How Israel Is Infiltrating Dutch Democracy

A rare Dutch investigation reveals how deeply Israeli influence extends from Parliament to the intelligence services—reshaping policy and silencing dissent.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (R) meets with visiting Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte, Oct. 24, 2022. Credit: Haim Zach/GPO.

Sometimes the most revealing truths aren’t found in the headlines of US or British media. Many times, they’re tucked away in the pages of European broadsheets, written in languages few outside the continent speak.

This week, one such story caught my attention, and wouldn’t let go.

So I decided to write this essay referencing a recent Dutch investigation published by NRC Handelsblad, one of the Netherlands’ most respected newspapers.

The original article is titled “The Visible and Invisible Influence of Israel in the Tweede Kamer”, a deep look into the ways Israel shapes Dutch political discourse from the inside.

Tap the screenshot above to read the full investigation in dutch.

This is not the stuff of fringe forums or Telegram channels, it is mainstream Dutch media describing how Israel, with the help of Israeli lobby organizations like CIDI (Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel), has managed to wield remarkable influence over members of the Dutch parliament.

The original investigation was written by Dutch journalists Wilmer Heck and Steven Derix, whose combined expertise makes the report all the more credible and damning.

The Mass Grave That Exposed More Than Just Bodies

It started with yet another Israeli war crime: on March 23rd, Israeli forces opened fire on a convoy of Palestinian ambulances in Gaza. According to eyewitnesses and forensic evidence, 15 medical workers were killed. Israel first lied about it, and then tried to bury the evidence. Israeli bulldozers crushed the ambulances and the bodies, burying them together in a mass grave.

What followed in the Dutch parliament wasn’t outrage, it was a carefully coordinated spin. Dutch MP Don Ceder (ChristenUnie) speculated — publicly — whether the bodies were buried “to prevent decomposition.”

As it turns out, it came straight from a briefing prepared by CIDI, which had already distributed Israeli talking points to key MPs ahead of the debate. The same language, almost verbatim, was later echoed by Isa Kahraman (NSC) and others during parliamentary discussions.

These documents recycled Israeli military talking points, claiming, absurdly, that the bulldozing of medics and ambulances into a mass grave was merely protocol to prevent stray dogs from scavenging bodies. Footage from a slain medic’s phone disproved IDF claims about unlit vehicles, but CIDI’s version prevailed in Parliament.

Even more alarming, these materials were deliberately sent only to right-wing and centrist parties—VVD, NSC, CDA, BBB, SGP, and ChristenUnie—excluding left-leaning MPs entirely, in what GroenLinks MP Kati Piri called a “bizarre” and “opaque” move.

Meanwhile, fabricated “special reports” from Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs were weaponized in Dutch debates to accuse Palestinian groups of inciting violence, despite the Dutch cabinet confirming Israel provided no evidence.

The Blueprint for Foreign Influence

The investigation details how CIDI and other pro-Israel groups feed MPs sanitized versions of Israeli military actions. These groups receive support not just from Dutch donors but are ideologically and operationally aligned with Israeli ministries, especially the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs.

According to NRC, these groups downplayed or omitted key facts from their briefings, presenting the mass grave incident as a benign effort to prevent “scavenging animals” from disturbing the bodies. They failed to mention the bulldozed ambulances, the crushed medics, or the forensic evidence suggesting a cover-up. skillfully steer debates to favor Israeli interests and frequently work to delegitimize critics of Israel by branding dissent as antisemitic or extremist.

And it gets deeper.

Intelligence Cooperation and Influence

While Israel’s lobbying efforts in the Dutch Parliament are well-known and active, less visible but equally significant is its influence within the Netherlands’ security apparatus, especially intelligence agencies and police forces.

Dutch intelligence agencies have established cooperation agreements with Israeli counterparts such as Mossad and Shin Bet. While these partnerships are officially framed around counterterrorism efforts, the article reveals growing concerns about the deepening dependence of Dutch security services on Israeli intelligence methods and information.

Israeli operational tactics, surveillance techniques, and intelligence frameworks reportedly influence how Dutch agencies monitor and investigate political activists, especially those involved in pro-Palestinian movements, which risks importing a securitized mindset that conflates political dissent with security threats.

Policing and Civil Liberties

The influence extends into Dutch policing strategies. Israeli security doctrine, known for its aggressive approach to dissent is also shaping Dutch police practices, particularly how demonstrations and political activism are policed. This includes heightened surveillance, infiltration of activist groups, and preemptive measures to suppress protests deemed “dangerous” to public order.

Dutch civil society, human rights organizations, and academics all warn this trend threatens fundamental democratic rights, including free speech and peaceful assembly. The blending of political lobbying with policing methods contributes to an environment where political expression that affirms Palestinian human rights and dignity is disproportionately targeted, often under the pretext of combating extremism or hate speech.

Impact on Democratic Debate and Sovereignty

The article stresses that this dual influence that is both political and security-related is narrowing space for open and critical discussion about Israeli policies within the Netherlands. It is also raising broader concerns about the sovereignty of Dutch democratic institutions, questioning how foreign lobbying and intelligence cooperation affect national policy-making and civil rights protections.

This dynamic mirrors a wider European trend and poses urgent questions about transparency, accountability, and the resilience of democratic values in the face of foreign influence from a rogue state committing genocide and ethnic-cleansing and backed by the USA.

At the same time, a disturbing pattern of silencing UN voices emerged: Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Palestine, was effectively blacklisted by multiple parties and disinvited from Parliament, while pro-Israel figures like UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer were welcomed with open arms.

This double standard, where UN experts are dismissed as biased while Israeli-aligned PR figures are embraced, exposes a deeper erosion of democratic norms and informed debate.

In 2020, even the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Stef Blok, a VVD party member himself, called out NGO Monitor, a supposedly neutral watchdog, for what it truly was: an organ of selective smear and strategic silence. Blok described their reports as “based on selective citations, half-truths, and insinuations,” adding that they actively contributed to a climate of hostility against human rights organizations, particularly those critical of Israel’s occupation.

And yet, under the leadership of Dilan Yesilgöz, the VVD didn’t just ignore Blok’s warning, they embraced NGO Monitor. Just months after October 7, 2023, VVD MPs welcomed this same organization into the halls of power. They did this because NGO Monitor, along with CIDI and UN Watch, serves a useful purpose: to drown out, delegitimize, and blacklist anyone—be they human rights defenders or UN officials—who dares speak truth to Israeli power.

Yesilgöz herself joined a CIDI-sponsored trip to Israel in 2019, a trip that included VVD staffers and Dutch Foreign Ministry officials, but notably went unpublicized.

According to CIDI, their policy is to keep participants anonymous to shield them from “hate.” But the real question is: what kind of democracy allows foreign-funded lobbying trips to occur in the shadows?

Fast forward to November 2023, in the smoldering aftermath of Gaza’s destruction, and VVD, along with SGP and BBB, still chose to meet with a delegation from the Israeli parliament—including Ariel Kallner, a Likud MK who, just days earlier, had called for a “second Nakba.”

When Even the Intelligence Services Blink

Perhaps most chillingly, the article points to Dutch intelligence reports that were later walked back or quietly buried. For example, after the Amsterdam riots, CIDI and the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs blamed six Dutch pro-Palestinian organizations for inciting violence. But those claims, NRC notes, were “factually unsupported”, and still found their way into official parliamentary discourse.

It’s hard not to see a pattern: a foreign government whispers, and lawmakers echo. UN voices are excluded. Critics are smeared. Investigations are warped. And a narrative is sculpted, not by facts, not by justice, but by allegiance.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

This isn’t just about the Netherlands. It’s about a global architecture of repression that disguises itself as diplomacy, democracy, or defense.

What this article lays bare is how language becomes a weapon. How narratives are massaged, briefed, and deployed. How lobby groups launder state violence through respectability. And how even in a country like the Netherlands, which is renowned for free speech and neutrality, truth is no match for the powerful that are profiting from this genocide.

Albanese was disinvited from speaking in Dutch Parliament and publicly snubbed by the Dutch government because she dares to speak uncomfortable truths about Israel’s actions in Gaza. She dares to hold up a mirror to them and remind them of their legal, not to mention, moral obligations.

This is precisely why we must read and share her latest report exposing the companies and ecosystem that profits from Gaza’s genocide and props it up — before the stranglehold on European politics gets any tighter, and the truth becomes even more dangerous to say out loud.

When journalists of this caliber tell us that Israeli narratives are shaping not only the words spoken in the Dutch parliament but also the assessments of Dutch intelligence services, it’s not a theory.

It’s a warning.

The world is not against Israel because Israel is a Jewish state. The world is against Israel because Israel is mass-murdering children, committing genocide, and ethnically-cleansing Palestinians.

I translated this article because silence is complicity. Because we are witnessing the same patterns from Washington to Westminster, from Berlin to Brussels.

And because it’s long past time we stop treating “foreign influence” as something only Russia or China does.

I found this quote in the NYT revealing:
“In 20 countries, more than half of the people said they had an unfavorable view of Israel. In eight countries — Australia, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Turkey — more than 75 percent held that view.”

You can read the original Dutch version here.

Wilmer Heck, one of the original article’s authors, is part of NRC Handelsblad’s investigative unit, known for exposing foreign influence operations and disinformation campaigns. Steven Derix, NRC’s foreign affairs and defense editor, was the paper’s correspondent in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and has authored acclaimed books on both political leaders and institutional corruption.