Pro-Palestine demonstrators disrupted a speech by the Dutch Minister of Defense Ruben Brekelmans during the celebrations of the National Liberation Day in the city of Wageningen.
The demonstrators interrupted the annual ceremony, singing the “free Palestine” and other pro-Palestinian slogans.
During the Brekelmans speech, he underlined the role of NATO and the EU in securing peace, noting that “for the former, the German soldiers walk in the parade”.
He warned of complacency, saying that threats were often built quietly.
While the pro-Palestinian demonstrators interrup him, he thought about the return of violence on a large scale and asked a key question: “Let us look at each other, or do we look up?”
The minister ended that he was briefly speaking to respond to the demonstrators, saying, “I say that the people we have just seen here, keep us firmly and not let us play each other, that's what we all have to do.”
Police say five people were arrested after breaking the obstacles to security.
The annual event in Wageningen marks the end of the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands in 1945 and is a key date of the Dutch national calendar.
