Geert Wilders, the leader of the Netherlands’ largest political party, said on Sunday he conveyed the support of millions of Europeans during a phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Besides criticism from weak politicians and biased media, there are millions and millions of people in Europe supporting him and his brave actions to free both Israel and Gaza from the terrorists of Hamas, Wilders told the prime minister, the Dutch lawmaker revealed on X.
“His fight is our fight since we cherish life and freedom while they [Hamas terrorists] love death and destruction,” Wilders tweeted.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office did not issue a readout of the call between Netanyahu and Wilders as of press time on Sunday afternoon.
The Dutch government collapsed on June 3, ushering in an Oct. 29 snap election, after Wilders’s Party for Freedom withdrew from the coalition, accusing other parties of failing to back his plans to toughen immigration policies.
The Party for Freedom had entered the coalition some six months after its surprise victory in the Netherlands’ November 2023 general election, striking a deal with the centrist People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy and New Social Contract parties, as well as the Farmer-Citizen Movement.
Initially described as the most pro-Israel government in the history of the Netherlands due to its promise to move the country’s embassy to Jerusalem, Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp (New Social Contract) quickly became one of Europe’s most vocal critics of the Jewish state.
Speaking during a parliament session following the fall of the coalition, Wilders said: “If Jerusalem falls, Athens, Paris or Amsterdam are next.
“The fact that our mothers in the West can sleep peacefully is because the mothers of Israeli soldiers lie awake, wondering whether their child will come home alive from a battle fought in the name of freedom,” he said. “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and it has to fight the terror of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”
Wilders—a staunch supporter of Israel’s right to the entire Land of Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea—has said he visited the Jewish state more than 40 times. After graduating from high school, he spent a year volunteering at Moshav Tomer in the Jordan Valley.
In 2018, Wilders declared, “The more Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, the better, for that land is Jewish—and Jordan is Palestine!”
Following Wilders’s win in the 2023 election, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority condemned him for saying Palestinians should be offered the right to settle in the Hashemite Kingdom and elect their government.
