Dozens arrested at illegal anti-Israel protest in Amsterdam

(JNS) — Police in Amsterdam on Sunday arrested several dozen people at an unauthorized anti-Israel protest rally at a square where, days earlier, Muslims assaulted Israeli soccer fans.

The arrests at Dam Square followed a temporary municipal ban on the anti-Israel demonstrations that regularly take place there. The ban followed the coordinated assault on Thursday by at least 100 Muslim men on fans of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team who were leaving a match against the local Ajax team.

Five Israelis were moderately wounded and another 20 suffered light injuries. Some 2,000 people left the Netherlands for Israel over the weekend in eight emergency flights organized by El Al, Israel’s flag carrier airline. The assaults, which Israeli President Isaac Herzog called a “pogrom,” shocked many in Israel and beyond.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted in a filmed address how the event coincided with annual anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms that happened throughout the Third Reich on Nov. 9-10, 1938.

“Unfortunately, we have seen in recent days images that are reminiscent of that night. On the streets of Amsterdam, antisemitic perpetrators assaulted Jews, Israeli citizens, only because they are Jewish,” Netanyahu said. But, he added, “there’s a difference between that night and our times: Now we have our own state, government and army. We have the ability, will and determination to defend ourselves and also to demand others fulfill their duties.”

Netanyahu said he had called his Dutch counterpart, Dick Schoof, and demanded to bring the perpetrators to justice and protect the local Jewish community. Schoof said he was “ashamed” of the assaults of Nov. 8, Netanyahu said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a memorial ceremony at the Knesset in Jerusalem for the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, Oct. 28, 2024. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.

In the Netherlands, the assaults were widely seen as part of the immigration crisis that has divided locals for decades, and especially following the entry of hundreds of thousands of people to that country and elsewhere in Europe after 2011. In that year, the Syrian civil war erupted, triggering the arrival of millions from the Middle East to Europe, many at the invitation of the German government.

Geert Wilders, the head of Netherlands largest party and senior coalition partner, called to deport the perpetrators, lamenting on X that “we have become the Gaza of Europe.”

Israeli journalists covering the aftermath of the assaults were intimidated by locals over the weekend, they said. Kan journalists Michal Reshef and Micah Rizov said that youths had followed them around in Amsterdam after they had filmed a segment there. The youths shouted “Free Palestine” until police pushed them away, they said.

Yossi Eli, a reporter for Channel 13, wrote on X that dozens of police officers escorted him and a cameraman to film in a heavily Muslim neighborhood of Amsterdam, where locals took photos of him and shouted insults. Police advised Eli to move to a hotel outside Amsterdam for his safety after the visit, he wrote, fearing the photos that Muslims had taken of him would be shared online with the intent of tracking him down and assaulting him.

On Sunday, Bart Schut, the deputy editor-in-chief of the NIW Dutch Jewish weekly, documented how shopkeepers in stores on the Nieuwndijk shopping street near Dam Square were holding up cell phones displaying the PLO flag in solidarity with the participants of the illegal protest, after some them moved to that street. 

The assaults of Thursday night followed smaller altercations involving Maccabi fans, who reportedly damaged a taxi cab, stole a PLO flag hanging from a building façade and chanted at a metro station about “letting the IDF win and f***k the Arabs.”

The assaults were the largest-scale antisemitic assault in the Netherlands since the Holocaust. Video filmed by perpetrators showed scenes of public humiliation, including of an Israel who was forced to his knees and made to say “Free Palestine” before being beaten up. At least one Israeli jumped into a canal to escape his attackers. At least one suspected car ramming was reported.

Law enforcement agents apprehended 62 people ahead of the assaults, Amsterdam Police chief Peter Holla said on Friday.

But Wilders, the head of the Party for Freedom, revealed on Saturday that “Amsterdam Police just confirmed that NO ONE has been arrested during the Islamic Jew-hunt in Amsterdam Thursday night. All arrests have been made before and during the soccer match and NOT during the pogrom.”

Prime Minister Dick Schoof said in a statement Saturday that a “thorough investigation” will be carried out about how the event was allowed to happen and to “bring the perpetrators to justice.”

The Municipality of Amsterdam is carrying out its own independent investigation, Mayor Femke Halsema said at a press conference on Friday.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander in a statement on Friday wrote: “We must not look away from antisemitic behavior on our streets. History has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse, with horrific consequences. Jewish people must feel safe in the Netherlands, everywhere and at all times. We embrace them all and hold them close.”