Anti-Semitism soars in Holland

From the Jerusalem Post with a H/T to KitmanTV

By ISI LEIBLER
08/18/2010 21:03

There is a popular misconception that the Dutch are an easygoing, tolerant people.

Like many Jews, as a youngster I associated Holland with windmills and tulips and a heroic people which bravely defended Jews during the Nazi occupation.

Alas, I subsequently learned that the record of the Dutch towards the Jews was nothing of the sort. There were tens of thousands of Dutch righteous gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews but there were far more collaborators, over 25,000 of whom even volunteered for the Waffen SS. Overall, the Dutch authorities willingly assisted in the deportation of the Jews. Anne Frank and her family were amongst those denounced to the Nazis. Of the 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands before the war, over 100,000 were murdered.

Today, there is a popular misconception that the Dutch are an easygoing, tolerant, multi-cultured people.

In truth, Dutch society has become polarized as a consequence of the massive influx of non-Western immigrants, predominantly Muslim, who have shattered social stability. Muslims currently comprise one million out of a 16 million population, a disproportionate number of whom have police records.

Together with indigenous anti- Semites, some radical Muslims have effectively exploited the culture of permissiveness to violently promote their objectives.

Verbal and physical violence has escalated, climaxing in November 2004 with the brutal public street murder in Amsterdam of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh who was shot and stabbed to death by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Muslim radical.

Although this had a major impact on Dutch society, it did not become the watershed one may have expected. However the status of the 30,000 members of the Jewish community, already subjected to increasing anti- Semitic incitement and violence primarily emanating from the Moroccan Muslim community, continued to deteriorate.

The leading daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad published an article in June stating that anti- Semitism in areas of Amsterdam has become the norm rather than the exception. It identified areas in Amsterdam in which Jews with skullcaps or distinctive garb cannot walk in the streets without being affronted, spat at or even attacked.

In May, an outdoor commemoration ceremony for the last transport of 3,000 Jewish children deported during the Holocaust was disrupted by bikers shrieking “Heil Hitler” during the recitation of Kaddish.

Anti-Semitism also manifests itself in anti-Israel demonstrations where cries of “Hamas Hamas – Jews to the gas”; “Jew cancer”; and “Hitler let one get away!” are frequently heard. Football stadiums have become notorious arenas for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic chants. About half of the registered criminal utterances reported on the internet throughout Holland in 2009 were against Jews. It is believed that if full records were accessible, the proportion would be much higher.

LAST MONTH, the 280-year-old synagogue in Weesp became the first Jewish house of worship in Europe since the war obliged to cancel Sabbath services after the police had warned congregants of threats of violence.

In a recent letter to members of Parliament, the Jewish community stated that anti-Semitism was rampant, noting that the Jewish community is obliged to provide its own security at schools and all public functions, the costs for which have become unbearable.

Surveys among teachers in the major cities indicate that one out of five teachers have difficulties in relating to the Holocaust because of the hostile response from Muslim students. The Chairman of the Orthodox Rabbinate, Binyomin Jacobs, protested that “today there are many schools which simply stop providing lessons relating to WWII and the Holocaust due to fear of negative reactions from pupils from Muslim backgrounds”.

Jewish schoolchildren feel intimidated and the school authorities are either indifferent or unable to assist them. To avoid harassment, some children are obliged to change schools and even hide their Jewish identity.

A few weeks ago a local Jewish TV station (Joodse Omroep) broadcast scenes of anti-Semitic harassment in the streets recorded by a hidden camera which followed a rabbi accompanied by two students. This provided chilling testimony of the intimidation to which Jews are subjected.

In response, the Dutch police announced that they might use “decoy” Jews – police dressed in traditional Jewish garb – to entrap anti-Semitic hooligans. Rabbi Jacobs responded by stating that such initiatives would be futile unless accompanied by greater emphasis on education, stressing that not only Muslims were engaged in anti-Semitic agitation.

“I witness Dutch non-Muslim youngsters also shouting at me in the street” he stated.

Ironically, the major escalation of anti-Semitism in Amsterdam took place between 2001-2010, when Marius Job Cohen, a Jew, was mayor. Cohen’s grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust but he frequently expresses indifference to his Jewish origins. Now as leader of the Dutch Labor party he participates in attacks demonizing Israel as exemplified in the party’s platform in the recent elections.

Such behavior towards Israel is particularly shameful coming from the country whose UN peacekeeping force in 1995 in Srebrenica stood by while 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were massacred by the Serbs (there are reports that some even took part in seperating the women from the men). The Dutch peacekeepers then fled to Zagreb, where they held a beer and music fest in the presence of the crown Prince and the prime minister.

HOWEVER, THERE is now a potential for positive change on the political horizon. At the recent polls, contrary to expectations, the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) headed by Geert Wilders surged from its pre election nine seats to winning 24 out of the 150 seat Dutch parliament.

Nicknamed Mozart because of his blond hair and voted politician of the year in 2007, Wilders displays contempt for the hypocritical political correctness displayed toward Islam that has enveloped Europe. He resolutely calls for tough action against intimidation and threats from Islamic fundamentalists.

He describes Muslim migrants as a “Trojan Horse” and warns of the danger of Europe being transformed into Eurabia and European civilization coming to an end.

Wilders is an outspoken friend of the Jewish people and considers Israel to be “the West’s first line of defense”. He lived in Israel for two years and has visited the Jewish state more than 40 times.

Contrary to defamatory allegations directed against him, Wilders abhors fascism and publicly condemned politicians like France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen, the late Haider and other racists with whom he swears he would never associate.

His controversial call for the banning of the Koran (which he compares to Mein Kampf and claims incites to violence) and the production of a film depicting the brutality and denial of human rights prevailing in Muslim countries led to his being charged with incitement and hatred. The court proceedings became transformed into a political arena when the judge refused to hear the majority of witnesses Wilders presented.

Should Wilders be convicted of promoting hate speech it will have problematic implications in a country like Holland where calls for “death to the Jews” are regular occurrences and rarely prosecuted.

The trial outcome will also be a curtain raiser on what to expect from other European countries in the years ahead.

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About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

10 Replies to “Anti-Semitism soars in Holland”

  1. These people are nuts the Muslims are ruining their country and society, so they take it out on the few remaining Jews in the Netherlands.

  2. ”Hamas, Hamas: Jews gassed” is actually a soccer slogan, the Amsterdam team Ajax is nicknamed ”the Jews” because in the early 20th century Amsterdam had a big Jewish population. If you hear this slogan shouted it is usually not antisemetic.

  3. The Dutch are not anti-semetic at all .. its our political correct elite that wants nothing more then appease islam and thus demonize anyone that loves his own country and Israel. We are sick of it to the bone as people and you have seen that in the elections, but still the political correct haters try to wage an all out war. All out media in anti jewish and anti dutch propaganda all geared to promoting the multicul environment of which muslims mostly take part.

    Its too sick for words but believe me the Dutch are not at all anti-semetic … like me im white, blue eyed and have nothing to pull me towards Jews and Israel, but still i fiercly want to scream out to protect them because i also see how our elite and islam are destroying us and the world.

    There will be without a shadow of a doubt a big revolution that will get these anti semites and islam lovers out of office and perhaps even judged for treason but thats a dream for now.

    That slogan btw has nothing in soccer one comment said is indeed anti semetic but not used as such. I mean its soccer hooligans bashing each other thats why they do that.

  4. “Football stadiums have become notorious arenas for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic chants”.
    This is crap. Really, this has nothing to do with Jews or their religion. The supporters of the most succesfull footbalclub in the Netherlands (Ajax, sadly enough) are calling themselves “Jews”. That’s why you will hear certain “anti-jews” chants and remarks. It has absolutely nothing to do with ‘real’ jewish people or the jewish religion.
    The explosive rise in anti-semitism cab be for 95% counted on behalf of (Maroccan) muslims and the 5% remainder to people connected to the various socialistic organizations in the Netherlands.

  5. The people on this blog that call the Netherlands anti-semetic are absolute boneheads. Furthermore some claim that anti-semitism is somehow related to socialistic organizations. People, people, you know so little of the rest of the world. A lot , and I mean a lot of dutch Jews are member of the PvdA, one of the bigger socialistic parties in the Netherlands, which Party-leader is Job Cohen, a Jew (the party I voted for in the last election). And it is Job Cohen who is frontrunner for the tolerance towards Muslimpeople in the Netherlands. Although the Netherlands is not as tolerant as it once was, mainly towards Muslim immigrants (ever since 9/11) , it is still way more tolerant than 99 % of countries in the world. And the claim that some Dutch were supportive of German rule during WWII is no proof of intolerance as there are traitors in any war.

  6. What is happening is that a more critical view towards the way Israel’s politics is being translated as anti-semitism. In Holland there is a group of Dutch Jews who are really critical of Israels politics. These are people in business, journalist, TV-producers, etc. As these people are of Semite-origin themselves, their view can’t be called Anti-Semetic.

  7. Rudi,

    The murder-of-and-cannabalism-of-Christian-European-children-libel (the “Blood Libel”) that was propagated against Jewish people by Christian European people for several centuries, was invented by, and most influentially propagated by, an ethnically Jewish convert to Christianity named Theobald of Cambridge in England in the 1100’s.

    Karl Marx, who invented an ideology which is structurally similar to traditional Christian European anti-Jewish bigotry (“There is a small group of evil people who are responsible for the suffering of the majority of people in the world who are the noble people of the world”) and which was an ideology that was explicitly anti-Jewish racist, was ethnically Jewish.

    Rudi, everything that you most likely believe about the situation that Israel is in are lies. The fact that Jewish people are propagators of those lies do not make those lies true, and do not make the bigotry involved in the propagation and belief in those lies not bigoted.

    If a Dutch (or Jewish) person said that Dutch (or Jewish) people were non-human evil beings who were descended from lizards and intended to enslave humanity, just because that person was Dutch (or Jewish) would not mean that what that person said was true.

    Almost all Jewish people experience, to varying degrees, as a psychological coping mechanism, a deep profound form of Stockholm Syndrome (They think to themselves “It’s our fault (we accept what our accusers say) – so hope is not lost – we have the power to make our situation better – if we change, we have the ability to make our accusers and attackers stop hating us and stop attacking us”). Jewish people who experience this Stockholm Syndrome severely (because of lack of moral integrity – mainly exceeding egocentrism) (thinking to themselves “It’s THOSE Jewish people fault (that the accusers and attackers of Jewish people hate me)”) – are fervent propagators of, and the most influential propagators of, lies that vilify Jewish people, which currently, are lies that vilify the country of the Jewish people, Israel.

  8. Correction:

    I wrote,

    “The fact that Jewish people are propagators of those lies do not make those lies true, and do not make the bigotry involved in the propagation and belief in those lies not bigoted.”

    which should be,

    “The fact that Jewish people are propagators of those lies does not make those lies true, and does not make the bigotry involved in the propagation of, and belief in, those lies not bigoted.”

  9. Rudi,

    If you do believe the lies – the obscene perverse false narrative about the situation (the situation that Israel is in) – that is huge dominant narrative about the situation that is being propagated in Western countries, I do not blame you. The lies are huge and overwhelming. It is an ocean and tsunami of lies. The lies were invented by racist anti-Jewish British officials (such Jack Philby who in 1920 was assigned as the most influential manager of the British Mandate of Palestine (which included what is now Jordan, and included what is now Israel, and included what is now called “The West Bank”, and included what is now called “The Gaza Strip”), and who converted to Islam in 1930, and who, with laundered Arab petroleum-revenue, funded the Nazi regime of Germany in the 1930’s) and by Muslim Arab Nazi-allied leaders and, most especially by the Muslim Arab Nazi official Amin al-Husseini, who resided in Germany from 1941 to 1945, and who, with his colleague Adolf Eichmann, was the co-architect of the genocide against the Jewish people in Europe by the members of the Nazi regime and their supporters and allies, and who was the founder of what came to be called the “Palestinian” movement – and who was the mentor of, and an uncle of, Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat, and the lies were further developed by Arab Nationalist Muslim Arab leaders (such as Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt) and members of the Soviet KGB (whose regime – the Soviet regime of Russia – supported, financed, and armed – the Arab Nationalist (former Arab Nazi) regimes of Muslim Arab states in the Middle East), and are lies that are being propagated by, and that have been for several decades, been propagated – out of bigotry, and out of amoral greed for the petroleum of the regimes of Muslim countries in the Middle East, and out of having been indoctrinated by Soviet anti-Israel propaganda in the 1960’s and 1970’s and 1980’s, and out of being indoctrinated in the Saudi-funded, Saudi-controlled, Middle-East departments and Saudi-financed Foreign Policy and Political Science departments of the colleges and universities in Western countries, and out of fear of the modern Islamic-Supremacist political movement – by, Western journalists, intellectuals, academics, and politicians.

  10. Correction:

    “…Saudi-funded, Saudi-controlled, Middle-East departments…”

    should be,

    “…Saudi-funded, Saudi-controlled, Middle-East Studies departments…”