Yasmina Haifi, a Dutch woman from a Turkish background, was the textbook example of a successful and integrated Muslim. A cultural anthropologist by trade, in 2013 she was nominated for the award of Ethnic Manager of the Year by a platform for ethnic Dutch businesswomen. As a former Labour Party city council member in The Hague (1994-98), she was a Labour Party talent scout from 2011 onwards. In 2012 she started her most prestigious job to date: a high-ranking Human Resources manager and Project Leader at the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre [NCSC] in The Hague -- a sub-department of the Dutch government's National Coordinator of Anti-Terrorism and Security.
On August 13, Haifi tweeted: "ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It's a preconceived Zionist plan who want to deliberately make Islam look bad."(sic) Even though the tweet got Haifi suspended the same day, she said on a radio interview that "I've taken the liberty of expressing myself and apparently I have to pay for that. I wouldn't know why I should renounce my statement. This is how I feel about it. ... Apparently certain things cannot be said. I did not give my opinion. I didn't make that up about Zionism. I read countless articles about it."
Although Haifi did not specify a source for her claims, chances are it involves Moroccan media outlets such as The Moroccan Times and Intellectually yours, which regurgitated the Iranian fabrication that Edward Snowden "admitted" that ISIS leader Sheikh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was trained by Israel's Mossad.
Two days later, Haifi was fired from her job without the possibility of ever returning to the organization. Her dismissal, however, was not the end of the matter. A Facebook page -- called, "We support civil servant Yasmina Haifi" -- was created and got more than 6.500 Likes in fewer than three days. The postings of the page's administrators can best be summarized as: "What Haifi said is true so all controversy is unjustified and The Netherlands is hypocritical for its selective application of the right to free speech."
According to the Dutch constitution, the right to free speech ends when one incites violence. Although holding Zionists responsible for the atrocities ISIS has committed could indirectly incite retaliatory violence toward Zionists, Haifi's remarks do not seem directly to violate the Dutch right to free speech. However, it is not the Dutch law that is condemning or sentencing Haifi as a Dutch citizen; Dutch courts are not accusing her of anything. It was her former employer -- the Dutch government's National Coordinator of Anti-Terrorism and Security -- that deemed Haifi's views and her willingness to go public about them, incompatible with the nature of her job.
The Facebook page has no room for nuance, even from other Muslim commentators. Nizar Mourabit, for example, a Dutch political scientist and columnist of Moroccan descent, wrote on it: "I understand the attempt to support Yasmina. I agree with her that ISIS doesn't represent Islam or Muslims, but that it's a Zionist conspiracy is simply untrue. Therefore, I will not Like this page and I secretly hope Yasmina will renounce her statement, although I'm afraid this won't happen."
The people who control and run that particular Facebook page replied: "This page is meant for people that support Yasmina Haifi, including the notion that ISIS and Zionism are connected. I will therefore remove your message forthwith."
The page is also rife with comments denying the Holocaust and promoting literature such as The Synagogue of Satan, which elaborates on a plot for Jewish world-domination. Possibly without being aware of it, Haifi has unleashed the most virulent Dutch revival of the libelous legacy of the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion since the end of WW2.
The Protocols were published in 1905 by the Russian Sergei Nilus and contained a totally fictional conversation between the "Elders of Zion" elaborating their plans for world-domination.
Many Russians as well as the Ultra-Orthodox Russian church immediately seized upon the work to justify their anti-Semitic policies. That reaction rapidly spread, as its authors likely intended it to, among anti-Semitic movements in Western Europe and the United States.
Although a Russian court in 1993 ruled the work to be an anti-Semitic forgery, its ideological legacy has never fully diminished. Especially in the Middle East, the authenticity of The Protocols is rarely doubted. It is available on a wide scale and seriously considered authentic "historic information."
When Haifi tweeted: "ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It's a preconceived Zionist plan who want to deliberately make Islam look bad," she accused the Zionists of attacking a religion and instigating a war, both of which charges are carefully outlined in The Protocols. Protocol number seven, for example, directly claims that the Elders instigate armed conflict whenever their supposedly nefarious plans face obstructions.[1]
We now see Iraq and Syria, no friends of Israel, engulfed in a war waged by the terrorist ISIS [aka The Islamic State], which has intimidated the local population there into submission by means of beheadings, shootings, crucifixions, sieges, looting, kidnapping and rape. Incredibly, however, according to Protocol-minded commentators, ISIS's carnage must be due to a Jewish conspiracy designed to keep the Jewish state out of harm's way.
Haifi is not alone in this, mainstream Moroccan, Turkish, Syrian and of course Iranian media outlets promote that exact thought.
In a classical example of psychological "projection" -- according to which we all have a tendency to ascribe to others what we ourselves are feeling -- Protocol number 14 outlines the way the Elders will attack any other religion besides their own in order to establish their religious world-domination.[2]
According to Protocol-minded people such as Haifi, the existence and actions of ISIS do not suggest that certain teachings of the Islamic religion can lead to groups like ISIS. To people such as Haifi, the Protocols signal that a Jewish conspiracy is actively seeking to vilify Islam in order to advance the Jewish case.
Douglas Murray recently proposed that in Britain, many people regarded as "integrated Muslims" often turn out to be anything but integrated when it concerns Jews or Israel.
Yasmina Haifi and her widespread support signify that the same is true for The Netherlands. Although controversial, some Dutch commentators are starting to ask how many more civil servants from a Muslim background are there in the security apparatus, who also cherish such perverted ideas?
[1] Protocol Seven states: "We [the Elders] must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbours of that country which dares to oppose us." In contemporary language: 'whenever a country opposes us we will make sure it gets tied up in a war with its neigbours or is engulfed in civil war.'
[2] Protocol 14 states: "When we come into our kingdom it will be undesirable for us that there should exist any other religion than ours of the One God with whom our destiny is bound up (...). We must therefore sweep away all other forms of belief."
Fiorella Massey