“Stuck, really terrible” felt it for Maastrichtaar Wesly, when the Israeli ambassador asked him two weeks ago to leave as a honorary consul of that country. “Shortly thereafter I became eighty. In all those years I have never been fired. Now that happened.”
In the second instance, Wesly expresses itself even more. “It was as if I was murdered of that telephone conversation in those few minutes.”
Israël’s ambassador in the Netherlands, Modi Ephraim, gave him the choice: or get on himself – supposedly because of his age – or forced leave. “It was not caught that I had told the regional broadcaster L1 that the images, if they are correct, tend to genocide. In a letter that followed later, there was also the reproach that I was in an earlier interview with The Limburger CRIBALLY left a possible relocation of the Dutch embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I thought that was throwing oil on the fire at the time. “
The decrease in the consulation is this way because he promised his father on his deathbed “to take good care of the family and to make the Jewish community in the south of the Netherlands as vital as it once was.” His many years of presidency of the Jewish municipality in Limburg fit in with it and was, just like the honorary consul, an unpaid honorary job.
Solidarity
Hanging on the wall of his office, framed, the documents from 2009, signed by Queen Beatrix and the then Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Verhagen and Shimon Peres. Much in space breathes connection with Israel. But there is also a photo of him with PLO leader Yasser Arafat. “After the Oslo agreements, it seemed like we were over a bridge. Since then it went downhill, including the settlers in the occupied territories and Hamas.”
I was brought up with the idea that if there were ever horrors again, there would always be a safe haven: Israel
Wesly is three years older than the state of Israel. “I was brought up with the idea that if there were ever horrors again, there would always be a safe haven: Israel.”
The Holocaust always played a role in the Wesly family. Benoits older brother Léon (“I never knew him myself”) was arrested as a toddler and murdered in Auschwitz. A total of 51 family members never returned from the camps.
As a seventeen -year -old, Wesly traveled to Israel for the first time. “My only survivor Uncle, Uncle Leo, had gone as a pioneer and had founded a small village. It was a very special experience for me. I had the feeling that the past was lived in the present and that the future was determined in the same past. Since then I have been back 137 times. My wife has been living there in the meantime, just like my son and my so -called Zoussen.”
Support
October 7, 2023 came as a shock. “I already saw the news at seven o’clock in the morning. Unimaginable: 1250 people slaughtered in beastly way and 250 people hostage. In the first instance I mainly started calling family. But after a few hours the first journalists also hung on the line. I said that I hoped that Israel would not have had such a time at first. With that understanding of Hamas. After all. Isolement In the region, Israel could have worked on peace and safe boundaries. “
When Israel attacked, I was happy that it was from strength. “My grandmothers took potato peelers to the camps, expecting that they would be put to work in the kitchens in the camps in Eastern Europe. Now at least Jews did not go into the war with potato peelers, but properly armed.”
At the same time, Wesly did not believe in the usefulness of the killing of terrorists at the time. “If you kill one, there are two new ones on it.”
It gnaws at my conscience. I am really awake about it
Wesy also touched the further fighting methods. “In a war, the truth is the first to die. It is teeming with disinformation. But what I saw was that large groups of people were consciously starving, remained devoid of medical care and information. It reminded me of the Second World War. That gnaws at my conscience. It really awake.”
The dividing lines run through the Jewish community and through his own family. , My son does not like everything that happens, but sees the need for it. My oldest sister is of the opinion that the goal does not justify all means. I tend to her side. ”
Comments
From the Israeli representation in The Hague it has remained silent in recent years. “Under the previous ambassador I was still briefed every day. Not under the current at all.”
Wesly cannot be prescribed what he should say. “I am not going to say anything that I am not behind, I have always kept my back straight. Then they cannot put me in the coffin after my death.”
In the meantime, it is raining reactions to the notice of his resignation and the phone regularly switches. The programmed names of the callers sound automatically. “Rabbi Soetendorp” and “Frits Barend” can be heard from the device, for Wesly the phone.
He is determined to remain as a honorary consul for the time being. “Because of my age I wanted to leave soon. But if I go, I will do that with a lifted head.”
Phone calls and an email to the Israeli embassy for a response remained unanswered on Wednesday.
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