When Human Rights Are Used to Harm Israel: Selective Outrage in The Hague

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In early May, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp — formerly ambassador to Israel — sent a letter to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas urging a formal review of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. In it, he accused Israel of violating international humanitarian law, questioned its intentions in Gaza, and warned that the EU-Israel relationship may no longer be tenable under Article 2 of the Association Agreement.

As a Dutch historian and academic who has long observed the Netherlands’ ambivalent relationship with Israel, I read the letter with a mixture of disbelief and resignation. The disbelief came from its brazenness. The resignation came from knowing that this is part of a broader European tendency: using the language of human rights not to protect Jews, but to isolate their state.

The letter is formally addressed to Brussels, but it is aimed squarely at Jerusalem. Veldkamp gives Hamas a single vague line — calling for the release of hostages — and then devotes his legal outrage entirely to Israel. His tone is familiar: assertive, selective, moralizing. What is different this time is the context.

Only weeks earlier, Veldkamp and Prime Minister Dick Schoof had met with NGOs that have been consistently hostile to Israel — including Oxfam Novib, Amnesty International, Save the Children, and PAX. These organizations demanded that the Dutch government draw a “red line” for Israel. Shortly after that meeting, Veldkamp announced he would summon the Israeli ambassador for a formal reprimand over a tragic IDF strike in Rafah. The IDF had already opened a new investigation. Whether the decision was based on evidence or on activist pressure is unclear. But the pattern was unmistakable.

Only weeks later came the letter to Kaja Kallas — a formalization of the same logic: isolate Israel, downplay Hamas, and dress it all in legal language.

This is the deeper problem. Dutch foreign policy toward Israel is no longer about facts. It is about optics, alignment, and ideological positioning. Veldkamp represents a government under pressure from activist NGOs and progressive parties. His letter is less a legal brief than a political gesture. And in making that gesture, he revives a troubling European tradition: of telling Jews how they should conduct themselves — and punishing them when they refuse.

There is also a colonial undertone to all of this — one Europe refuses to examine. Veldkamp’s letter is not a conversation between equals. It is an act of moral supervision, delivered by a European power to a Jewish state that must, once again, justify its existence, its boundaries, its self-defense.

This is not partnership. It is paternalism. It revives the old colonial reflex: the civilizer instructs the native — and punishes him when he does not comply.

As someone descended from a Dutch East Indies family, I have a historical sensitivity to these dynamics. I recognize the tone — the certainty, the asymmetry, the self-assurance. And I know where it leads.

Veldkamp says Hamas should have no role in Gaza’s future. Fair enough. But then he condemns Israel for taking the only steps that might make that outcome possible. He even criticizes Prime Minister Netanyahu for allegedly prioritizing military objectives over hostage negotiations. This, from a European minister whose own government has done nothing to bring the 59 remaining hostages home — 35 of whom are presumed dead. If anyone has misjudged his priorities, it is Veldkamp himself.

In his letter, Veldkamp dismisses the new Israeli-American humanitarian aid mechanism as “not credible,” while simultaneously admitting that many of its details remain unknown to him. This is not reasoned diplomacy. It is ideological reflex. A man who writes legal condemnation before reading the evidence should not be lecturing a democracy at war.

The tone of the letter is also revealing. It is disjointed, repetitive, and accusatory — a patchwork of human rights jargon, legal insinuation, and political pressure. There is no constructive path forward, no engagement with Israeli reality, no recognition of October 7. It is as if the dead are forgotten, and the living — those still held hostage in tunnels beneath Gaza — are background noise.

Veldkamp is not new to this style. When the ICC first suggested arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, he publicly declared that Netanyahu would be arrested if he entered the Netherlands — before reading the ruling. He speaks fast, loudly, and always in the direction of applause. But when it matters — when moral clarity is needed — he disappears.

I know my country. I know its history. We pride ourselves on being principled, restrained, neutral. But sometimes neutrality becomes complicity — especially when it hides behind the mask of legal process. Veldkamp’s letter is not about saving lives. It is about saving face.

Israel is not perfect, and it is not above scrutiny. But if Europe continues to speak about Israel the way it once spoke about Jews — as uniquely suspect, uniquely dangerous, and uniquely deserving of pressure — then we have learned nothing.

Justice begins with honesty. And honesty begins by naming the real threat.

The threat to Gaza is not the IDF. It is Hamas.

And the threat to peace is not Israel’s self-defense. It is Europe’s selective outrage.