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/01/cold-dose-of-reality-how-palarabs-in.html)
Silke,
I have every reason to believe that Amie is one of the good guys. Treat her nicely.
Regards
Could it be that “amie” is confusing her facts?
Silke if you read my previous comment, you would see that I am questioning this assertion made in the TV series the Promise, which was under discussion. It is certainly not “my” fact.
Sorry – I should read more slowly
Richard have you seen Melanie Phillips has quoted your summing up of the Promise in this post, via another blog:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6719200/the-oldest-obsession.thtml
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