This is the week of two interesting public dialogues. Sunday between Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp and youth imam Shamier Madhar Outside court and a day later between Frans Timmermans and Pieter Omtzigt in Arnhem.
Many people will have missed it, because… Outside court is not one of the most watched TV programs and the conversation between Timmermans and Omtzigt – only available on YouTube – had not received enough publicity in advance, including by the participating parties themselves. Why no major media advertisements on the day of the meeting? Timmermans referred to the conversation between Soetendorp and Madhar in Arnhem and called it “moving”. That’s what it was, although that emotion may not have had the same reason for everyone. You could draw hope from it, because there were only two representatives there, one of Judaism, the other of Islam, who put aside all enmity between their worlds and symbolically reached out to each other under the beaming eye of host Twan Huys .
Perhaps it was my mood, weighed down by the daily avalanche of war suffering, but I also experienced this demonstrated willingness to reconcile with a sense of futility. It’s great that that rabbi and that imam got along so well, but would their respective supporters be very impressed? And it was as if I also heard doubt in Soetendorp’s mind when he spoke in his enchanting closing words of “holding on to the driftwood of hope with both hands.”
Something else was at stake between Timmermans and Omtzigt: the near political future of the Netherlands. It was a good idea (whose, by the way, Timmermans or Omtzigt?) to organize such a debate-like conversation outside the broadcasters. Those broadcasters don’t need an hour and a half of in-depth insight into Dutch politics.
The gentlemen were doing well, they did not play the man, but did not turn it into a casual friendly game either. You could tell that they were in awe of each other and were willing to emphasize the similarities on many things. At the same time, they did not spare each other when discussing the differences between them, especially in the areas of migration, minimum wage and nuclear energy. Political commentator Thomas van Groningen spoke On 1 already of “a bromance” between GroenLinks-PvdA and NSC, but perhaps he had not listened carefully enough to the final act. “Do you also think that the VVD should sit on the bench for a while?” asked discussion leader Diana Matroos. Omtzigt shook his head. “I also count Mrs Yesilgöz as part of the new politics,” he said emphatically. In other words: unlike Timmermans, he does want to be in one government with the VVD.
Perhaps, in retrospect, this moment will prove to be the most important of the entire debate. Does going out together also mean being at home together? I suspect that at NSC they have already decided who they would prefer to govern with. They still pretend that they also want that with the left, but that is mainly to remain ‘hard to get’ for the VVD. In the Christian community, they usually only govern together with the left if there is no other option. Timmermans will soon need Omtzigt, not the other way around, and Timmermans will know that.