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| Pete Hoekstra US Ambassador to the Netherlands and Donald Trump |
Donald Trump's choice of
Pete Hoekstra to represent the United States as ambassador to the
Netherlands has alarmed Dutch observers familiar with the former
congressman’s bizarre and entirely false claim that parts of their
country have been surrendered to Islamist radicals, creating “no-go
zones” for non-Muslims.
Hoekstra, who was born in the Netherlands but raised in Michigan as a
staunch social conservative, might find himself largely unwelcome in
his parents’ homeland, where even opponents of Muslim immigration, like
the opposition leader Geert Wilders, typically cast themselves as
defenders of liberal social values, like support for gay rights and
abortion.
News of Hoekstra’s nomination prompted
stunned reports in Dutch publications about the
shockingly racist, anti-Chinese campaign ad he ran in 2012, his
repeated efforts,
during an 18-year career in Congress, to deny gay couples the right to
marry or adopt children, and his leading role in the fight against
government-funded health insurance.
Most baffling of all, though, was Hoekstra’s absurd claim, just two
years ago, that the Dutch government had ceded control of sections of
their country to Islamist radicals.
Martijn de Koning, an anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam
whose research focuses on the Dutch debate over Islam, drew attention to
video of comments Hoekstra made in 2015 at a conference sponsored by
the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Hoekstra’s contribution to
a panel discussion of Muslim migration to Europe
was to claim that a “stealth jihad” was underway which had plunged the
Netherlands into such “chaos” that “there are cars being burned, there
are politicians that are being burned, … and yes, there are no-go zones
in the Netherlands.”
The former member of Congress went on to tell the conference that he
and his wife had narrowly escaped from Budapest that summer, one day
before thousands of Muslims seeking refuge from the war in Syria arrived
in the Hungarian capital. “The little railroad station that we went
through in Budapest,”
Hoekstra recalled, “the next day it was surrounded
by 10,000 invaders, or refugees.”
What should make Hoekstra’s nomination to represent the United States
in Europe alarming to Americans is that he is part of a far-right
movement against the imaginary threat of Islamic Shariah law that uses
the fear of terrorism to stoke hatred of Muslims.
Read complete report and watch video : Dutch Wary of Trump’s Ambassador, Who Imagines “No-Go Zones” in Netherlands
