Zelenskyy hails F-16 commitment on visit to Netherlands

The Netherlands confirmed that it will provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets following approval from the U.S. allowing Ukrainian pilots to get training to fly the planes and eventually to provide the aircraft themselves.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received the assurance on the jets, which he called a “breakthrough agreement,” from Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on a visit to Eindhoven on Sunday. Rutte confirmed that Denmark also will deliver F-16 aircraft to Kyiv, after the Biden administration last week gave final approval for the delivery of Dutch and Danish F-16s to Ukraine as soon as pilot training is complete. 

Roma and Travelers in Netherlands fear for their culture

ZWOLLE, the Netherlands – For Roma and Traveler communities in the Netherlands, things were meant to get better.

Across the Continent, Europe’s largest minority group faces restrictions on their way of life, in particular their tradition of living in caravans. In July last year, the Dutch interior ministry set out to protect their rights by asking local authorities to halt the practice of limiting parking sites for their caravans.

The “Dutch Trump” Is Even More Toxic Than the Real Thing

PITY THE DUTCH, if you can. The party led by a far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-Islam populist named Geert Wilders is on course to gain the most votes in next week’s parliamentary elections in the Netherlands. But the journalists who have dubbed Wilders “Holland’s Trump” and “the Donald Trump of the Netherlands” may owe the U.S. president an apology.

Dutch go old school against Russian hacking

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Better safe than sorry.

That’s the Dutch government’s approach to dealing with the fear of Russian election hacking. The tech-savvy country scaled back the use of computers to count votes and opted for an all-paper, all-manual election this month. It is one of the more drastic responses to a threat that France and Germany, which also hold elections this year, have also started to grapple with.

California Nonprofit May Have Violated Tax Law By Donating to Anti-Muslim, Far-Right Dutch Candidate

The David Horowitz Freedom Center, a controversial California-based nonprofit that sponsors virulently anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant campaigns in the U.S., has quietly played a prominent role in financing Dutch far-right nationalist Geert Wilders’s People’s Party for Freedom (PVV). The PVV’s platform calls for an end to Muslim immigration and the closing down of mosques and Islamic schools in the Netherlands — and polls suggest it may win the largest number of seats in the Netherland’s parliamentary elections this month.

Geert Wilders, Reclusive Provocateur, Rises Before Dutch Vote

SPIJKENISSE, the Netherlands — He wants to end immigration from Muslim countries, tax head scarves and ban the Quran. He is partly of Indonesian heritage, and dyes his hair bright blond. He is omnipresent on social media but lives as a political phantom under police protection, rarely campaigning in person and reportedly sleeping in a different location every night.

He has structured his party so that he is the only official, giving him the liberty to remain, above all things, in complete control, and a provocateur and an uncompromising verbal bomb thrower.

Far-right leader Geert Wilders calls Moroccan migrants ‘scum’

The Dutch populist leader Geert Wilders sparked outrage on Saturday when he launched his election campaign with a stinging attack on the country’s Moroccan population. The anti-immigration MP called them “scum” and said he wanted to make the Netherlands “ours again”.

Wilders, 53, was surrounded by police and security guards when he made his remarks during a walkabout in his party’s stronghold of Spijkenisse, part of an ethnically diverse industrial area just south of Rotterdam.