Sleepwalking Dutch lulled into complacency on terrorism - Geert Wilders Freedom Party tries to wake up the country

Sleepwalking Dutch Lulled Into Complacency On Terrorism

By Beila Rabinowitz, Director - MilitantIslamMonitor.org

November 1, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Less than five months before Theo van Gogh's ritual murder at the hands of radical Islamists, he performed at a political event, convincingly dressed as an Imam in Muslim robe. Resplendent in beard he pontificated that his "conversion" to Islam benefited him in two ways, having "finally found clothes that fit as if tailor made" while nodding his approval of "a belief in which a woman knows her place."

His performance concluded with the sagacious observation, "Allah is the scourge which will conquer Amsterdam, sleep well, good Amsterdammers."

Holland's awakening after van Gogh's brutal killing was short lived, the Dutch since having gone back to sleep, a conclusion which is borne out by surveys that suggest - contrary to the evidence of a continuing Islamist juggernaught in that country - that 20% more people in 2006 than the previous year don't regard terrorism as their first concern, and that 13% more have confidence that the government is doing a good job of fighting terrorism.

Such complacency brings to mind Dr. Daniel Pipes' article "My Gloom-Back to September 10th," in which he wrote that the 9/11 attacks "made me feel more secure...finally the country was focused on issues that had long worried me" but pessimistically concluded that "If there ever was a crisis, it is over. Life is good, security appears adequate...sleep beckons."

The Dutch seem intent upon ignoring the Islamist threat, though it permeates their society, to the extent that it is markedly affecting the upcoming November 26 election in which control of the Lower House looms large.

The Freedom Party - a political movement built on the recognition of the threat to Holland posed by the Islamists - was nearly sidelined due to death threats against its leader, Geert Wilders who is campaigning on an anti-immigration platform.

Party activists are routinely harassed and attacked by Islamic immigrants and their sympathizers. Just days ago a group of Moroccan Muslim youths assaulted two campaign workers who were hanging political posters in the Hague, Holland's capital.

The omnipresent atmosphere of intolerance displayed by Holland's Muslim population seems to have cowed the society into silence.

In a recent interview the campaign volunteers said they no longer wanted to discuss the assault and a police spokesman declared that "he could not find a pattern in the incident concerning Wilders' poster hangers."

This assessment was contradicted by a member of the Pim Fortuyn's List - another party [named after Pym Fortuyn a politician who had been assassinated by a Green party activist with Islamist sympathies] concerned with Muslim immigration - who said that "it happens all the time, "our staff is regularly harassed and chased," adding that someone who works for a party with a controversial point of view has "problems on the street. You see how it is, especially if you have sharp views on immigration which elicits heavy reaction on the street. When it comes to other important topics it happens much less. And that is not just for people with right wing ideas. Look at the murder of Theo van Gogh."

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders is forced to lead a nightmare existence, under 24 hour guard because of the death threats which obviously curtails his ability to campaign.

Wilders was targeted by van Gogh's murderer Mohammed Bouyeri who singled out the politician for assassination in the multi-page rant that he affixed to van Gogh's lifeless body with a butcher knife. Islamist websites continue to offer rewards for anyone who kills him, preferably by beheading and Wilders has reported that he receives at least 5 death threats a day.

Despite these constant reminders, the disruption of the Dutch electoral process due to the activities of the radical Islamists seem to have gone unnoticed by the public largely as a result of the Dutch media's complicity in hushing these incidents up.

As Geert Wilders commented after the beatings of his election workers, "the newspapers are not saying it was Moroccans."

For example last month, an on the dole and angry North African immigrant was responsible for creating a bloodbath in a Dutch welfare office, attacking and stabbing three of the staff members, yet only one paper mentioned the attacker's foreign origin, and that only in passing.

Demonstrating evidence of the "unholy alliance" between the Islamists and the left, Wilders who made headlines last month when he spoke about Holland being deluged by a "tsunami" of immigrants, was savaged by the leftwing Green Party as well as the Democrats 66, whose leader, Hans Pechtold called Wilders comments "Too disgusting for words."

Wilders responded by accusing both parties of "walking around for 30 years acting as if nothing was wrong."

The parties who oppose Wilders live in the shadow of demographic predictions showing that by 2020 Muslims will become the majority in four of Holland's largest cities, with Rotterdam already near a Muslim majority.

Wilders, who has braved the constant death threats to campaign and crafted a party of people who are jeopardizing their own safety by joining with him, is fighting the good fight. He knows that a Muslim majority would be mean "the end of civilization as we know it' and be a death knell for Holland.

"The day there are more Muslims than Christians in the Netherlands, I will leave this country whether I am a parliamentarian or not," he says "I wouldn't feel it was my country any more."

In an interview with Ian Buruma, the author of "Murder in Amsterdam" Wilders criticized the Dutch immigration policies favored by the left.

"We just let everybody in. There is no sense of urgency…I'm furious that the Dutch government is incapable of taking hard measures. That would be better for the moderate Muslims, too. We must crack down. In this country, politicians have always tried to pacify minorities by mollycoddling them. All that holding of hands. It makes me sick."

The Green Party's demonization of Geert Wilders echoed the 2002 election campaign during which Pim Fortuyn - a prime ministerial candidate who had written a book entitled, "The Islamisation of Holland," warning of the demographic threat posed by Muslim immigration - was assassinated.

It was the first political murder in Holland since the time of the House of Orange. The sentencing judge declared that the murder "was an attack on the democratic process."

Fortuyn was shot as he was exiting a radio station by 32 year old Volkert Van de Graaf. In 1990 Van de Graaf had started his own political party [Cow Foot] and participated in the local council elections in Wageningen [a suburb of The Hague]. The party received 202 votes and was disbanded in 2001.

Displaying the little regard that the Dutch legal system typically has for victims of violent crime, Van de Graaf only received a sentence of 18 years for the murder of Fortuyn and will be eligible for parole in 4 years time.

At his trial Van der Graaf [an "animal rights" extremist, who was the treasurer of the radical-eco group Foundation for Environmental Offensive] said he killed Fortuyn because he wore fur and planned to lift the ban on the breeding of animals for fur, and "because he used Muslims as scapegoats."

Presciently, Fortuyn's predicted his assassination. In an interview which can be seen on You Tube [Pim Fortuyn Als mij wat gebeurt, "If something happens to me] the prime ministerial candidate declared:

"If you see what I get in the mail from time to time - I mean all the threats - it wouldn't make you cheerful. And the Dutch government - I find that a bloody shame, [it] helps to create a climate, the demonizing of me as a person. And if something should happens to me soon, and I am happy you are giving me the opportunity - and if something happens to me soon, then they are partly responsible. And they cant remove their hands from responsibility and say but it wasn't me who committed the attack. You have created the climate. And that has to stop."

Theo van Gogh, joining in Fortyn's prediction, wrote:

"I suspect Fortuyn will be the first in a line of politically incorrect heretics to be eliminated. This is what our multicultural society has brought us: a climate of intimidation in which all sorts of goat fuckers can issue their threats freely."

In an interview before his murder Fortuyn had warned of the consequences of the denial rampant in Holland.

In this electoral battle the dhimmitude of the left - who blame Holland for causing Muslim rage - abounds, with Labour politicians variously eating Iftar meals with Moroccan Muslims youth [at events organized by the Socialist Party] while concluding that if "Muslim youth would feel that they were better understood, they would not radicalize so quickly."

After the 2002 murder of Pim Fortuyn, the editors and readers of an online publication called "Fundamentally Dutch" addressed an open letter to "Ladies and Gentlemen Politicians of the Country," writing:

"In reality Pim Fortuyn was murdered by the politically correct left.

How long do you think that we can stand idly by and watch as our country is destroyed and our norms and values sold as worthless trinkets?

Politicians in The Hague wake up, take off the blinders and see how things are in this country. Look at the many, many thousands who stood in line for hours to pay their last respects to their hero, Pim Fortuyn, who listened to the people.

Wake up - dammit!"

As of this writing, Labour stands in a statistical dead-heat with the Christian Democrats.

If they do wrest control of the Lower House in this month's elections, Holland's Muslims - who are championed by the socialist laborites - will be doing more then just sharing Iftar dinners with politicians; they will be celebrating Ramadan in parliament instead and Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party will no longer have a country to save.

©1999-2006 Beila Rabinowitz, all rights reserved.