Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Dutch Leader: Homeland for Jews in Germany

A former Dutch prime minister reportedly said that the Jewish state should have been established in Germany.

“Jews need a safe place. Why couldn’t they get a safe place in Germany, at the time?” Dries Van Agt said on Nov. 8 during a seminar Nijmegen, according to the Dutch daily Telegraaf.

The paper described Van Agt, who is a harsh critic of Israel, as a “pro-Palestinian activist.”

Jack de Vries, a lawmaker for Van Agt’s party, the centrist Christian Democratic Appeal, is quoted as telling Elsevier, a weekly, that he “nearly fell from the chair” when he heard Van Agt’s words.

“This remark reflects very little respect for history, especially considering the timing, the 74th anniversary of Kristallnacht,” De Vries said.

Van Agt later told Elsevier that he “only said it would be more logical for Jews to have gotten a piece of land in Germany” as “the Middle East had nothing to do with World War II.”

Van Agt served as prime minister in the early 1980s. In 2008, he spoke at rally in Rotterdam, in which Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh delivered a speech on video via satellite.

Van Agt has said that he would accept the definition of Hamas as a terrorist organization only if the same definition applied to Israel.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.