Reporter's notebook'To have meaning, I need to do something tied to Israel'

In Holland’s Bible belt, a Christian family’s pro-Israel empire shifts into overdrive

Since the October 7 Hamas massacre, the 45-year-old Christians for Israel’s product sales, public engagement – and risk exposure – have vastly increased

Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter

Huib Kriekaard and Ina Straatsma-Elzes work at the Israel Product Center in the headquarters of the Christians for Israel group in the Dutch town of Nijkerk, June 5, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)
Huib Kriekaard and Ina Straatsma-Elzes work at the Israel Product Center in the headquarters of the Christians for Israel group in the Dutch town of Nijkerk, June 5, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)

NIJKERK, the Netherlands – A large Israeli flag flying on a pole is eye-catching anywhere in this country. It’s especially conspicuous, however, in this rural town in the Dutch Bible Belt.

The flag flies opposite a modern, three-story office building that’s the world headquarters of Christians for Israel, an international organization established in Nijkerk near Utrecht 45 years ago by the late pro-Israel activist Karel van Oordt and run by his family today.

Christians for Israel has a multidenominational membership, drawing from a mix of churches and communities ranging from Afro-Carribean Evangelical communities and some Catholics. The predominant base of support appears to come from Protestant congregations.

A mix of a community center, a vehicle for advocacy, and a department store for made-in-Israel goods, the building is the largest of its kind in Europe and a testament to the deep attachment that many Christians have to Israel here.

In a society where both Christianity and Israel have become unfashionable or worse, the Christians for Israel building is also a unique rallying point, social club and activism hub for thousands of non-Jews for whom Israel is the manifestation of divine will and a key component of their own identity.

After October 7, the center became a source of solace for Huib Kriekaard, a regular who volunteers at the center.

“I have less pleasure in life after October 7. To have meaning, my actions must have something to do with Israel,” he told The Times of Israel in a recent interview.

An Israeli flag flies at the entrance to the headquarters of the Christians for Israel group in the Dutch town of Nijkerk, June 5, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)

Kriekaard, a 72-year-old historian, feared for Israel’s existence after the Hamas onslaught that day, in which about 3,000 terrorists invaded border towns and cities, killing some 1,200 people and abducting another 251.

“If Israel disappears, my life will become pointless,” Kriekaard said. To him, Israel’s existence is “proof that God fulfills His promises to the People of Israel,” said Kriekaard.

A broader conflict

Other members of the Christians for Israel movement see Israel as an incarnation of divine goodness in a broader fight.

“Hostility toward Jews belongs to God’s rival, shall we call him,” said Ina Straatsma-Elzes, a 75-year-old volunteer. “It singles out Jews but sows dissent among Christians, too. We see it all in wars like this one, but it’s everywhere. We see it in universities, on the street and in the media’s narrative.”

The top floor of the Christians for Israel building features a television studio that the organization’s media department uses to produce Dutch-language news journals and podcasts. A space for exhibitions – the current one is a summer display about Jerusalem’s history – is on the ground floor, along with a gift shop and an events hall.

Christian supporters of Israel attend the opening of an exhibition in the Dutch town of Nijkerk, June 5, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)

Last month, two far-left activists spraypainted messages about Gaza on the building of Christians for Israel. It was the first act of vandalism at their HQ, which is equipped with multiple security arrangements, including cameras and a double door where visitors need to identify themselves to be let in.

“The Jewish community in our country is confronted with this every day, and now so are we,” wrote Christians for Israel Director Frank van Oordt, a former teacher and son of founder Karel van Oordt, who died in 2013 and had eight children. The building remains safe to visit despite the incident, he added.

Frank van Oordt inspects the products on sale at the gift shop of the headquarters of the Christians for Israel group in the Dutch town of Nijkerk, on June 5, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)

Antisemitic attacks in the Netherlands increased in volume by 245% in 2023 over 2022, mostly after October 7. Christians for Israel have participated in multiple demonstrations against antisemitism since October 7, sometimes providing most of the participants.

In March, Christians for Israel dispatched volunteers to pick 13 tons of oranges in affected groves in Israel’s south. The group shipped the fruit to Nijkerk and sold them at cost. The oranges were sold out within days.

Picking up the pieces

Christians for Israel’s previous director, Frank’s brother Roger van Oordt, visited the home of Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs after it had been vandalized for the fifth time in 2014. Roger said relatively little during the visit, expressing his solidarity with Dutch Jews and rejection of antisemitism. In typical van Oordt form, he then began clearing glass shards from the attack on the rabbi’s home.

Supporters of Christians for Israel “represent all that’s beautiful in Dutch society. They are the hope for better times not only for Dutch Jews, but all Dutchmen,” Jacobs, a longtime ally of Christians for Israel, said at the exhibition opening whose ribbon he was invited to cut in May.

Frank van Oordt, right, introduces Israeli diplomat Fentay Alamu-Maharat as Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs listens to his speech at the headquarters of the Christians for Israel group in the Dutch town of Nijkerk, June 5, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)

Both Straatsma-Elzes and Kriekaard, the volunteers, lamented images of human suffering from Gaza, where some 38,000 have died during the war on Hamas, according to unconfirmed statistics published by the Hamas-run health ministry. The statistics don’t differentiate between civilians and terrorists, of whom Israel says it has killed at least 15,000.

“You feel like ‘this can’t be’ when you see the children,” Straatsma-Elzes said. “With the children it’s terrible,” added Kriekaard. But “when the allies bombed Germany, we in the Netherlands didn’t exactly think of the poor Germans, he added. Both volunteers have had arguments with friends, colleagues and even family members over their support for Israel, they said.

Money time

This support is not only spiritual: The volunteers work at the Israel Products Center, or IPC, which spends millions of euros annually on goods from Israel, including from the West Bank.

Founded in 1980, the IPC has grown from a gift shop into a thriving business offering orthopedic soles, jewelry beauty products and gourmet wines, to name just a few of its hundreds of products. IPC became profitable for the first time in 2021 after decades of breaking even. Kriekaard is one of dozens of volunteers working in the IPC warehouse, which is the size of four tennis courts.

Pieter van Oordt receives goods at the Israel Product Center of the Christians for Israel group in the Dutch town of Nijkerk, June 5, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)

The wines are the IPC’s bestsellers, said Pieter van Oordt, another son of Christians for Israel founder Karel, with about 150,000 wine bottles sold annually, he said. That figure represents an incremental growth of about 25% in wine sales over the past decade.

Sales have increased by about 20% after October 7, Pieter van Oordt added.

“Returning customers buy out of concern and solidarity with Israel and Jews. [After October 7,] new customers come to us for the same reason,” he said.

With their first profits, the IPC’s 350 shareholders decided to buy a winery in Kiryat Arba, an Israeli settlement in Hebron in the West Bank, and a vineyard in Aminadav near Jerusalem.

Christians for Israel have made a point of buying and reselling products from Israeli West Bank businesses because they believe Jews have a claim to that area, where most residents are Palestinians.

This has not escaped the attention of the Dutch state, which has followed the European Union position that all settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory are illegal under international law.

Resisting labels

Dutch Christian volunteers pick oranges in Israel in March 2024. (Christians for Israel)

In 2019, government inspectors from the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority audited the IPC, handing out a fine of 2,100 euros ($2,286) for what the inspectors considered the mislabelling of products made in the West Bank as originating in Israel.

In reaction, the IPC appealed the fine and called on its tens of thousands of customers to buy even more settlement goods. A court in 2021 dismissed the appeal but the IPC appealed again to a higher court, whose ruling is still pending.

“They’re trying to get us to say something we don’t believe: that Judea and Samaria aren’t Israel,” Pieter van Oordt said of the government. “But we won’t do it. To them it’s politics, for us, it’s a matter of faith.”

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