This week, the Dutch Parliament voted on a motion to provide medical care in the Netherlands for severely wounded children from Gaza. The PVV bloc (PVV, VVD, JA21, BBB, SGP, and FvD) voted against it, showing that political calculation matters more to them than basic humanity.
The motion was a simple, humanitarian measure, an attempt to ease the unimaginable suffering of innocent children. And yet PVV, VVD, JA21, BBB, SGP, and FvD rejected it. With a single push of a button, these parties demonstrated that for them, geopolitical games, electoral strategies, and cold ideological dogmas outweigh saving children’s lives.
There is nothing neutral about such a vote. It is an active choice to deny shelter to children who have been bombed, who have lost their parents, who lie in hospitals without medicine. This is not “tough but fair,” it is a denial of basic humanity.
That this happened in the Netherlands – a country that so often prides itself on human rights and the international rule of law – shows how far our politics has drifted from solidarity and compassion. It reveals that the call for militarisation, exclusion, and hardened borders is increasingly placed above the duty to help people in need.
At DiEM25 we refuse to accept empathy as a luxury. For us, international solidarity is not a slogan but an obligation. No justification can ever outweigh the refusal to help wounded children. Political parties that cast such votes place themselves outside the circle of humanity. In the Netherlands, parties must choose peace, compassion, and care – not cynicism, electoral rhetoric, and indifference.
The children of Gaza are not numbers, not a burden, not an abstract political issue. They are human beings of flesh and blood with a right to life and care. When parties in the Netherlands deny this, they betray not only these children, but also the very values they claim this country is built upon.
We condemn the disgraceful vote of these parties in the strongest terms. Solidarity knows no borders, and neither does humanity.
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