The Netherlands
Dissing gay soldiers: Dutch officials are furious over claims by a retired U.S. Marine Corps general that Dutch troops had failed to prevent a massacre in Bosnia because of the presence of openly gay soldiers. At a congressional hearing last week on the Pentagon’s policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” former Supreme Allied Commander John Sheehan said that having gay soldiers undermined unit cohesion in the Dutch armed forces, resulting in a failure to intervene when Serbian militias massacred 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende called the remarks “disgraceful,” and Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop said they were “outrageous and unworthy of a soldier.” The Pink Army, a group of gay retired Dutch soldiers, said it planned to sue Sheehan for slander.
London
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Angry at Israel: Britain’s already-strained relations with Israel worsened this week when Britain expelled a diplomat believed to be the London station chief of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency. Britain said the move was in response to Mossad’s apparent use of 12 forged British passports to enter Dubai in January and kill a Hamas official. “Such misuse of British passports is intolerable,” said Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Israel will neither confirm nor deny any involvement in the plot, though Israeli officials say the slain Palestinian was deeply involved in an arms-smuggling operation used to support Hamas terrorist operations based in Gaza. British relations with Israel have been tense since last year, when then–Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni canceled a trip to London because a British court had issued an arrest warrant for her on war-crimes charges stemming from Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza.
Vienna
Choir boys abused: Eleven former members of Austria’s famed Vienna Boys’ Choir have come forward with allegations of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. After two former members of the choral group told an Austrian newspaper last week that they had been groped by choirmasters and older choir members, the group set up a hot line for choir alumni, and nine more came forward. Most of the callers did not allege sexual abuse, but complained about the ruthless discipline at their boarding school, where they said they were routinely screamed at and humiliated. The Vienna Boys’ Choir is not church-affiliated, though the allegations coincide with a spate of abuse claims against Austrian Catholic clergy.
