Irony of ironies: A disabled Dutch anti-Israel activist is being ridiculed for promoting BDS while sitting on a state-of-the-art mobile scooter made in the Jewish state.
By United with Israel Staff
Robert-Willem van Norren, a Dutch activist who supports the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, is being mocked on social and mainstream media for promoting his cause while sitting comfortably on a first-class mobility scooter made in Israel.
As reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), van Norren sits for hours on end, in all types of weather, on his scooter in Amsterdam’s Dam Square rallying against the Jewish state. With BDS stickers, Palestinian flags and anti-Israel posters, he shows up faithfully three times a week.
The scooter, according to JTA, is the Breeze S3 model of the Kalnoit brand, designed and assembled in Kibbutz Afikim in the Jordan Valley.
Van Norren, who, JTA says, “enjoys displaying a poster of the Israeli flag with a cockroach or a swastika over the Star of David symbol,” was photographed in July on a different scooter but has since upgraded to the more advanced, Israel-made bike.
Pro-Israel activists in the Netherlands have been mocking van Norren and well as his BDS-promoting buddy, Simon Vrouwe, who, the JTA report says, was recently photographed buying lunch at a Israeli falafel shop was wearing a vest reading “boycott Israel.”
The BDS movement promotes financial, academic and cultural boycotts against Israel, ostensibly as a nonviolent struggle against the so-called “Israeli occupation.” Critics say its activities are a modern form of anti-Semitism and that its true objective is to destroy the State of Israel.