DWhen chairman Martin Bosma (PVV) reads his poems, MPs now look like a class full of secondary school students with a Dutch teacher who enjoys reciting poetry just too much and abuses them as an audience. They stare blankly into space or do something on their iPhone. Bosma doesn’t seem to mind; because it is almost Easter, he wrote the poem this Tuesday Easter by Ida Gerhardt for.
Just before his lecture, Bosma had another misunderstanding; he mistook MP Harmen Krul (CDA), who was about to say something into the microphone, for another member and called him Boswijk. “Krul!” Krul corrected him. “You look so much alike,” Bosma replied. “If he wants to,” Krul said back. (It’s true, they look alike.)
Before this happened, there was a break and Geert Wilders was sitting on his couch, smelling a book that he held open in his hands. It is human to smell the pages of a book, new books smell very nice. But somehow you don’t expect it from Geert Wilders. He put the book down, Sophie Hermans (VVD) walked towards him because she had seen him smell the book. He picked it up again, opened it and smelled it again. In an attempt to read lips, I thought I saw Wilders saying ‘Smells so good’ to Hermans.
The term of the day in the House of Representatives on this Tuesday, during question time, was ‘weak bite’. Many times the weak bite came up, with several questions. The first time with Caroline van der Plas (BBB) who said: ‘I am amazed by the lackluster content that is being expressed here.’
She was talking about the words of Fleur Gräper-Van Koolwijk (D66), the State Secretary for Culture. Van der Plas did not think she was decisive enough after singer Lenny Kuhr was booed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a concert this week. Shortly afterwards, ticket sales for a Kuhr concert were stopped by another theater. The State Secretary said in Parliament that that is ‘up to the theatres’, but that it is ‘an incredible shame to stop ticket sales’.
Van der Plas thinks that is lame, and then continues to throw around the word lame. “Why these weak words?” she says, and “Away with that weak mouthful.” “Do we know what happened in the 1930s and 1940s?” she asks rhetorically.
Most MPs who speak about this question below also see the protest at Lenny Kuhr as an anti-Semitic action. Only Dogukan Ergin (DENK) asks: ‘Why is there anti-Semitism?’ According to him, pro-Palestinian demonstrators are ‘appropriately dismissed as anti-Semites’. “Stop that!” he exclaims. The other MPs laugh scornfully.
It’s a philosophical question. Is disrupting a Lenny Kuhr concert anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian or both?
Joost Eerdmans (JA21) puts the issue more into the sweet and sad atmosphere. ‘The Jewish community needs a collective response from the government. Has a bouquet of flowers gone to Lenny Kuhr yet?’ he wants to know. Ulysse Ellian (VVD) announces her own initiative. ‘I will go to a performance by an artist who is Jewish as soon as possible.’ The State Secretary: ‘If you let me know which performance you are going to, I will be happy to ride with you.’
In the next question, from Stefan van Baarle (DENK), the weak point comes up again. Van Baarle urges a ceasefire in Gaza, ‘but the US and Israel are raising their criminal middle fingers’. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hanke Bruins Slot (CDA), answers that he does mention Israel, ‘but I have not heard the word Hamas’. Van Baarle calls her response ‘an incredibly weak piece’.
In short: if you don’t stand up enough for the Jews, you’re weak, and if you don’t stand up enough for the Gazans, you’re also weak.
Aaf Brandt Corstius reports on a debate in politics in The Hague once a week in his own unique way.
