This is not a political forum and shouldn’t become one. Still if you want to make bold statements, make sure they are valid and that you’ve looked at it form multiply angels. I for example support the Israelis for dozens of reasons but none of them belong on a football board
I don't see how the criticism that Israel has no regard for the innocent Palestinians while taking out the terrorists is anything but valid.
sorry panic, but i simply adore how everyone falls one side of the israel/palestine mess like one side is totally at fault and the other is totally right - is it all possible that both sides are completely fugged up?! regardless, when AJAX supporters fly israeli flags it IS NOT the same as another group of fans shouting hamas chants
I agree with Rutger and Panic, take this to the political forums, moderators why don't you close this or move it?
To answer the historical aspect that Crazy Yank brough up. While the Dutch have shown tolerance, they also have a rather dark side to their history in World War II. Many Dutchman were sympathetic to the Nazi cause. The Dutch were one of the largest contributors to the Nazi war machine. Thousands joined the Waffen SS. The 23rd SS "Nederland" Division was one of the largest contingents. The SS also began forming, late in the war, more Dutch-based units. These never came to be due to the end of the war. A good number of Dutchmen also joined pro-German political formations. This being apart from the NSB, Holland's facist party.
'A good number', 'many Dutchmen'. Total BS my friend. Surely some people will have supported the nazi's before they invaded NL. And surely some will have joined the nazi's as a means to secure a better future for their families. But in no way were these significant numbers. So stop trying to tell us they were. We all have grandmothers and fathers who actually were there. We all had people tell us about the war in elementary school. Through the years it turned out our role wasn't as great as we thought it was... but it surely wasn't as bad as American history books apparently teach. Any idea why a lot of people still have trouble behaving themselves in the company of Germans? Because our grandfathers joined the SS I guess
its not American history books, they barely teach anything anyway. Its probably from outside reading. I thought Simon Kuper's book talks about this, but I haven't read it yet.
Kuper's book Ajax, The Dutch, The War does talk about it in detail. He writes extensively about the "myth" that the Netherlands in general and Ajax specifically was especially supportive/protective of Dutch Jews before and during the war. Please pay attention to my specific words. I am not condemning "many" Dutchmen as Nazi sympathisers. I'm just answering the point that Kuper's book does complicate the popular notion that the Netherlands was a sanctuary for European Jews. Kuper makes the point, to the contrary, that it was one of the least-protective of the occupied Western countries. Whether he's right or wrong, I dunno. But he makes a compelling argument. And as an American, I'm particularly open to the idea that ennobling national themes are at least partly b.s.
Isn't that the same guy that wrote Jews in the Netherlands were afraid to say they are Jewish? That was priceless
AFCA is right, the dutch weren't that heroic when it came to hiding jews from the germans (at least in numbers compared to e.g. France and Denmark), but that doesn't mean they were massively supporting the nazi's.....The dutch were just very passive, most people thought like: "If we just behave quiet and normal, the germans won't bother us until the brits and americans come", so many turned their heads when they saw what the nazi's were doing to the jews.....cowardice? maybe. Nazi sympathisers? Hell no!
Guys the NSB did not have anti-Semitism as a core tenet. Some Dutch Jews actually became NSB members. However, as Nazi Germany became more powerful in the late 1930's, the NSB slowly started to model itself after the german NSDAP. With the sudden occupation by 1940 the NSB quickly turned into a Dutch look-a-like of the german Nazi party. But for ones remember: very few knew of the concentration camps in 1945, so don’t think of every Nazi as a beast. But to come to the question: how many members did the NSB have before the war? In 1933 there were only a few thousand members, in January 1934 it had risen to 22.000 and at the end of 1934 there were 33.000. At 17 April 1935 the NSB party got 8% of all votes and 44 of the 535 seats. (Rotterdam 9,51%) (Utrecht 10,18%) (Den Haag 12,02%) At the elections in 1937 the movement lost near half of its votes from 1935 and stayed little until occupation.