WorthyNews: Netherlands Pro-Israel Rally Amid Fears Of Pro-Palestine Protests In Train Stations (Worthy News Focus)

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By Worthy News’ Stefan J. Bos with Johan Th. Bos reporting from the Netherlands

AMSTELVEEN, NETHERLANDS (Worthy News) – Hundreds of people gathered in a critical suburb of the capital Amsterdam on Sunday to express support for Israel ahead of anti-Israel protests at more than a dozen train stations across the Netherlands, including those used to transport Jews to Nazi death camps in World War Two.

Speaking at the “Together for Israel” rally in the heart of Amstelveen, former politician Rob Oudkerk said that “we should be ashamed of mayors who did not want to ban these actions” on Monday, the day that Israel remembers the October 7 attacks.

Caroline van der Plas, leader of the right-wing Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) party, echoed those words, stressing that “there was a horrible massacre of people who were singled out, just because they were Jewish.” Van der Plas called on people who wanted to demonstrate against Israel in pro-Palestinian rallies on Monday to stay home. “Demonstration is a great right in the Netherlands, but one day a year, you can stay home. Stay home now!” she said.

On what has been dubbed “Black Sabbath” in Israel, fighters of Hamas killed some 1,200 people, including babies and women they had raped while abducting 251 persons. More than half of those kidnapped have returned home, but at least some 97 of those hostages are believed to remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces.

The grandfather of Dutch-Israeli Ofir Engel, who Hamas took hostage on October 7, attended the event, saying: “We will fight until all hostages return home.”

After a speech by the granddaughter of a hostage, the slogan “Bring them home” reverberated throughout the area of Stadshart or “City Square.” Amstelveen, which hosts a vibrant Jewish community, also raised the Israeli flag on its municipality building after the October 7 attacks.

Member of Parliament for the centrist Christian Union (CU) party Don Ceder tried to encourage the 30,000-strong Jewish community in the Netherlands. “We will never succumb to intimidation,” he pledged.

ANTI-SEMITISM CONCERN

However, the Dutch National Coordinator for Combating Anti-Semitism (NCAB) announced over the weekend that the number of reports of anti-Semitism online had increased by almost half since October 7 last year. “Chilling statistics,” said Ceder. “Let us stand up for the Jewish community in the Netherlands.”

Legislator Ulysse Ellian of the conservative-liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) suggested it was crucial to show that the Jewish community thrives despite hardships. “Show that Israel is alive.”

The meeting, organized by the Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), concluded with a prayer. Since Sunday afternoon, a replica of an underground tunnel in Gaza has been visible on the square.

Hours ahead of the manifestation, Dutch Green-leftist Mayor Femke Halsema of Amsterdam clashed with VVD party leader Dilan Yeşilgöz, who called the planned pro-Palestinian rallies at train stations antisemitic. “It is what it is, let’s be honest,” she told Dutch television.

They are legitimizing “the terrorist group Hamas intentionally or unintentionally” by rallying on October 7, stressed Yeşilgöz, a former justice minister. The pro-Palestinian protesters claim Israel “killed more than 40,000 Palestinians” in its war in Gaza triggered by the Hamas attacks, citing figures from the Hamas-run health ministry that have been complex to verify.

But Yeşilgöz told the demonstrators: “You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror. How can you talk about the Palestinian cause at this moment? While also, intentionally or unintentionally, almost legitimizing or justifying Hamas in this way. You have to think about your actions.”

However, Mayor Halsema said the VVD party leader is “criminalizing pro-Palestinian demonstrators” and thus “setting the stage for conflict on Monday evening.”

‘ANTI-ISRAEL BEHAVIOR’

She told Dutch television, “These are demonstrations against the Israeli government and the behavior of the Israeli government in Gaza and other places. That is a legitimate and legally valid right to demonstrate.”

Yet local VVD party members disagreed and urged Dutch Railways (NS) CEO Wouter Koolmees to show that the NS “now” no longer facilitates antisemitism.

They refer to the role that the NS played in the deportation of at least tens of thousands of Jews during the Second World War.

The NS said in a reaction that it finds “intolerance, anti-Semitism, and all other forms of discrimination” unacceptable. However, the NS declined to commit itself to halting the planned protests at its stations.

The railway company said it is in contact with mayors in municipalities where demonstrations occur and urges them to “monitor very closely and intervene where necessary.”

However, Jewish representatives, including survivors of the Holocaust, or Shoah, have told Worthy News they are concerned that long-lingering antisemitism is reemerging in the Netherlands.

Some 75 percent of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands before the Holocaust were murdered by German Nazis and their local collaborators, according to official data.

HOLOCAUST APOLOGY

In 2020, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who recently became the secretary-general of the NATO military alliance, apologized on behalf of his country’s government for its failure to protect Jews during World War Two.

Rutte recalled that while some Dutch officials resisted during the Nazi occupation, too many simply did as they were told. It was the first such apology by a Dutch prime minister.

About 102,000 of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, or Shoah, came from the Netherlands

“With the last remaining survivors among us, I apologize on behalf of the government for the actions of the government at the time,” Rutte said on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

“I do so, realizing that no word can describe something as enormous and awful as the Holocaust.”

His words could not prevent the massacres on October 7, seen as the worst atrocity against Jews since the mass killing of them in the 1940s.

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