JNS
"Several groups pursuing Jews in city centers" was something "we have not encountered before," says Amichai Chikli, Israel's minister for diaspora affairs.
Dozens of people chanted “Say ‘Free Palestine,’ then we go” at police officers at an illegal rally in Amsterdam on Wednesday night.
The phrase heard at the protest, where many participants had a Middle Eastern appearance, echoes those an assailant was filmed telling an Israeli who had jumped into a canal in the city to avoid a beating on Nov. 7. In the video, the swimming man says “Free Palestine” almost immediately after being prompted, drawing laughter from his attackers watching him from the embankment.
That incident was part of a series of preplanned assaults, which many Dutch Jews and others consider a pogrom, by at least 100 Muslim men against Israeli soccer supporters returning from a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local Ajax team.
The chants, which were widely interpreted as a celebration of the violence exercised against Israelis on Nov. 7, were heard during the second anti-Israel gathering on Wednesday night at Dam Square, a central location that features a large monument for the victims of World War II.
Also on Wednesday night, demonstrators clashed with police at an illegal protest in Paris against a pro-Israel benefit held by local Jews.
Earlier this week, Belgian police arrested suspects whom detectives said were inspired by Amsterdam rioters to attack Jews in Antwerp.
These and other events are causing concern across Europe about a new security reality for Israelis, Jews and law enforcement agents. The Amsterdam assaults showed the ability of local groups of Muslim rioters to use instant messaging to mobilize quickly and coordinate concentrated attacks on moving targets that they pursued in real-time.
"The nature of this event is a new development," Amichai Chikli, Israel's minister for diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, told JNS Wednesday about the assaults in Amsterdam.
Chikli said that "several groups pursuing Jews in city centers" was something "we have not encountered before."
His ministry's situation room had monitored online preparations for the assaults. The information gathered was transmitted to Israeli security authorities and from there on to local law enforcement in Amsterdam, "who clearly dropped the ball," Chikli said.
During the first gathering on Amsterdam’s Dam Square on Wednesday night, police provided transportation services to 265 people who had gathered there in violation of the municipality’s temporary blanket ban on demonstrations, the De Telegraaf daily reported. Police vans dropped off the protesters at least one location in the city’s west where the municipality decided to make an exception to the ban.
But many protesters returned to Dam Square, according to the paper. When police told them to leave, they chanted, “Say ‘Free Palestine,’ then we go.”
The handling of Wednesday’s protests in Amsterdam gave fresh ammunition to critics who accused the municipality of laxness—and who had already lambasted city authorities for not preventing the violence on Nov. 7.
“We have an emergency situation in the city, and yet another demonstration is being allowed. It completely undermines the sovereignty and credibility of the city government,” Cas van Berkel, a member of the Amsterdam City Council for the JA21 party, told De Telegraaf.
Some of the demonstrators at Dam Square shouted at police: “Whose streets? Our streets.”
When police attempted to arrest some protesters, they ran away, some of them shoving the officers, according to Bart Schut, the deputy editor-in-chief of the Dutch-Jewish weekly NIW.
“This is how a city looks when the mayor has no control of it,” he wrote on X, adding a hashtag calling for the resignation of Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema. At around midnight, Dam Square was empty, the AT5 television channel reported. It was not immediately clear how many people, if any, were arrested on Wednesday.
In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Wednesday about the assaults on Israelis by Muslims in Amsterdam, left-wing lawmakers accused the victims of instigating the violence and blamed the right-wing, pro-Israel politician Geert Wilders for stoking racial tensions.
The rhetoric on display in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of parliament, was part of an emerging narrative in the aftermath of the events of Nov. 7.
The incidents, which Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Wilders have called a pogrom, initially prompted blanket condemnations and expressions of shame. Some of those expressions, including by Dutch King Willem-Alexander, referenced the near annihilation of Dutch Jewry by the Nazis and their helpers during the Holocaust.
The assaults took place on the eve of the Nov. 9-10 anniversary of the Kristallnacht Nazi pogroms that took place in the Third Reich in 1938—a fact that many Dutch officials referenced in speaking about the attacks.
Increasingly, however, the premise that the Israelis were the victims is being debated along the party and ideological lines that divide Dutch society, which is already polarized on issues of immigration and law enforcement.
At the parliamentary debate on Wednesday, Stephan van Baarle, a lawmaker for the Denk party, which has been colloquially described as a "Muslim political party" and is often been accused of antisemitism, presented the Israeli soccer fans as the aggressors.
Facing Wilders, he asked where Wilders was when “Maccabi rioters said to women with head covers: ‘You Arabs, we will kill you’?” and said that “Maccabi hooligans went hunting for Palestinians, to search for them.” The Dutch mainstream media and authorities have not reported on any such events.
Wilders said he condemned any expressions of violence by Israeli visitors, but said “it does not compare in any way to the Jew-hunt that we witnessed by Arab, Muslim men.”
Halsema, who on Friday said there was “no excuse” for the assaults against Israelis, at a debate at the City Council of Amsterdam juxtaposed the assaults of the Israelis with actions attributed to them.
“Israeli supporters, guests in our city, were searched, chased and attacked, accompanied by antisemitic calls on social media and on the streets. There were also Amsterdam residents who were attacked by Maccabi hooligans. Hooligans who used racist and hate speech in our city, against residents,” she said.
Prominent Dutch Jews, including attorney Herman Loonstein and Rabbi Meir Villegas Henriquez, accused the mayor of victim blaming. Villegas Henriquez has called on Dutch Jews to make aliyah following the assaults.
Footage from Nov. 7 shows dozens of men shouting “Let the IDF win” and “F**k the Arabs” in Hebrew as they enter a metro station after sunset. Another video shows Israelis stealing a PLO flag from a facade. A third shows Israeli men running in the city’s center, some of them holding sticks. It was not clear whether that video was filmed after or before the Muslims attacked the Israelis. Police said Israelis damaged a taxi cab, but some officers disputed this account, saying the driver had attacked Israelis.
On Wednesday night, Wilders, whose Party for Freedom is the country’s largest and a coalition partner, wrote on X that Prime Minister Dick Schoof had confirmed that perpetrators of the pogrom may be tried for terrorism and lose their Dutch citizenship. “Antisemitism can be considered extra reason for de-naturalization! Fantastic!” Wilders wrote.
Police are considering prosecuting 11 perpetrators of the assaults, in which 25 Israelis were wounded.
Following the Hamas-led invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and abducted another 251, Israel went to war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s critics in Europe have accused it of genocide, including at weekly rallies that have featured numerous calls for violence against Israelis and Jews. Several countries reported an explosion in recorded antisemitic incidents. In the Netherlands, the Center for Information and Documentation recorded an increase of 245% in antisemitic incidents in 2023 over 2022.
