BDS activists defeat Amsterdam-Tel Aviv twinning plan

Amsterdam City Council decidesto reject a proposal that the city officially twin with Tel Aviv. Instead, the municipal council voted to limit cooperation to individual projects.

By GIL STERN STERN ZOHAR
Amsterdam’s historic Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue (photo credit: GIL ZOHAR)
Amsterdam’s historic Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue
(photo credit: GIL ZOHAR)
Tel Aviv and Amsterdam would seem like a natural choice to become twin cities.
Both are the pulsating cultural and business heart of their respective countries, but not the seat of the government.
Both are ultra-liberal cities with substantial LGBT populations.
And Amsterdam already has a grove of Israeli olive trees transplanted in front of the landmark Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, symbolizing the long historical presence of Jews in the Netherlands.
But after months of discussions, the Amsterdam City Council decided recently to reject a proposal that the city officially twin with Tel Aviv. Instead, the municipal council voted to limit cooperation to individual projects.
The bid to twin the two cities began in 2013 at the initiative of pro-Israel lobbyist Ronnie Naftaniel, who had recently stepped down as the director of the pro-Israel lobby group Centrum Informatie en Documentatie Israel (CIDI). Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan and the city council initially welcomed the idea.
But Dutch-based Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions groups mounted a campaign against it. The BDS activists protested at Amsterdam City Hall, opposed the twinning at council meetings, organized a petition that gathered more than 2,500 signatures and posted articles in the Dutch press.
There should be no twin-city deal “as long as Israel occupies Palestine, structurally infringes human rights and continues its settlement policy,” Rutger Groot Wassink, leader of the left-wing green party GroenLinks, was quoted by Dutch News as having said.
In a victory for the BDS movement and a blow to the pro-Israel lobby group CIDI, Van der Laan withdrew the plan due to pressure from GroenLinks, the Labor Party and the Socialists. The mayor was also under pressure from a number of other pro-Palestinian Arab organizations which said the move is inappropriate because of Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank.
Amsterdam City Council rejected an official and full relationship with Tel Aviv, instead opting for limited cooperation. A compromise to extend the twinning to include Ramallah, the provisional capital of the Palestinian Authority, was also rejected.
The council moreover decided to allocate funding to Israeli human rights organizations, including Adalah, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement.
Among those Dutch activists who opposed the twinning plan were Jaap Hamburger, chairman of A Different Jewish Voice. Hamburger argued against twinning with Tel Aviv because the city houses the Defense Ministry.
Farid Esack, a South African-born anti-apartheid veteran now living in Amsterdam, was among the protesters, calling on Van der Laan to say “No to apartheid and occupation.” In an open letter, Esack wrote: “I am not unaware of the terrible crimes committed by many European countries against Jews, more particularly prior to and during the Second World War. Nor am I unaware of the contemptible increase in anti-Semitism in parts of Europe. Our ‘Never again!’ however, must be extended to all people. ‘Never again, to any people.’ Any elevation of a particular set of historical victims over another set of actual victims – in this case, the Palestinians – is another form of racism. Europe cannot compensate for its historical role in the demonization of Jews by turning a blind eye to the suffering and the dispossession of the Palestinians.”