Erwin van Veen of the Clingendael Institute is regarded as one of the leading Dutch voices of neutral analysis on the Middle East at NOS, RTL and the quality newspapers. Yet this analyst signed an activist pamphlet containing a Nazi comparison directed at Israel — and those convictions seep through in his media appearances. Israeli suffering is glossed over, Hezbollah is presented as the guardian of Lebanese sovereignty, and Hamas is labelled a ‘resistance movement’. The media allow him to have his say unchallenged, without any counter-arguments from experts offering a different perspective. A portrait of how activism masquerades as expertise — and how the Dutch press facilitates it.

Embodiment of neutrality = activist

Erwin van Veen. Everyone in the Netherlands who occasionally opens a newspaper or switches on the television to catch the latest news from the Middle East has encountered his commentary at some point. If the name doesn’t immediately ring a bell: Erwin is that slender man with dark blond hair, glasses, and a small moustache. He has the air of an mild-mannered schoolmaster with a soft voice, who permits himself the occasional gentle smile. The very picture of neutrality.

In reality, Van Veen is anything but neutral.

At the end of November 2024, an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Schoof, to which he had put his name, was published. Anyone who wants to know what Erwin really thinks should take a moment to read that letter (you will find a translation of this letter at the bottom of the article). It opened with a Nazi comparison — ‘never again Nazis’ now applies to the Jewish state — and called for firm diplomatic and economic action against Israel.

The letter was full of wild accusations against Israel and distortions of the facts. Conspicuously absent was any mention of the aggression of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah — in fact, those names did not appear in the letter at all. Also absent, of course, was any mention of the innocent hostages who were, at that very moment, languishing in Hamas’s tunnels for more than a year.

That Van Veen signed such a missive with the designation ‘analyst, Clingendael’ is dubious enough in itself — but does his activism also colour his commentary?

Framing

Immediately following the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, a piece appeared in the newspaper Volkskrant in which he was quoted: ‘According to Van Veen of Clingendael, the (Israeli) government has made a strategic miscalculation in thinking that it can continue to repress the Palestinians without paying a higher price than the ‘routine’ rocket attacks from Gaza.’ To borrow a phrase from commentator Johan Derksen: The Jews had, to some extent, brought it upon themselves.

This is characteristic of Erwin van Veen’s framing. In his commentaries, he consistently peppers his language with words that underscore Israel’s alleged malevolence, and with equal consistency omits any mention of aggression against Israel. See also the transcript below from one of his Nieuwsuur appearances (Nieuwsuur is a flagship current affairs programme on Dutch public television, roughly equivalent to BBC Newsnight in format and prestige).

Tweet text: Question: What effect does it have when a prominent programme invites almost exclusively ‘experts’ who promote this view👇?🤨 Answer: More and more Dutch people come to see Israel as a rogue state. Rhetorical question: Is this honest journalism? cc @wol

Nieuwsuur presenter Jeroen Wollaars did, incidentally, respond to this tweet of mine by arguing that Nieuwsuur had first shown clips from interviews representing various viewpoints. But he ignored the fact that, after hearing all those views, viewers were then presented with the authoritative commentary of schoolmaster Van Veen as the final word. That is the guiding principle that Nieuwsuur and all those other media outlets keep putting forward time and time again.

Wollaars is certainly not the worst presenter at Nieuwsuur. Mariëlle Tweebeeke does little more than set up the narrative Van Veen desires, and regular stand-in Petra Grijzen goes even a step further.

Ignoring Israeli suffering

There was, for instance, a broadcast on 9 October 2025 about the ceasefire that ended the Gaza war. When the five points of the first phase of the peace plan appeared on screen, Grijzen’s opening question (at 8:07) was: ‘What will this mean, in the short term, for the Palestinians?’ Not for the Israelis — no. Only for the Palestinians. You may have three guesses as to which point went unmentioned… here are the points:

  1. ceasefire
  2. Israeli hostages released
  3. Palestinian prisoners released
  4. withdrawal of Israeli forces
  5. humanitarian aid allowed in

Good guess: point 2 was skipped. It apparently did not interest these two that after two years of starvation and torture, the innocent hostages would finally be coming home.

This broadcast also made clear once again how Van Veen cannot bring himself to say anything positive about Israel. If something positive does slip out, he quickly contradicts himself. When asked why Hamas had now agreed to a ceasefire, Erwin replied (at 18:55): ‘the Israeli attack on Doha has of course mobilised the Gulf states’ — successfully, then — ‘but um, that was, um, truly a monumental strategic blunder by Israel to bomb Doha.’ — quite the contradiction.

After Erwin van Veen, former Dutch Minister Sigrid Kaag appeared on screen — someone who is certainly not known as a fan of Israel. But she did have her priorities straight: she named the release of the Israeli hostages first, and gave attention to their suffering. She also emphasised that the Israeli attack on Doha had been essential to the success of the negotiations.

Excusing terror

Just as naturally as Erwin van Veen ignores Israeli suffering, he excuses terror against Israel. He generally prefers to omit such aggression altogether. He likes to speak as though Israel is attacking Lebanon when the target is Hezbollah, and he even suggests that the Iran-led terrorist movement is the defender of Lebanon.

Tweet text: This👇 was the part that made my blood boil. Is this the quality @ClingendaelOrg stands for? How does Erwin van Veen manage to say this with a straight face 🤮 This has NOTHING to do with honest analysis. And yet we see these “experts” everywhere. #IsraelHaters

Note also that throwaway line he slipped in: that the Israelis would attack Lebanon ‘whenever they feel like it.’ As if it were some kind of hobby. The sadism and genocidal intent of Hamas, Van Veen projects onto Israel. And when Israel rightly points to the true nature of these terrorists, Van Veen calls it ‘selective framing’ and follows it up with sweeping accusations against Israel.

Tweet text: Propagandist Erwin van Veen from @Clingendaelorg (a regular guest on @NOS and @Nieuwsuur) is once again being given free rein to whitewash the ruthless terrorists of Hxmas. Who’s spreading propaganda here?

Anyone who takes Erwin van Veen seriously — and unfortunately, too many in the media and among their credulous consumers do — ends up believing that Hamas is a ‘resistance movement’ legitimately resisting Israeli aggression.

Israel’s motives

The fact that Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis all openly proclaim ‘Death to Israel’ does not fit Erwin van Veen’s narrative — particularly because Israel consistently makes clear that it is fighting only terrorists, not civilians. To cast Israel as a rogue state, Van Veen must get creative with the facts.

In that same Nieuwsuur broadcast in which he whitewashed Hezbollah as the ‘guardian of Lebanese sovereignty’, he was also asked about Israel’s motives. Hezbollah had been bombarding northern Israel for a full year, causing dozens of deaths, sparking major wildfires, and displacing tens of thousands of Israelis. That motive for the Israeli response Van Veen mentioned only as briefly as possible.

He then turned to the — politically charged — legal proceedings against Netanyahu and to the extremists in his coalition (at 16:32): ‘And finally, the more right-wing radical elements of Netanyahu’s coalition still pursue the concept of Greater Israel, and that includes part of Lebanon, up to the Litani river.’

For the record: the concept of Greater Israel that supposedly includes ‘part of Lebanon’ is so far-fetched — it would encompass parts of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq — that it has virtually no support in Israel whatsoever. The parliamentary backing for this idea is ZERO. Even the radical ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir do not pursue it. They seek only (partial) annexation of the West Bank.

Popular with the media

Van Veen’s cavalier relationship with the facts alone makes it staggering that virtually all media outlets ask him to provide commentary on the Middle East. And it is not as though his activism and distortion of the facts are some well-kept secret. CIDI – the Dutch Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel – also once took the trouble to pick apart an opinion piece of his in the newspaper Trouw. It was full of untruths and distortions.

The CIDI’s analysis was, I thought, still rather generous. Exposing factual falsehoods is of course important — but the defamatory language Van Veen casually deploys also has its effect. Describing Israeli aid as ‘straight out of the Hunger Games’ and claiming that for the Dutch government ‘a dead Palestinian apparently doesn’t matter much’ is pure rabble-rousing.

And Erwin van Veen is not only a regular guest at the NPO (the Dutch public broadcaster) and the ‘quality newspapers’ — the commercial broadcaster RTL also knows where to find him. Time and again, the same long-debunked falsehoods resurface. And anyone who, despite corrections, deliberately continues to spread falsehoods is not ignorant, but acting in bad faith.

Van Veen’s motives

How does someone come to so relentlessly smear the name of the only democracy in the Middle East while whitewashing terrorist regimes? Because do not think for a moment that the examples given above are outliers. This is what Van Veen always does — still, to this day.

For those who assume that Clingendael receives bags of money from Qatar or Iran: that is not the case. Middle Eastern countries — Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahrain — contribute only modestly. The list of partners is dominated by various ministries, though one of the largest contributors — the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs — is a well-known haven for anti-Israel activists. Van Veen himself worked at that ministry for years.

That Van Veen is a pawn of Iran also seems unlikely. He does work closely with Hamidreza Azizi — who is seen by dissident Iranians as a forward representative of the Iranian regime — but someone with Van Veen’s sympathies will naturally find common cause with people with similar views.

If Van Veen does all of this out of personal conviction, his position is baffling. He has been studying the Middle East for years, so he is capable of knowing that Israel, for all its flaws, is a functioning democracy that respects human rights. He is also capable of knowing what death cult Iran and its proxies subscribe to. That uninformed followers see Israel as a rogue state is still understandable — but it is incomprehensible that someone who knows the facts would think so.

No truth-seeking

As baffling as it is, the fact remains that some people, for one dark reason or another, have a deep aversion to Israel. What remains scandalous is that the media provide such a platform to an anti-Israel activist without setting him against experts holding different views. In a substantive debate, Van Veen’s arguments would collapse — but he need not fear that.

That the media fail so badly here is not only immoral — it also violates their own journalistic standards. Even the watered-down NPO editorial code still requires that broadcasters be independent and impartial, and that they report truthfully. Any journalist who takes this seriously should at minimum also give a platform to experts who push back.

If only there were a way to correct media outlets when they fail to live up to their own codes… Invoking the current supervisory bodies is pointless. The NVJ (Dutch Association of Journalists) is brazenly activist against Israel, and filing complaints with the NPO Ombudsman and the Dutch Media Authority proved futile. Even a thorough report documenting the failures is simply ignored.

We need a media revolution.

 

This article was originally published in Dutch.

You can support Maaike van Charante at repelsteeltje.backme.org

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Translation of the open letter to Prime Minister Schoof

For 47 weeks, civil servants have been holding a weekly protest outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They are tolerated but ignored. Now the civil servants of this weekly sit-in, supported by former diplomats, ambassadors, former ministers, lawyers, actors, authors, Holocaust survivors, and many others, are addressing the cabinet through the following open letter. Support their call and speak out.

The Netherlands must stop supporting the extermination of Palestinians

Open letter addressed to Prime Minister Schoof and Minister of Foreign Affairs Caspar Veldkamp as representatives of the Dutch government.

In line with the appeal to the German government and the European Union, we share the following.

Despite the promise of ‘never again’, the Dutch government has violated its own pledge through its unconditional support for Israel. As a signatory to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Rome Statute, the Netherlands has a historical, ethical, legal, and political obligation not to commit, facilitate, or promote the atrocities prohibited by these conventions.

With great horror, we witness the atrocities — including war crimes and crimes against humanity — being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. These crimes are well documented by the UN and major human rights organisations, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which has established that there is a real and imminent risk that Israel’s actions in Gaza may amount to genocide. Israel’s recent invasion of Lebanon follows a similar logic and risks further escalation of the ongoing regional war, threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

For more than a year, the Dutch government has enabled Israel to kill and dehumanise Palestinians by providing political, financial, military, and legal support to Israel. Israel’s atrocities must stop now. This humanitarian catastrophe must stop now!

We, the undersigned, demand that the Dutch government stand unwavering on the side of justice and international law, and uphold its own values and legal obligations.

It must do so by:

– taking immediate action in light of the provisional measures ordered by the ICJ in the case of South Africa v. Israel;

– respecting the advisory opinion of the ICJ, which declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful in July;

– implementing the recommendations of the United Nations General Assembly in the resolution on the ICJ’s advisory opinion, by reviewing all diplomatic, political, and economic interactions with Israel; imposing a full arms embargo; cancelling or suspending economic relations, trade agreements (including the EU Association Agreement), and academic ties with Israel that may contribute to the unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territories;

– supporting the call by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice President of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, to suspend diplomatic talks with Israel, halt ‘business as usual’, and ban the import of products from illegal settlements, thereby minimising Israel’s capacity to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity;

– continuing and increasing the Dutch financial contribution to humanitarian aid through UNRWA and other humanitarian and relief organisations in Gaza and Lebanon without further delay.

Enough is enough. Israel appears to show no restraint in its violence against civilians. The impunity must stop. If the Netherlands continues to cooperate with Israel as though it is not on trial for genocide, this will have negative consequences for political, economic, and security relations worldwide, and for the Netherlands’ credibility as the ‘Guardian of International Law’ and host country of the ICJ and ICC in The Hague.

The recent events in Amsterdam have fully exposed how this external conflict, and the Dutch government’s position on it, is penetrating Dutch society and stoking hatred between groups. We urge the Dutch government to use all possible constitutional means to prevent the toxic Israeli apartheid reality from further seeping into Dutch political debate and society — and to ensure that these events do not overshadow the Dutch responsibility to uphold justice and international law.

We therefore demand that the Netherlands effectively and immediately cease its complicity in the atrocities being committed by Israel in Palestine!