Netherlands: Soccer fans beat Jew and sing song praising Nazis

Via JTA:

A Jewish man was assaulted on the Netherlands’ national holiday of liberation from the Nazis by revelers who sang about gassing Jews.

The man, identified in the Dutch media only as Joram, complained to police that he was pushed around, kicked and verbally assaulted with anti-Semitic hate speech by a group of about 50 men in the Hague on May 5, a national holiday known as Liberation Day.

Joram, 35, asked men celebrating in a park near the Dutch parliament building to stop singing the offensive song, whose lyrics include: “My father was in the commandos, my mother was in the SS, together they burned Jews ’cause Jews burn the best.”

The chanters then began pushing Joram around as police stood idly by, he told the AD news site and the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI.

The men were wearing soccer shirts of the Feyenoord club of Rotterdam. The club’s rival is Amsterdam’s Ajax team, which is widely associated with Jews.

The chant, whose use was first reported by the media in 2015, has proliferated in the Netherlands and Belgium in recent years. In some cases, fans chant it to taunt counterparts from rival teams.

Hidde van Koningsveld, the head of the pro-Israel CiJo group, last week told the Dutch media he experiences an anti-Semitic incident at least once a week in the Hague, where he works, because he wears a kippah.

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Netherlands: Textbook omits Jewish connection to Jerusalem

Via Times of Israel:

A Dutch publisher that previously created school textbooks accusing Israelis of ethnic cleansing has released a new volume omitting Jerusalem’s significance to Jews.

The omission occurred in a textbook about social issues titled “Plein M” by Nordhoff Publishers for preparatory middle-level applied education level schools, including public schools. It states Jerusalem is holy to Muslims and Christians, but does not mention its holiness to Jews.

It also states that Jews and Christians were “mostly treated well” by Arabs throughout history. It does not mention capital taxes and many pogroms perpetrated against Jews in Arab countries before and during the flight of at least 800,000 Jews from those countries in the 20th century. Today, there are fewer than 7,000 Jews living in Arab countries.

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Likoed Nederland, a pro-Israel group, called the book a form of “historical falsification” in a statement Sunday, adding it “reads like Palestinian propaganda.”

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Netherlands: Jew harassed in Amsterdam town square, hours after Holocaust memorial ceremony

Via WNL:

Michael Jacobs, a pro-Israel activist, often stands in Dam Square protesting against pro-Palestinian demonstrations.  This often leads to clashes.

On Sunday, a few hours after a Holocaust memorial ceremony, he again stood to protest a pro-Palestinian protest, and harassed by a young man who cursed Jews and yelled at him repeatedly "aren't you ashamed of being Jewish?". 



YouTube removed the clip documenting of the incident, for "violating YouTube's Terms of Service".

Netherlands: 43% of Jews say they hide their ethnic identity

Via Times of Israel:

Nearly half of 557 respondents in a survey of Dutch Jews said they were afraid of identifying as such.

Of the respondents, 43 percent said they take active steps to hide their Jewish identity, such as wear a hat over their kippah or hide Star of David pendants.

Many respondents cited their perception of a rise in the prevalence of anti-Semitic sentiment, with 48% saying they avoid situations where they suspect they may be exposed to anti-Semitic reactions.

The results of the survey were published Monday.

Other key findings were that 52% of respondents said anti-Semitism on the street has become more common, 59% said it extends also to media and 82% see it rising online.

When it came to experiencing anti-Semitism, 34% said they had experienced racially offensive remarks directed against them, and of those, 89% said that those remarks were connected to Israel. 11% of respondents said they had experienced anti-Semitic violence directed against them.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they heard anti-Semitic jokes, featuring stereotypes about Jews. Other jokes involved the Holocaust. One respondent said a neighbor once told him that the only reason the respondent is living in the Netherlands is “because they forgot to gas” his family.

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Holland: Extreme antisemitic tweet from municipal council member

Via Bad News from the Netherlands blog:

A member of the municipal council in the town of Heerenveen on behalf of the Frisian National Party [the FNP is a left-wing nationalist party] tweeted that Jews murder entire groups of populations.

read more @ De Dagelijkse Standaard (in Dutch)

Holland: Restaurant owner evicts Dutch Jewish community from synagogue

Via JTA:

The Jewish community of this Dutch city was evicted Monday from its former synagogue in what members said was the first such occurrence in years in the kingdom.  

Members of Beth Shoshanna, a Masorti/Conservative Jewish congregation of approximately 30 people, packed up and loaded into a van their Torah scroll and other scripture, as well as other items used for worship and furniture.  The move followed a legal fight against the building’s new owners, who are seeking to turn it into a restaurant.  

“It’s a very heavy feeling that this thing can happen here in 2018,” said Tom Furstenberg, the community’s chairman.  

His community had been told to move out by the office of Ayhan Sahin, a Dutch-Turkish developer and owner of several eateries, who in January bought the building housing the Great Synagogue of Deventer with a partner. Last week, the city blocked his plan to open an eatery in the 125-year-old synagogue. But as the owners, Sahin and his associate can still determine who has access to the building and have asked the congregation to move out, according to Sanne Terlouw, a member of the congregation.  

The community has found a new home in the nearby municipality of Raalte. “We will continue. But this means the end of centuries of Jewish life in Deventer itself,” Terlouw said.

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Holland: Ministers say Israel’s deduction of money paid to terrorists by Palestinians is unwise

Via Bad News from the Netherlands blog:

Israel has decided to withhold from tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority payments to terrorists and their families by the PA. In answer to parliamentary questions, ministers Blok and Kaag reply that the Dutch government considers this Israeli decision unwise.  

(Suggested Dutch parliamentary question: If someone kills Dutch ministers, will the Dutch government pay him or her for that?)

read more in Dutch @ CIDI.NL

Holland: Jewish community remains an important target for terrorists

Via Bad News from the Netherlands:

The annual report of the BLEW advisory body for the security of the Dutch Jewish community says that the Dutch Jewish community remains an important target for terrorists. Jews get much attention in jihadi propaganda. The worldwide increase in antisemitism also proves that Jews are threatened. BLEW concludes that it is of great importance to maintain existing security measures. The organization is unhappy with the decision to remove a number of police posts from Jewish institutions. 

read more (in Dutch) @ CIDI

Holland: Swastikas daubed on wall of Jewish cemetery in Amsterdam

Via European Jewish Press:

The outer wall of a Jewish cemetery in Amsterdam was daubed with swastikas last Saturday. Dutch police reported that a suspect has been arrested.

In addition to the swastika, letters were found on the wall. For the time being, it is unknown what these should mean. As soon as the daubing was noticed, the graffiti was removed. Nothing is known yet about the motive of the perpetrator.

The Zeeburg cemetery is the final resting place where some 80 percent of the Amsterdam Jews were buried between 1714 and 1914. Some 100,000 people are believed to be buried, making it the largest Jewish cemetery in the Netherlands.

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Holland: Muslim political activist wishes cancer on ‘filthy Jews’ at pro-Israel paper

Via JTA:

A former staffer at a Muslim political party in the Netherlands sent an email to a newspaper that was attacked this week saying “May you get cancer, you filthy, far-right cancer Jews.”

Hussein Jamakovic, who worked for the Denk Muslim party, which Dutch Jews allege is anti-Semitic, wrote the message to Telegraaf, the country’s largest-circulation daily, as well as three other news organizations.

The message came amid elevated concern in the Netherlands for the safety of journalists following the attack Tuesday on Telegraaf, when a van drove into the newspaper’s entrance in Amsterdam. Police do not have any suspects in custody.

Telegraaf is seen to have a center-right editorial line. The pro-Israel publication features an activist and a hostile attitude toward radical Islam. It also covers organized crime regularly and thoroughly.

Jamakovic’s message was over reports of his alleged expressions of sympathy for the Islamic State terrorist group. He also sent the email to the DDS, WNL and GeenStijl news sites.

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Holland: Muslim city counselor tweeted "Oh Allah, destroy the Zionists"

Via Bad News from the Netherlands blog:

Arnoud van Doorn, a Muslim member of the Municipal Council in the Hague tweeted that he read an interesting article about whether the 'good people' won the second World War or were the Nazis the protectors of the European civilization against American Zionism and the communism of Stalin. He added that there is perhaps a distortion of history here.

A month ago he tweeted "Oh Allah, destroy the Zionists."

read more in Dutch @ AD.NL

Netherlands: Men yell ‘f*** all Jews’ at chief rabbi’s son and family

Via JTA:

The son of a chief rabbi of the Netherlands and his family were accosted on the street by two young men who shouted at them “f*** all Jews” at them.

Rabbi Yanki Jacobs, the son of Binyomin Jacobs, made a complaint to police on Sunday about the incident from the previous evening, the AD news website reported.

On a street corner in a heavily Jewish area in southern Amsterdam, “two young men called out at the family ‘Cancer Jews’ and ‘f*** all Jews’ at our direction. They repeatedly drove in our direction in an intimidating manner,” Yanki Jacobs was quoted as saying.

On Twitter, he listed the license plate number of the vehicle in which the two were riding with a request to help identify them. Jacobs said the men appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent.

“I have had enough,” he told AD, adding that previously he had been cursed on the street. “I’ve grown accustomed to thinking about it as normal, but now thought that we as a Jewish community must no longer agree for this to happen to us.

“If I do nothing, who will? I walk around my neighborhood, a 10th-generation Amsterdam Jew, and I will not be driven out of this city.”

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Holland: Rabbi complains to police about insults by North Africans

Via Bad News from The Netherlands blog:

Amsterdam rabbi Yanki Jacobs has complained to the police about insults by two youngsters with a North-African appearance. They shouted against him and his family from their car “cancer Jews” and “fuck all Jews”.  

The rabbi was recognizable as being a Jew by his kippa. He said that they passed a number of times in their car in an intimidating way. The rabbi said that such insults occur so frequently that he has begun to consider it normal.

read more in Dutch at ad.nl

Anti-Semitic vandals hit shop in Italy, Holocaust monuments in France, Holland

Via Times of Israel:

A barbershop in Italy, and Holocaust monuments in the Netherlands and France were targeted in separate incidents deemed anti-Semitic.

The perpetrators of the incident involving Gianni Errichiello’s barbershop in a northern suburb of Turin in northern Italy torched a car parked in front of the establishment on Marconi Square. They splashed red paint on the shuttered blinds of the barbershop of Errichiello, who is not Jewish. And they attached a piece of printer paper on which was printed: “This shop belongs to a Jew,” Corriere de la Sera reported Tuesday.

(...)

Separately, in Paris, unidentified individuals removed a commemorative plaque that education ministry officials put up at the Ave Maria public elementary school for Jewish children who were deported from there and murdered during the Holocaust, Le Parisien last week reported.

The perpetrators did not damage any other object on the building’s façade, raising the suspicion that their action was an anti-Semitic incident. The Ave Maria school is located at the 4th District of Paris, or the Marais – the city’s historic Jewish quarter. The district’s mayor, Ariel Weil, who is Jewish, called the incident “shameful.”

On Sunday, unidentified individuals painted swastikas and other far-right symbols on a monument for Holocaust victims in the Midden-Groningen municipality, situated in the northeastern Netherlands, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the capital Amsterdam. City workers swiftly cleaned the black paint off the monument as police began investigating the incident, the RTV Noord broadcaster reported.

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France supports a UN Security Council resolution on Gaza

Another illustration of the "politique arabe" of France. "At the UN, France, China, and Russia were among the countries that voted in favor of the draft put forward by Kuwait on behalf of Arab countries. Four countries, Ethiopia, the UK, the Netherlands, and Poland abstained."

Via The Times of Israel:

Israeli deputy minister Michael Oren on Saturday slammed France for supporting a UN Security Council resolution on Gaza, saying Paris was hypocritical for supporting an “anti-Semitic resolution.”

Oren’s comments, in a tweet, prompted outrage from France’s ambassador in Israel Hélène Le Gal who accused Oren of not even reading the resolution and “insulting France.”

On Friday the United States vetoed an Arab-backed UN draft resolution calling for protective measures for the Palestinians that won backing from ten countries at the Security Council. A US resolution condemning Hamas also failed.

‏ “Praise for the US for vetoing Security Council resolution on Gaza that didn’t mention Hamas and condemned the IDF for defending Israel,” tweeted Oren, the deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office who is responsible for diplomacy.

“Shame on France for supporting it. French government cannot say it’s against anti-Semitism and vote for this anti-Semitic resolution,” said Oren, a former ambassador in Washington.

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Holland: Antisemitic cabaret program on Dutch socialist television channel

Via Bad News from the Netherlands blog:

A cabaret program on the Dutch Socialist VARA television by Sanne Wallis de Vries has used Israel's Eurovision winning song as a parody.  

Her text contains antisemitic motifs such as jokes about Jews and money.  

It also accuses Israel of using Buk rockets which Israel does not have. These rockets were used to bring down a plane of mainly Dutch passengers in the Ukraine. They all died.

read more in Dutch here

Holland: Holocaust monument smeared with bood, mud

Via Jewish Press:

A Holocaust monument in the Netherlands was smeared with blood and mud last week, shortly after the nation honored its war victim on May 4, Netherlands’ Memorial Day.

Police said they didn’t know how the filth was applied to the monument, which was unveiled in 2015 and which is engraved with the names of 1,239 Jews who were shipped to their deaths from the city, Utrecht.

In addition to the anti-Semitic vandalism at the monument, there were a number of other incidents as well around the same time, including “Nazi-like posters” hung up at the Groen Links office.

The type of blood used was unknown, according to the report, published Wednesday by RTV Utrecht, which did not provide details on the desecration. The monument is allegedly to be cleaned by the end of this week.

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Holland: Amsterdam kosher eatery’s owner will close shop unless police curb vandalism

Via JTA:

The owner of a frequently vandalized kosher eatery in the Dutch capital said he will close it down unless city officials install permanent security measures outside his business. 

Sami Bar-On’s lawyer, Herman Loonstein, told the Het Parool daily Wednesday that his client feels it is “irresponsible to go on like this” at HaCarmel restaurant without permanent security measures. 

In December, a 29-year-old Syrian asylum seeker smashed the restaurant’s window while holding a Palestinian flag. He then broke into the restaurant and grabbed an Israeli flag as two police officers watched before they arrested him. He has been charged with vandalism, but not a hate crime. 

Since the incident, the restaurant’s windows were smashed once more and are repeatedly spat on and smeared with garbage, Bar-On said. Police beef up security after each incident but leave shortly after, he said.

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Netherlands: Cop requests removal of Holocaust memorial sign, cites Israeli actions / Jew attacked

Via Times of Israel:

A bookshop owner in the Dutch capital said that a police officer asked him to remove a sign commemorating Holocaust victims, citing Israel’s actions.

Gert-Jan Jimmink told the De Telegraaf daily in a video published online Friday that the request was over a sign that read “Open Jewish Homes, Houses of Resistance.” The sign is part of a grassroots initiative from 2011 in the Netherlands in which residents of homes that used to belong to Holocaust victims open them to the public on the week of May 4, the Netherlands’ day of Remembrance of the Dead for Dutch war casualties.

The officer asked Jimmink: “Would you mind taking that off, because Israel launched an attack,” he said. Jimmink did not say when the officer, who he did not name, requested this. He ignored the request, he said. “I will not bow to this,” he added.

Jimmink, who has commemorated Holocaust victims also by having memorial cobblestones installed outside their former homes, also said that he recently saw an anti-Semitic assault outside his shop. A man of about 40 wearing a kippah was waiting for a tram, when an older man spat on him and hit him, Jimmink said. The attacker had left by the time Jimmink rushed to intervene he said.

“But it happened right in front of my eyes,” he said.

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Netherlands: newspaper slammed for ‘anti-Semitic’ cartoon on Gaza protests

Via Times of Israel:

A newspaper in the Netherlands has come under fire for publishing a cartoon depicting an Israeli soldier shooting masses of Palestinians on the Gaza border in celebration of the Jewish state’s 70th Independence Day, which was marked on Thursday.

The cartoon, published in Volkskrant, a major Dutch paper, depicts an IDF soldier wearing sunglasses and adorned with a Star of David on his back. Having put a frightened-looking unarmed Palestinian against a wall, he fires a barrage of bullets to spell out “Happy birthday to me” — passing across the Palestinian’s chest along the way.

Bodies of what seems to be other protesters lie nearby, next to what could be seen as a pile of bodies of slaughtered demonstrators who participated in the weekly “March of Return” mass rallies organized by Hamas, the terror group which runs the Gaza Strip.

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