Amsterdam: “The Hunt for Jews” Alarms the Authorities

An emergency meeting of the Amsterdam city council will be held on Tuesday, following incidents leading to the cancellation of the match between Ajax and Israeli club Maccabi. Dilan Yesilgöz, of the center-right VVD party, believes that the mayor of Amsterdam will have to “explain what went wrong” on the night of Thursday to Friday. During an intervention on Radio “Met het Oog op Morgen”, Yesilgöz denounced a worrying pattern where certain groups now feel emboldened enough to “go hunting for Jews”.

She notably recalled the demonstrations that occurred last May during the inauguration of the Shoah Museum, where the presence of Israeli President Herzog caused unrest.

“The city council places too much emphasis on the right to protest, to the detriment of the right of Dutch Jews, foreigners or Israeli football fans to feel safe in our city,” the councilor said, advocating harsher sanctions and stricter supervision of demonstrations.

For her part, Imane Nadif, from the green party GroenLinks, questions the circulation of information within the “Amsterdam triangle” (mayor, police and prosecutor). “I am surprised that Israel indicated that it had indications of threats and that the national government was informed of them, while the local triangle was not aware of them,” she stressed. This controversy comes in a context of growing tensions around demonstrations linked to the conflict in the Middle East in the Dutch capital.