Plan for Arab tour angers

Press, 26 April 1978, Page 8

Plan for Arab tour angers

NZPA-Reuter Amsterdam Plans to attract more Arab visitors to Amsterdam with tours omitting all the city’s Jewish sights have been hurriedly dropped after a storm of public protest. The idea of winning wealthy Arabs away from London was put forward in a newspaper interview last Wednesday by an Egyptian businessman who runs an information, publishing and import-export business in Amsterdam. Mr I. A. Farouk was quoted as telling the Amsterdam evening paper. “Parod” “The Arabs are sick of England. It’s full of other Arabs and swindlers who are only after Arab money. Arab tour operators are very' interested in Holland and it’s up to the national tourist bureau to do something.’’

He said guided tours of Amsterdam would have to be adapted for Arabs to leave out the Anne Frank Museum, the Waterlooplein textile and flea-market area, and anything else with Jewish connections. Otherwise the entire plan would be ruined.

“I know of one case when three Arab businessmen came here to visit a big Amsterdam firm, who arranged for them to take a guided tour which wasn’t adapted. They went straight home the same day and a lucrative contract didn’t go through,” he said.

Mr Farouk’s suggestion drew a blistering response from the Anne Frank Foundation, which runs the museum in the house where the voung Jewish girl wrote her famous diary' before she and her family, were discovered

by the occupying German authorities in August, 1944.

Anne and most of her relatives died in German concentration camps, like 100.000 other Dutch Jews. “We wonder if Mr Farouk might not have done better to be direct and ask for the ‘Judenviertel’ (the nazi term for the Jewish ghetto) to be closed off again and for the Anne Frank house to be turned back into a place of hiding,” the foundation said. It added that Arab tourists were welcome at the museum because the foundation hoped their visits might help increase tolerance and combat racial discrimination.

There were equally angry actions in the Dutch Parliament and the national tourist bureau quickly denied it had any plans to do business

with Mr Farouk, describing his remark : as “offensive.” Mr Farouk at the weekend beat a hasty retreat, and announced he was dropping his plans to try to attract more Arab tourists. “We shall advise Arabs to take their holidays in another country where they get a more friendly reception,” he said. The final word on the row came from the “Parool” yesterday in a sarcastic editorial which suggested that the principle of “adapted” guided tours should logically be extended for other nationalities as well. While Arabs would be able to miss out Anne Frank and Rembrandt’s famous painting, “The Jewish bride,” in the Rijksmuseum, Germans would be spared the 'sight of the national monument to the Dutch World

War Two dead and the stat ue of an Amsterdam docker which commemorates the February, 1941, strike against the deportation of Jews.

Spanish and English tourists would likewise be able to avoid hearing about the Dutch naval heroes who trounced their fleets more than 300 years ago, Piet Hein and Admiral De Ruyter.

Tourists from Japan would be allowed to avoid performances by Wim Kan, the country’s most famous cabaret humourist, who was a prisoner of war under the Japanese in World War Two.

“The national tourist bureau can always supply plenty of bulbfields, clogs, and windmills instead,” the “Parool” commented.