Ex-European Union boss branded antisemitic after claiming right-wing Israelis think exactly like Nazis
A former E.U.-boss who is now a top adviser to the Dutch king and government said on Sunday that right-wing Israelis have “exactly the same reasoning as the Nazis,” prompting local Jews to call him an antisemite who should resign.Frans Timmermans, a former E.U.top boss and Dutch foreign minister who was recently nominated to the honorary position of minister of state of the Netherlands, made the comments in an interview with the Belgian paper De Morgen.“The reasoning of the right and the far right in Israel is: ‘We Jews can only survive if the Palestinians are gone.’ That is exactly the same reasoning as that of the Nazis back then: ‘The German people, the Aryan race can only survive if the Jews are gone.’ I find that utterly baffling.
Something terrible happened to their grandparents and great-grandparents during the Nazi era: the Holocaust, in which they were annihilated, and now they are doing exactly the same thing to another people,” said Timmermans.He continued: “In the Middle East, an entire people is currently being exterminated.We watch and remain silent, while Palestinians are literally being driven into the sea and worse.”Israel’s enemies and critics have maintained that its attack on Hamas in Gaza, in which several tens of thousands of people are widely believed to have died, including at least 19,000 terrorists, constitutes genocide.
Israel, the U.S.and others have disputed this claim, which the European Union has not adopted.Timmermans had been considered a center-left politician before 2023, when he became the political leader of the Labour Party (PvdA) and GreenLeft (GroenLinks) alliance.
He stepped down in 2025.A former first vice-president of the European Commission—a post he held until 2019—Timmermans was praised by many European Jews for standing up to antisemitism, including by saying at many speeches that “without Jews, Europe is not Europe.”The Central Jewish Board of the Netherlands, CJO, wrote a letter on Mo...