http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,699377,00.html
"One thing that distinguishes Wilders from some of his populist colleagues in other parts of Europe, is a somewhat sinister form of philosemitism, which is driven by his loathing of Islam. A frequent visitor to Israel, Wilders approves of the Israeli hard line on the Arab population. He also finds support among right-wing Jewish organizations in the US, where he finds sympathetic audiences, often in synagogues, for his diatribes against Islam. One wonders what his audience at an "anti-Jihad conference" in Jerusalem made of his remark that Muslims were threatening Amsterdam's status as the "gay capital of the world." But this observation says something about the peculiar nature of modern Dutch populism....
Geert Wilders is popular, but not nearly as popular as the former social democratic mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen. Ever since he tried to calm things down in Amsterdam after the murder of Theo van Gogh by a young Muslim terrorist, he has been attacked by his critics as a cowardly appeaser of Islamic extremism. He personifies, in the eyes of his enemies, the liberal elitism and soft tolerance that people blame for everything, from street crime in immigrant neighbourhoods to violent Islamist extremism.
It is true that Cohen did his best to talk to Muslim citizens, to drink tea in mosques, and to take the problems of immigrants seriously. He did this, as he himself has often pointed out, because he knows what it is like to be excluded. Cohen is from a secular Jewish family. His parents survived the Nazis' attempt to exterminate them."