Dutch man jailed for anti-Semitic T-shirts

A court in The Hague sentenced a man to two years in jail for stocking T-shirts featuring anti-Semitic slogans.

The appeals court in The Hague ruled Tuesday that the T-shirts, with a slogan that read “Destroy Zionism” and the image of a gun pointing at a hasidic Jew, were an insult to the Jewish community and an incitement to hatred and discrimination.

The man, 37, also had neo-Nazi T-shirts in his possession. According to Dutchnews.nl, the man had two other T-shirts, one bearing the slogan “Combat 18” and the other with “Whatever it takes,” but the man was cleared of charges related to those articles.

Combat 18 refers to a minor British neo-Nazi group. The court’s website explained that the digits 1 and 8 refer to the first and eighth letters of the alphabet, A and H, which stand for Adolf Hitler. The man denied he knew the meaning of the term, and the court said it could not prove he knew its implication.

The more than 40 T-shirts were seized during a raid of the man’s home in connection with a drunken attack on another man. According to the court, the man assaulted an Antillean man, struck him on the head with a bottle, then kicked him repeatedly in the head and body.