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| Hirsi Ali: Europe has double standards on Israel
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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Somali born and ex-Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali has claimed that many European leaders are imposing double standards on their relations with Israel.
In a recent interview with Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld, Chairman of the Board of Fellows at the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, Hirsi Ali discussed her feelings on Israel, Europe’s future and the Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen.
The interview was part of a of a major project of about 100 interviews with prominent Dutch people on the Dutch attitude toward Jews and Israel, which was funded by the Israel Maror Foundation.
Hirsi Ali first became interested in Israel to understand how the country dealt with immigration issues. She said she became very impressed by what she saw and commented on the unifying nature of immigration to Israel.
Binding Factor in Israel
“I understood that the binding factor among immigrants to Israel is a crucial element of success. Whether one arrives from Ethiopia or Russia, or one’s grandparents emigrated from Europe, what binds them is being Jewish. Such a bond is lacking in the Netherlands,” Hirsi Ali said.
While visiting the Palestinian territories, Hirsi Ali said that when the cameras and notebooks were put away she found many Palestinians willing to talk more openly and were more critical of their leaders. She despaired of this viewpoint ever reaching Holland and says that people just aren’t interested in stories of Palestinian corruption.
She added that there are certain concepts relating to the Middle East crisis and immigration, which seem to have been built up over time especially amongst the Left. “In socialist eyes whoever isn’t white or western is a victim, which thus defines Muslims, Palestinians and immigrants as such. My position is that I am not a victim. I am responsible for my actions like anybody else and so are all people.”
The subject of Hirsi Ali’s feelings towards the moral decay of parts of European socialism was brought up a number of times during the interview.
Different standards applied
“The crisis of Dutch socialism can be sized up in their attitudes to both Islam and Israel. They hold Israel to exceptionally high moral standards. The standards by which the Palestinians are judged are very low,” Hirsi Ali suggests.
Hirsi Ali, who was the subject of many death threats for the things she says is also critical of the ‘land for peace’ theory. “It is hard to believe that there are Dutch people who say that if Israel would follow another foreign policy and withdraw from the territories, the problem would disappear entirely. This attitude is infantile and utopian wishful thinking, but one cannot get it out of their heads.”
Hirsi Ali first rose to prominence after Theo Van Gogh was murdered for his direction of the controversial film ‘Submission’ which Hirsi Ali wrote. She is very critical of the idea that Holland is a tolerant country. “There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance,” She said.
Job Cohen, the Mayor of Amsterdam, also came in for harsh criticism from Hirsi Ali. She said that Cohen bends over backwards to reach out and provide for the Muslim community like providing segregated swimming and subsidising segregated schools. However, Hirsi Ali added: “Some Muslims threaten him to make him understand that despite what the Jew does to please them, he always remains a Jew. For the head of the Amsterdam mosques the mayor is the Jew Cohen.”
Hirsi Ali refered to Cohen as “a sweet and cultured man with good intentions”, but symptomatic to the relationship Dutch society has with its minorities.
Hirsi Ali has become a very controversial character in Holland. Earlier in the year there was a furor about how she received her Dutch citizenship and the possibility of her having her citizenship rescinded created such polarisation that the Dutch government fell as a result. In June, the government confirmed that she could keep her Dutch citizenship even though she has now moved to the US.
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