The Dutch king has defied calls from more than 200 mosques to call off his attendance at the opening of a Holocaust museum in Amsterdam alongside Israel’s president on Sunday.
The National Holocaust Museum was said to be too much of a “great significant and national importance” for King Willem-Alexander, 56, not to be at the inauguration, according to the Netherlands Government Information Service.
Isaac Herzog’s attendance was described as “a huge blow to anyone who cares about the fate of the Palestinian people and values justice” by the K7 alliance of Dutch mosques.
The organization argued that the Dutch government should not receive the Israeli dignitary, adding: “But certainly not by our king. We therefore ask his majesty not to participate in Herzog’s reception.”
It criticized the president for signing an artillery shell with the phrase “I rely on you” before it was fired toward the Gaza Strip.
Details of his trip to Amsterdam for the museum opening were on Wednesday leaked to Israeli media.
A day later human rights campaigners, including Erev Rav, a Jewish organization, announced a counter-demonstration on nearby Waterlooplein.
The Rights Forum accused Mr Herzog of “genocidal sedition” and said it was “unthinkable” that “he sets foot on Dutch territory, other than to answer to the International Criminal Court”.
In addition to the Israeli president and the king, Alexander van der Bellen, the Austrian president, and Manuela Schwesig, a German state premier, will be at the public launch.
The Dutch police said it would have “visible and invisible” measures to ensure the event passes without incident.
A similar event in Canada was marred by a group of “aggressive and physically intimidating” pro-Palestian protesters who blockaded the Montreal Holocaust Museum.
The National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam will be the first in the country to explore how Nazi-installed bureaucracy carried out by Dutch officials led to the highest ratio of Jewish victims in western Europe.
In the Netherlands, the Nazis deported 75 per cent of the country’s Jewish population – about 102,000 men, women and children.
Exhibitions highlight how Dutch civilians enforced diktats barring Jews from sports clubs, riding bicycles and attending universities.
Annemiek Gringold, the museum’s head curator, told The New York Times: “You feel the oppression and the dismantling of the rule of law and freedom for every Jew.
“That crime, no matter how neatly captured in judicial text, is always present.”
It contains clothes, items of jewellery, suitcases and other keepsakes taken from the Jews transported to concentration camps by the Nazis.
“That’s the only way to do justice to someone’s memory,” Ms Gringold added.
“Otherwise someone is reduced to what the Nazis made them into. We don’t want that.”
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