Despite threats and a ban, thousands of Christians and Jews celebrate Israel in Amsterdam
Some 2,000 people attend Thursday night rally outside city hall after mayor nixes planned Dam Square demonstration, saying she’s unable to guarantee safety of attendees
AMSTERDAM — Some 2,000 pro-Israel protesters gathered outside Amsterdam’s city hall on Thursday night after Mayor Femke Halsema nixed the originally planned rally in the capital’s Dam Square, reportedly concerned that the site could not be properly secured.
The central Dam Square is where pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel demonstrations have taken place with greater frequency over the last few weeks following the violent attacks on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters on November 7 — though with far fewer attendees than Thursday evening’s pro-Israel crowd.
“This is how ‘never again’ becomes ‘yet again,’ by taking rights away from Jews bit by bit,” said Jewish former politician Rob Oudkerk. “‘Yet again’ is Mayor Halsema, who bans us from Dam Square.”
Several speakers bitterly complained of what they called Halsema’s unwillingness to protect Jews in the heart of the city.
The city’s “security triangle” — consisting of the mayor, the local chief of police and Amsterdam’s chief public prosecutor — had banned the gathering, saying that the safety of the pro-Israel protesters could not be guaranteed after antisemitic riots earlier this month.
Israeli officials said 10 people were injured in the November 7 violence, perpetrated by Arab and Muslim gangs against visiting and local fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer club after a match against Amsterdam’s Ajax. Hundreds more Israelis huddled in their hotels for hours, fearing they could be attacked. Many said that Dutch security forces were nowhere to be found as the Israeli tourists were ambushed by gangs of masked assailants who shouted pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel slogans while they hunted, beat and harassed them.
Led by Christians For Israel, some 20 Protestant and Jewish organizations at first rejected the security triangle’s decision to prohibit pro-Israel demonstrators from gathering at Dam Square, but finally agreed on the alternative location.
Solidarity with Israel and Dutch Jews was shown in a celebratory fashion by the protesters next to the “Stopera” (Amsterdam’s city hall doubles as an opera house), a stone’s throw away from a large statue of Baruch Spinoza, Holland’s most influential philosopher.
Small groups of counter-protesters — not more than a few dozen — were kept away from the largely Christian crowd that had come to the Dutch capital mainly from small and mid-sized towns in what is known as Holland’s Bible belt. There they were joined by Jewish citizens from Amsterdam and other sympathizers.
“My savior [Jesus Christ] was a Jew, the apostles were Jews, the Bible is a Jewish book. Antisemitism and anti-Zionism are deeply anti-Christian,” said Protestant minister Klaas-Jelle Kaptein, from the island fishing town of Urk.
In a speech, Yanki Jacobs, a local Chabad rabbi, asked if there was a future for Dutch Jews in light of recent events. “My answer is, if there is a future for the Netherlands, there is a future for Jews in the Netherlands,” he said. “If Dutch society has enough strength to fight hatred, my answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ But we need people who speak out.”
Addressing the crowd directly, Jacobs said, “That is what you are doing and I am grateful to you.”
The crowd was a sea of Israeli flags and signs saying “Never again.” One banner read “Stop Jew hunters,” referring to the phrase “Jew hunt” used in social media groups by some perpetrators of the November 7 attacks here.
A group from Urk carried a banner saying, “Benjamin Netanyahu, welcome on Urk,” mocking a statement by Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Casper Veldkamp in which he announced that the Netherlands would comply with the recently issued ICC warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and arrest him were he to land on Dutch soil.
Veldkamp, a former ambassador in Tel Aviv, was then harshly criticized when a day later he received and shook hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
Last week, a planned trip to Israel by Veldkamp was canceled in “mutual agreement” with the Israeli government, according to the Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry in The Hague. But Jerusalem maintains that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar unilaterally canceled the trip after Veldkamp’s endorsement of the ICC warrant.
Geert Wilders, leader of the largest coalition party, the far-right Party for Freedom, said Veldkamp’s meeting with Araghchi while “Netanyahu is taboo” was “hypocritical.”
Notably, at Thursday evening’s protest against antisemitism, many Persian flags were flown by opponents of the Islamist regime in Tehran who expressed their solidarity with Israel.
The most emotional speech of the night came from Holocaust survivor Deborah Maarsen-Laufer. Born in February 1942, she was the youngest survivor of the Ravensbrück Nazi concentration camp.
“Borrie,” as Maarsen is affectionately known in the Dutch Jewish community, referred to the three minutes of speaking time the organizers had given her.
“A lot can happen in three minutes. Three minutes were enough for the Nazis to take my parents, my sisters and me from our house 80 years ago. On October 7, three minutes were enough to turn a place where young people danced into hell. And three minutes were also enough for youths on scooters to hunt for Jews in our Mokum,” she said, using the traditional nickname for Amsterdam that has roots in the Hebrew word “makom,” meaning place.
“In these historic antisemitic times in which part of the people assume a passive-aggressive attitude [to Jews] or looks away, it is priceless that another part refuses to do so and shows its unreserved affection,” Lenny Kuhr, the Dutch Jewish winner of the 1969 Eurovision contest, told The Times of Israel.
Kuhr has become a more and more vocal defender of Israel after a theater in the city of Leiden banned her from performing in March, claiming that “people like her openly support genocide.” The performer, whose two daughters live in Israel with their families, sang part of her recently written song “Light” for the crowd.
A group of some 15 keffiyeh-wearing and mostly masked counter-protesters yelled “Zionism down” from the other side of the River Amstel that gives the Dutch capital its name, trying to reach the protest by claiming to police officers that they were part of it “as vehement opponents of antisemitism.”
Police, some on horseback, quickly surrounded and later dispersed the group, as they did with other small anti-Israel groups and individuals at the beginning of the demonstration. Halsema had banned a larger counter-protest after far left and Muslim youths attacked pro-Israeli Christians at a commemoration of the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel.
Groups of Muslim youths were not seen at the site of the protest, however, and confrontations between far-left counter-protesters and police remained mostly nonviolent. The pro-Israel crowd was largely well-behaved, and hundreds thanked policemen as they left for the busses that waited in Amsterdam’s outskirts to take them back to their towns.
As two men wearing Israeli flags left the square in front of the Stopera, one told The Times of Israel he was a refugee from Aleppo, Syria. David, born Dawud, said he converted to Christianity after arriving in the Netherlands in 2014.
“I am here to support Jewish people, they are the nation of God,” David said, adding one message for the citizens of Israel’s neighbor states: “Love, not hate!”
