How Israel used a Dutchman’s bravery to cover up its crimes - Adri Nieuwhof, Electronicint Ifada, 24 November 2016.
Erik Ader has no memory of his father. When Erik was a baby, Nazi forces tortured and executed his father, Bas. That was 72 years ago this month. Bas Ader had been a clergyman and a resistance fighter in the Netherlands when it was under Nazi occupation. He has been credited with saving the lives of more than 200 Dutch Jews. As a tribute to Bas, the Jewish National Fund planted more than 1,000 pine trees in the Hebron district of Palestine. Decades later, Erik learned that the forest had been planted over the ruins of Bayt Nattif, a village destroyed by Zionist forces during the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe), the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Erik, a retired diplomat, felt that he needed to protest against how his father’s brave deeds had been used to conceal the mass displacement of Palestinians. He did so by recently donating trees to Farata, a Palestinian village under Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
Son of Dutch Couple That Hid Jews From Nazis Wants Father’s Name Removed From JNF Memorial - In Haaretz from NOS, by Monique van Hoogstraten, Nov 23, 2016.
Erik Ader, a former ambassador of the Netherlands to Norway, says the monument built on what used to be a Palestinian village is 'an abuse of Ader's memory' because of Israel's 'ethnic cleansing.'
For the original article and Radio brodcast in Dutch by Monique van Hoogstraten, NOS, Nov. 18, 2016.
Former diplomat decries Israeli depopulation of Palestinian village of Bayt Nattif - Ibrahim Husseini, AP News, Nov. 22nd, 2016.
Bayt Nattif is a former Palestinian village now inhabited by Israeli settlers, who cleared the land there and established a Jewish settlement. Erik Ader is a former Dutch diplomat who worked in the Middle East in the mid 1980s. He is also the son of Reverend Bastiaan Jan Ader, a man who was executed in 1944 by the German Army for resisting the Nazi occupation of Holland and for helping Dutch Jews escape Nazi persecution. "I am proud because my father managed with help of many others to save the lives of two to three hundred Jewish compatriots during the Holocaust," says Ader. Umar Al Ghubari is a researcher for Zochrot NGO. Zochrot means 'remembering' in Hebrew. They work to promote acknowledgement and accountability for the ongoing injustices of the Nakba. Zochrot organised this tour to Bayt Nattif.
Ex-ambassador: Israel used my father to cover up ethnic cleansing - Jonathan Cook \ Middle East Eye, Nov. 20th, 2016.
Erik Ader, a former ambassador to Norway, said the trees were his way of apologising for a similar number of pine trees planted in Israel in the 1960s to honour his father. The Rev Bastiaan Jan Ader, who was executed by the Nazis in 1944, was named a “Righteous among the Nations” in 1967 by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. Ader said he had been shocked to discover a decade ago that under the small conifer forest dedicated to his father were concealed the ruins of a Palestinian village. All of the 2,400 Palestinian inhabitants of Bayt Nattif, south-west of Jerusalem, were expelled in 1948, the year Israel was established. The Israeli army destroyed the 350 homes there and none of the villagers has ever been allowed to return.
