AMSTERDAM — A Pro-Israel organisation has lodged a criminal complaint against the Arab European League (AEL) for allegedly anti-Semitic cartoons on its Dutch website.
The Hague-based Centre Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) contacted the public prosecutor’s office on Sunday after the cartoons appeared on AEL.nl.
CIDI said one of the cartoons – since removed – depicted Adolf Hitler sharing a bed with Anne Frank, author of the world-famous diaries about her Jewish family hiding in Amsterdam from the Holocaust. A second cartoon showed a person doubting the Holocaust actually took place.
The cartoons were a reaction to the 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that have caused offence to Muslims around the world. CIDI said earlier cases had established it can be a criminal offence to cast doubt on the Holocaust.
The cartoon of Hitler and Anne Frank on the AEL site is a “nightmare” for the thousands of Jewish victims of the Holocaust who are still alive, CIDI director Ronny Naftaniel said.
He said he wanted to use the criminal complaint to teach a “little lesson in democracy” to Dyab Abou Jahjah, the Lebanese-born founder of the AEL in Belgium.
He said the Dutch law was the correct medium to decide what is and what isn’t permissible. Acknowledging the AEL’s anger at the cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed, Naftaniel said this does not sanction using vulnerable victims of the war or incitement against the Jewish people as a whole as a means of expressing this frustration.