(JTA) Amid protest by prominent Dutch Holocaust survivors, an author who called Gaza “a ghetto” and said he feels uncomfortable around Jews has stepped down as keynote speaker of the national ceremony commemorating victims of the genocide.
In a statement published Thursday on the website of the National 4 and 5 May Committee, Dutch-Moroccan author Abdelkader Benali wrote that on the national commemoration day, “we come together to commemorate and the discussion around my remarks must not distract from that. So I’ve decided it’s better if someone else deliver the speech.”
Benali, who was named Monday by the committee as keynote speaker, said in 2006 during a conversation with a journalist that southern Amsterdam “is full of Jews. And that’s annoying that there are so many of them. Amsterdam Jews. Makes you feel uneasy as a Moroccan. It looks like Israel. So many Jews, it just feels crazy.”
