Below is an interview with Geert Wilders from the Israeli newspaper Yedioth, published on November 19, 2010 (print edition only).

Many thanks to DarLink for translating it from the Hebrew:

“Israel is fighting our war”

Even a journalist from a friendly country such as Israel does not escape invasive hands of the security guards who protect Geert Wilders. At the entry point to the interview with Holland’s extreme politician, founder and leader of the anti-Islamic “Party for Freedom” [PVV], bodyguards do not hold back, and run extensive security checks. Time and again they recheck my identity, making sure that I possess nothing that could potentially turn into a weapon.

In a SPIEGEL interview, Dutch Islam-opponent Geert Wilders discusses his fight for a Koran ban, why German Chancellor Angela Merkel is running scared on the immigration issue and his belief that the Netherlands' debate over Muslims has now crossed the border into Germany.

The Wilders trial shows the threat religious hate-speech laws pose to free speech.

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders was threatened with criminal punishment for hate speech from the moment his anti-Koran film Fitna hit the internet in March 2008. Last month, a Dutch judicial oversight body ordered that he be tried anew after finding that judges in the first round of court proceedings appeared to be biased. Even if Mr. Wilders is ultimately acquitted, as his prosecutors themselves urge, he will have already been punished by years of costly and tiring legal wrangling.

The Alice in Wonderland justice system on display in the Amsterdam Court show trial of MP Geert Wilders took another bizarre turn. One of the presiding judges engaged in a thinly veiled attempt to turn an expert witness for the defense, Hans Jansen at a dinner party. Anywhere in the US, such antics would get the Judge dismissed from the bench and subjected to a judicial ethics proceeding leading to possible disbarrment. Wilders accomplished defense counsel, Bram Moszkowicz immediately requested that the judges in the proceeding be dismissed and the witness be recalled. November 5th had been set for a decision in the case. Certainly the public prosecutors thought there was no basis for a conviction of Wilders based on the original charges of violations of a hoary hate speech law in The Netherland. Wilders broke his self imposed silence to say, " The trial is a great big Mess".