The rise of Geert Wilders and the new Dutch government

The Dutchman Geert Wilders is a break-away parliamentarian from the Liberal Party who founded his own Freedom Party in 2004. Since his youth he has developed an emotional bond with the Jewish state and has visited Israel at least more than 40 times. As a youngster he went there to work in the Kibbutz, a socialist experiment of collective farming, and had an abortive relationship with a Jewish girl. His second wife is the Jewish-Hungarian diplomat Krisztina Marfaimarried.

The reason for his breakaway from the Liberal Party was their point of view about immigration in general and Muslims in particular. Wilders’ concern for Muslim immigration is because he believes that Israel and the West are confronted by the same enemy. He recently declared in an interview for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot that the Palestinians are not a puny guerrilla force fighting a last stand against dispossession by the settler movement backed by the Israeli military juggernaut. They are the first line of defense of the Western world:

The Palestinians believe – and this is the nature of Islam – that Israel is their country and that they are fighting the non-Muslims in the West through it. The struggle against Israel is a struggle against us. We are Israel. The reason Dutch parents can sleep calmly without having to worry about their kids is that Israeli parents stay awake at night because their children are in the army. This doesn’t mean Israel cannot be criticized, but I’m not ashamed to fight for Israel. Read more