source: platform-investico.nl
NATO-Confidant of Mark Rutte secretly deleted anti-Palestinian tweets just before taking office.
After October 7, former VVD minister Geoffrey van Leeuwen spread messages from Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian and far-right accounts with disinformation about the Gaza war on X. He did this before he took office on behalf of the VVD in December as a deputy for the Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation (BHOS). These messages were deleted just before he took office. This is evident from leaked screenshots of the deleted messages in the hands of Investico. Van Leeuwen was interim BHOS minister from early December to mid-April.
Mark Rutte will take Van Leeuwen - who is known as his confidante - to NATO this fall.
Several messages that Van Leeuwen spread contained disinformation about the war, such as tweets from the account 'Imam of Peace', which is managed by the far-right and Islamophobic thinker Mohammad Tawhidi. Posts from accounts such as Visegrad24 and Mario Nawfal were also liked. Both are among the most influential pro-Israel disinformation spreaders on X, according to Bloomberg news agency and the University of Washington.
The former minister also 'liked' a message with a reference to the well-known conspiracy theory 'Pallywood', which claims that images of human suffering from Palestinian areas were all staged to stir up anti-Israel sentiments. In the tweet in question, Imam of Peace shared a video of a Palestinian mother visiting her injured son in a hospital and wrote: 'He's fine, it's just an act mommy. It's called Pallywood'. AP News and Alt Media labeled the tweet in question as disinformation: the man in the picture is indeed injured, he was only trying to reassure his mother. Another message shared by Van Leeuwen is a video of an Israeli army spokesman in which he points to a list of 'terrorist names' in Arabic in a room under a hospital, on which the duty rosters of Hamas fighters can be seen. This also turned out to be untrue: a translation of the document shows that it contains no names, but instead a calendar with the days of the week, wrote France24, among others. Van Leeuwen explains his likes in a response as a way to save messages. 'If I see a message that I want to read more closely at a later time, look back on or see whether this is becoming a broader story, I like it.' According to him, there is 'no broad and deep consideration behind this'. The former minister could not tell Investico why it was decided to secretly remove the messages. He also does not discuss whether he approves or disapproves of the content of these specific tweets, nor does he answer questions about whether it is desirable for a prospective minister to spread disinformation in this way.
In his ministerial position, Van Leeuwen was responsible, among other things, for freezing support for the UN aid organization United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), which provides Palestinians with humanitarian (emergency) aid. This follows allegations from Israel that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the attack on October 7 last year. As soon as UNRWA announced the allegations and announced an investigation, some 15 donor countries froze their support to the UN organization. The ministry has announced that advice on the matter will follow, as is evident from emails from the ministry requested by Al Jazeera on the basis of the Open Government Act (Woo). Van Leeuwen announces that the Netherlands will suspend support for UNRWA before the advice note from its officials has been sent. Several anonymous officials confirmed to Investico that Van Leeuwen made the decision without consulting the civil service: “This is not how it should be done.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a response that it did not communicate about the extent to which Minister Van Leeuwen had received internal advice for his decision. Furthermore, the ministry was “in no way involved in the use of X by Mr Van Leeuwen” before he became minister. “When Van Leeuwen took office as minister, as usual, a social media team started managing his X account.”
In recent months, donor countries have almost all resumed support for UNRWA, due to the aid organization's crucial role in Gaza, and the fact that Israel has provided no evidence to substantiate the accusations. The Netherlands has announced that it will only resume support if UNRWA implements improvements. It is expected that the incoming Schoof cabinet will decide whether or not to resume support.
STOP Mark Rutte from becoming Secretary General of NATO