{"id":136500,"date":"2022-02-22T14:18:51","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T13:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=136500"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:26:08","slug":"transparency-needed-about-dutch-israeli-connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2022\/02\/22\/transparency-needed-about-dutch-israeli-connections\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Transparency needed about Dutch-Israeli connections\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wake of Amnesty Report and a FOI request submitted by the Rights Forum, there has been a lot of commotion<\/a>, confusion, and utterly ridiculous accusations of antisemitism. But who, alongside The Rights Forum, supported the original FOI request? What was contained in that request? And why was such a request necessary? In this article, we wish to clarify these matters.<\/p>\n

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Jeff Handmaker<\/span><\/p>

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On 21 January 2022, a Freedom of Information or FOI request<\/a> was submitted to Dutch universities by The Rights Forum concerning ties between Dutch and Israeli universities and Israel lobby organisations. Shortly thereafter, Amnesty international released a lengthy report<\/a> that outlined a system of apartheid directed against Palestinians, the latest in a string of reports by Palestinian<\/a>, Israeli<\/a> and other international organisations<\/a> showing a regime of systemic, institutional discrimination inside Israel and occupied Palestinian territories.<\/p>\n\t

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Dr. Jeff Handmaker is Associate Professor in Legal Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Dutch Scholars for Palestine is a Platform \/ Citizens Initiative of several hundred Dutch-based scholars who are concerned about and organize discussions regarding the longstanding impasse between Israel and the Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n

The FOI request<\/a> was submitted on behalf of scholars and students who are connected with a group known as Dutch Scholars for Palestine and various student groups who are in solidarity with the Palestinians. This has led to absurd allegations of antisemitism against the Rights Forum<\/a>, student associations<\/a> and others.<\/p>\n

These groups are not formal associations, but a movement of concerned scholars and students. The former arose out of two petitions from May 2021; the one signed by several hundred academics in their individual capacities<\/a>, the other by a host of Dutch academic institutions<\/a>. Both expressed concern and anger regarding human rights violations by the Government of Israel and its military as well as institutional complicity in these violations.<\/p>\n

The FOI requests information about two sets of relationships; firstly, on the institutional relationships between Dutch and Israeli universities and corporations and second, the relationship between Dutch universities and Israel lobby organisations.<\/p>\n

FOI Request (1): institutional relationships<\/h2>\n\t
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