Man holding Palestinian flag smashes windows of Amsterdam kosher restaurant

Police are investigating an incident in which the windows of a kosher restaurant  in a heavily Jewish part of Amsterdam were smashed by a man wearing a Palestinian flag.

The incident at HaCarmel restaurant occurred early Thursday morning, hours after US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The AT5 television station showed a video of the incident, in which a man holding a Palestinian flag and wearing a Palestinian keffiyah on his head smashes the window and kicks down the restaurant’s doors as passersby and two police officers look on. The officers wait until he breaks into the restaurant. They pause as he returns to the street from the restaurant’s interior holding an Israeli flag that he took from there. He throws it at their feet. They then overpower the man and arrest him.

Herman Loonstein, who heads Federative Jewish Netherlands, says the incident at HaCarmel happened when no patrons were inside the restaurant and ended without injury. “But it is nonetheless an attack, a terrorist attack, carried out by a man whose behavior was that of a terrorist,” he tells JTA.

— JTA