David Cronin
The Electronic Intifada / May 21, 2026
Geert Wilders has built a political career on bigotry and buffoonery.
The Party for Freedom – which he leads – continues to produce a steady stream of toxic garbage. One recent proposal it put forward was that Dutch lawmakers should declare “anti-Semitism, hatred and violence” to be an “intrinsic part of Islam.”
Crude stereotyping by fake theologians like Wilders and his followers should be regarded as the very antithesis of the reputation for religious tolerance which the Netherlands developed over several centuries.
The Party for Freedom (known by the acronym PVV) was defeated by liberals in a general election last year. PVV representatives do not seem to have been chastened by that setback.
Sebastian Kruis, a PVV member of the European Parliament, described a discussion on Israel earlier this month as a “debate without facts.” Rather than citing facts, he branded sympathizers with Palestinians as “scum,” while complaining about “Gaza genocide nonsense.”
Voluminous evidence that Israel’s attack on Gaza is genocidal has been gathered or accepted by the world’s largest human rights organizations , quite a few Holocaust scholars and a preliminary verdict from the International Court of Justice.
The dismissal of that evidence by Kruis has apparently endeared him to at least one organization. Two days after he made his “Gaza genocide nonsense” comment, the European Coalition for Israel hailed Kruis as “someone we can truly call a friend.”
Despite being a party that regularly invokes the Holocaust, the PVV has little regard for the global rules system introduced with the intention of preventing such horrors ever occurring again.
Israel’s colonization activities in the occupied West Bank violate the Fourth Geneva Convention – one of the most important international laws drawn up following the Holocaust.
Each time, therefore, Israel establishes a settlement or expands an existing settlement in the West Bank, it is committing a war crime. Each time, Wilders welcomes an Israeli settlement – as he did in late April – he is applauding a war crime.
The war Israel and the US declared on Iran a few months ago was similarly a breach of international law. It involved the crime of aggression – the supreme international crime, according to a 1946 ruling from the Nuremberg tribunal.
Kruis seems to have no qualms about cheering on such crimes.
“I believe that we must support Israel and the US in every possible way,” he posted in March. Kruis was offering his thoughts on President Donald Trump’s threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened swiftly.
‘Civilized forces’
For Kruis, supporting Israel in “every possible way” evidently included attending a party to mark the anniversary of the state’s foundation during May. We can be sure that the party’s organizers did not express any remorse for the Nakba, the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine between 1947 and 1949.
When Kruis joined this year’s celebration he gushed that it was “nice to catch up with civilized forces.” On its 78th “birthday” – 14 May – Israel underscored just how “civilized” it is by attacking a medical center in Lebanon.
The European Coalition for Israel is a Christian Zionist group nominally committed to the principle of religious freedom.
Its commitment is superficial. The group has been silent about the manifold ways through which Israel denies religious freedom.
As the European Coalition for Israel embraces lawmakers from the explicitly anti-Islam PVV, it comes as little surprise that the ECI has no issue with the massive destruction inflicted on Gaza’s mosques during the genocidal war.
But as a so-called Christian group, perhaps we could expect that it would oppose restrictions placed on Easter ceremonies by Israeli forces occupying Jerusalem earlier this year. If the restrictions have upset the European Coalition for Israel, then it is keeping very quiet about its feelings.
The silence reveals how Christian Zionism is such a warped ideology that its adherents will back Israel no matter what that state does.
Christian Zionism does not honour the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is completely at variance with the message of love and equality he preached.
The ideology of Christian Zionism was already an affront to Christianity when it emerged in the 19th century. By backing a colonization project under which Palestinians have been uprooted and are now subjected to a war of extermination, Christian Zionists expose themselves as hardcore racists.
Is it any wonder that they are forming an unholy alliance with the far right?
David Cronin is an associate editor of The Electronic Intifada; his books include Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel and Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation
