Doing What Others Won’t: The Dutch Stand Up to Israeli Fascism

From Complicity to Confrontation: How Dutch Policy Is Shifting the Conversation on Israel and Gaza

As the location of The Hague, it’s always been presumed that the Netherlands might lead the way regarding human rights. Sadly, this has often been far from the case, as widespread support for the far-right in the country shows. However, over the past 48 hours, a quiet and largely unpublished revolution has been happening.

While most Western governments wring their hands and clutch their pearls over taking substantive action against the genocidal so-called state of Israel, including Keir Starmer’s pathetic conditional “recognition” of a Palestinian state, the Dutch have begun taking concrete, unapologetic action against Israeli state extremism.

So far, the country has:

• Banned two far-right Israeli ministers from entering the country

• Signalled support for EU sanctions and financial restrictions

• And, most significantly, classified Israel as a potential foreign security threat

Let’s break it down.

Travel Bans and Sanctions

Yesterday, the Dutch government announced it would not permit Itamar Ben-Gvir or Bezalel Smotrich to set foot in the country and that it will be working with other European nations to coordinate regional restrictions, including visa bans, diplomatic isolation, and the freezing of any European assets. Both are well-known figures within the ongoing genocide and senior ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, both noted for their ultranationalist, racist, and genocidal rhetoric.

Ben-Gvir has openly praised the settler who carried out the 1994 Hebron massacre and called for the mass displacement of Palestinians. Smotrich has declared that the entire land “from the river to the sea” belongs to Jews alone and has repeatedly endorsed the destruction of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.

At the same time, the Netherlands has joined a growing number of EU states in backing real sanctions on the so-called state of Israel itself, including:

• Suspension of Israel’s participation in €900 million of EU research funding

• Scrutiny of Israel’s trade privileges under the EU-Israel Association Agreement

• Support for sanctions against other individual Israeli officials

While other countries have implemented sanctions against Israel and Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, the Dutch rhetoric in the announcement stood out. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that the pair “pose a threat to the Dutch public order and to international law.”

The statement that Israeli ministers pose a direct threat to Dutch public order marks an extraordinary shift and is an essential change in how other nations publicly view Israel.

And it didn’t end there.

Naming Israel as a Foreign Threat

In an explosive report from the Dutch National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV), Israel was for the first time listed as a nation conducting dangerous foreign influence operations on Dutch soil alongside Russia, Iran, China, and Turkey—the unofficial Western enemies list.

The report alleges that Israeli authorities, specifically its Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, attempted to covertly shape public opinion in the Netherlands by distributing politically loaded propaganda documents directly to Dutch politicians and journalists, bypassing diplomatic channels. This is a clear breach of diplomatic norms and an attack on Dutch sovereignty.

It should be noted that the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs is, in essence, a propaganda body which exists to conflate anti-Zionism and antisemitism and disseminate pro-Zionist propaganda abroad and online, with Minister of Disapora Affairs Amichai Chikli openly admitting the ministry was lobbying the U.S. to ban TikTok, exposing the lie that the move was anything to do with China.

The report also warns that both Israel and the U.S. have used public threats against the International Criminal Court (ICC) to intimidate or sabotage its investigation into war crimes in Gaza.

In naming Israel as a foreign threat, the Dutch government has shattered the illusion that Western allies are exempt from scrutiny. The implications cannot be overstated, not just for Dutch-Israeli relations, but for the integrity of global justice. The ICC cannot function under intimidation, and sovereign states cannot tolerate foreign ministries acting with impunity on their soil. By calling this out publicly, the Netherlands has done what few others dare: it has exposed the machinery of Zionist propaganda as not only deceitful, but a threat to peace, to law, and to democracy itself.

Why It Matters

For decades, foreign governments, particularly those in Europe and NATO, have cowered in the shadow of U.S. foreign policy when it comes to Israel. They’ve feared accusations of antisemitism. They’ve prioritised trade. They’ve ignored their moral compass for the want of money. What we’re now witnessing isn’t just policy change, it’s a crack in the wall of impunity. And once it begins to crumble, others may follow.

These actions taken by the Netherlands may seem small in isolation, but for Palestinians, they are a lifeline of legitimacy in a world where silence is the norm. For activists, it is vindication that Israeli propaganda and clandestine operations in the West are no conspiracy theories. For common humanity, it chips away at the illusion that war crimes are tolerable when committed by somebody our governments consider an ally.

What the Netherlands has done in the past 48 hours is historic. Not because the actions are unprecedented, others have imposed sanctions, issued statements, or voiced concern, but because the Dutch did it without apology, without euphemism, and without fear, naming Israel as the threat it is.

In a political climate where most Western leaders trip over themselves to justify the unjustifiable, the Netherlands has called fascism by its name, propaganda by its function, and genocide by its consequences. They have named the threat, banned the perpetrators, and begun to tighten the economic screws, not for optics, but for justice. It is a moral line drawn in the sand, a challenge to the cowardice of the so-called “international community.” If one European state can do it, others can follow. And if others follow, the days of impunity for Israeli war criminals may, finally, be numbered.

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