Dear colleagues,
Every inhabitant of Amsterdam has the right to freedom and safety. In Amsterdam we are obliged to do everything we can to protect our Jewish community. We praise and protect the precious part they are of our collective history, culture and literature.
It is sad, but we still need to be vigilant. Not only for Jewish, but also Muslim and other minorities that are at risk. In Amsterdam we invest in the protection of synagogues, mosques and other religious buildings. Nevertheless protection is not enough. Also words matter. As the mayor of Amsterdam I have a responsibility to fight the sources of structural racism and institutional discrimination.
This year in Amsterdam a monument designed by Libeskind will be unveiled with the names of 102.220 victims of the Holocaust. As Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg rightfully stated on our National commemoration day: “ It is not a responsibility to undo the past, but a responsibility to emphasize that the past is not finished yet.”
We should not forget how the holocaust began: with a joke, with fake-news, in classrooms, at work, in the streets. We should be vigilant of those first steps. Do not forget that before Auschwitz, there were elections, administrative directives, willing and less willing helpers, most of whom had never visited a concentration camp, never killed anyone. It is important to note that after the war it was not only the Germans who said they knew nothing about the whole thing, that they were only following orders. The helpers of the Dutch Police, Dutch Railroad employees and even the civil servants of the city of Amsterdam had similar claims. We cannot afford to live without the reasonable fear that among us, that even we could be future perpetrators or their helpers. Just as important we need to be hopeful and encouraged by acts of bravery like the strike in February 1941 in Amsterdam. This strike in the middle of Nazi occupation by the people of Amsterdam is considered to be the only mass protest in Europe against the Nazi round-up of the Jews.
This strike is one of the reasons Amsterdam launched a campaign against racism and discrimination. With this campaign, we make a statement: we are all responsible. All Amsterdammers should stand up for each other: say something, intervene! Not be a silent bystander. Words matter. We have commissioned studies into the effect of racism, anti-Semitism, discrimination against Muslims and against LGBTIQ+ persons on the well-being of those people involved. In the coming period, these studies are the basis for broad city conversations about the experience of discrimination, anti-Semitism and racism.
Words matter. Anti-Semitism and being critical of the State of Israel are not the same. You are allowed to criticise the policy of the Netherlands; people should also be allowed to criticise the policy of the State of Israel. However, if you equate criticising an act of the State of Israel with hatred of Jews, then you deceive those people who experienced the horror of real discrimination; if someone says for political gain that a legal investigation by the International Criminal Court of a state-actor in Gaza is anti-Semitism, than you deeply under valuate the meaning of antisemitism and the dark outcomes of anti-Semitism nowadays and in history.
As Angela Merkel recently stated: ‘Language is the harbinger of action’. As leaders we bear extra responsibility to set a good example, to make sure the word does not become poison.
Thank you.