Does Criticism of Israel Justify the Exclusion of Jewish Historical Memory?

In this commentary, Dr. João Ferreira Dias examines the troubling intersection of antisemitism, political polarization, and the politics of historical memory through a controversy surrounding a proposed exhibition commemorating three centuries of Jewish life in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. Drawing on debates about collective responsibility, cultural exclusion, and multidirectional memory, Dr. Ferreira Dias explores how criticism of Israeli government policies can become entangled with perceptions of Jewish communities elsewhere. He argues that solidarity with Palestinians and recognition of Jewish historical suffering are not mutually exclusive, warning against the conflation of Jewish identity with Israeli state actions. The commentary underscores the importance of preserving inclusive historical remembrance amid contemporary geopolitical conflicts.

By João Ferreira Dias

Should the history of a Jewish community in Europe become entangled in controversies over the policies of the Israeli government? The question exposes a troubling tension between legitimate criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the tendency to hold Jewish communities elsewhere symbolically accountable for those actions. When Jewish cultural heritage and historical remembrance become politically sensitive because of events in the Middle East, the boundary between political solidarity and collective stigmatization begins to blur. A recent controversy in the Dutch city of Amersfoort illustrates how this tension can affect even the commemoration of a centuries-old Jewish community.

Workmen were renovating the synagogue on Drieringensteeg when Alexander van Dijkhuizen spoke to the Dutch newspaper Trouw. The building was approaching its three-hundredth anniversary. For Van Dijkhuizen, chair of Amersfoort’s Jewish community, an exhibition at the city museum was intended to be one of the anniversary’s main events. However, the museum had withdrawn from the project. Its director, Paul Baltus, cited tensions over the Middle East.

Baltus was concerned about the 85 volunteers who interact with visitors. He told Trouw that there had been no specific threat of violence. The museum had neither consulted the police nor conducted a risk assessment, and the exhibition was still at the conceptual stage. A small museum must consider what its volunteers can reasonably handle. In this case, however, the subject itself was deemed a risk before the exhibition had even taken shape.

In one strand of the cultural left, the distinction between oppressors and oppressed has come to do more than explain who exercises power over whom in Gaza. It has become a framework for determining what Jews elsewhere are perceived to represent. One can honor the Jews murdered under Nazism while still placing a contemporary Jewish congregation on the side of the oppressor based on the actions of the Israeli government. David Schraub has examined a related problem in debates about race: when Jews are viewed primarily through their presumed proximity to power, the prejudice they face becomes harder to recognize. In debates over Gaza, even making space for Jewish history in a museum can come to be perceived as taking Israel’s side.

In May 2025, the Bristol venue Strange Brew canceled a concert by Oi Va Voi, a British band whose music draws on klezmer traditions. The Bristol Palestine Alliance had objected to the band’s previous performances in Israel. Campaigners also claimed to discern a coded Zionist message on the cover of a solo album by the band’s Israeli guest singer, Zohara, which depicted her surrounded by watermelons. The venue later acknowledged that the cancellation had been a mistake and that the band’s Jewish identity and its guest singer’s nationality had likely subjected them to a level of scrutiny that other performers would not have faced.

The reporting on the Amersfoort exhibition identifies no comparable campaign. The museum allowed a dispute over Israel to influence what it would exhibit before any confrontation had even occurred. Follow that logic far enough, and a Jewish family could have lived in Amersfoort for generations, yet its place in the city’s museum would still depend on how calm the news from the Middle East happened to be.

Amersfoort’s Council of Churches condemned Israeli violence in Gaza and the West Bank in the same letter in which it called on the museum to reinstate the exhibition. Michael Rothberg has explored how the remembrance of one history of violence can deepen recognition of another. The churches suggested that anger over Gaza need not prevent Amersfoort’s residents from learning about the Jewish families who had lived in their city for centuries.

On November 6, following a meeting convened by the mayor and the councillor for culture, the city announced that it would work with the museum and the Jewish community to find a way to hold the exhibition. Offers of assistance had alleviated some of Baltus’s concerns, although the venue had yet to be determined.

At Borneoplein, a light is illuminated for each of Amersfoort’s Jewish victims of the Second World War on the anniversary of their death. An exhibition could offer visitors a glimpse into the lives commemorated by those lights. Amersfoort once had a Jewish theater society. In 1941, the community established a school for Jewish children excluded from public education. The congregation was reestablished after the war, and by 1949, the synagogue’s damaged interior had been restored. This time, the workmen on Drieringensteeg were preparing the synagogue for a celebration.

The Amersfoort controversy raises a broader question: should Jewish communities in Europe bear the consequences of political conflicts involving Israel? Criticism of Israeli policies and solidarity with Palestinians should not come at the expense of Jewish historical memory or cultural belonging. As the Council of Churches demonstrated, these commitments are not mutually exclusive. A democratic society must be capable of acknowledging different histories of suffering without turning remembrance into a political endorsement. Commemorating three centuries of Jewish life in Amersfoort is not taking Israel’s side; it is recognizing that Jewish history is an inseparable part of the city’s own history.