A short national work walkout Monday saw hundreds of people banging saucepans to get the government to stop supporting Israel.

Chanting slogans such as “Netherlands you cannot hide, no supporting genocide” and “Free, free Palestine”, the action piggybacked on the monthly Monday air raid sirens at noon, when workers left their offices to demand the government end military aid to Israel, stop importing goods from Occupied Territories and recognize the Palestinian state.

The protests were organized by a group of friends and took place under the hashtag #Wijwerkenhiernietaanmee (“We’re not working on this”).

Organiser Floor van Lissa from Utrecht says there were about 55 official locations taking part in the protest and others who acted on their own. “At the biggest, there where between 200-500 people, at some places just one person or office,” she says. “But that was exactly the idea of the action. It resonated all through Holland so that was exactly what we wanted.”

State responsibility

As a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the Dutch government, the campaigners say, is legally obliged to prevent genocide. “But by lingering and turning, this government makes us, as Dutch [people], complicit. And we’re not working on that,” says the organisers’ website.

“Our message to the government is stop supporting Israel in this genocide,” says Zdenka Fieggen, a press officer for the Wereld Museum, which has four locations throughout the country, including one in Amsterdam where some 50 protestors took part in the action on the museum’s front lawn.

“The museum is a world museum, we’re socially involved,” says Fieggen on why the museum took action. “We have our own colonial history, and our mission is to contribute to more equality in the world and make a better world where we can live together in peace. So this action really suits us.”

Farida, a retired 69-year-old living in Amsterdam, stood on the corner of the Oosterpark banging a pan all by herself. She wants an end to the war and what she calls a man-made hunger. “The pan symbolises food,” she says. “The people of Holland can pressure the Dutch government with protests, so they can’t say no one here cares.”

Genocide scholars weigh-in

The protest came as the world’s leading genocide scholars’ association passed a resolution stating that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal criteria for genocide.

In total, 86% of the 500-strong International Association of Genocide Scholars agreed that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. They called on Israel to immediately stop all internationally criminal acts, including intentionally targeting civilians, starvation, the denial of humanitarian aid, water and fuel and the forced displacement of Gazans.

Such acts, says the association, meet the legal criteria of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

“If this is not a genocide, then I don’t know what genocide is,” Netherlands-based genocide scholar and former member of the association Iva Vukusic told Dutch News. “I think it’s the most blatantly obvious case of genocide that we’ve seen probably in a long time.”

She says with so many basic rights now out of reach of Gazans—from education and food to arable land and housing—Gazans are being intentionally wiped out.

“Beyond the killings, it’s making life unliveable. There’s no life possible there now.”

Vukusic says it’s important to set the historical record straight for the future, and that even if governments like the US won’t listen, others, like the Dutch, may take action.

Hamas welcomed the resolution, saying it “places a legal and moral obligation on the international community to take urgent action to stop the crime, protect civilians, and hold the leaders of the occupation accountable.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, called the resolution “disgraceful” on social media site X. The country has denied its actions amount to genocide in an ongoing case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.