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Dozens Arrested at Illegal Anti-Israel Protest in Amsterdam
Anti-Israel protesters face Dutch police during a banned demonstration in Amsterdam, Netherlands November 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Esther Verkaik
JNS.org – Police in Amsterdam on Sunday arrested several dozen people at an unauthorized anti-Israel protest rally at a square where, days earlier, Muslims assaulted Israeli soccer fans.
The arrests at Dam Square followed a temporary municipal ban on the anti-Israel demonstrations that regularly take place there. The ban followed the coordinated assault on Thursday by at least 100 Muslim men on fans of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team who were leaving a match against the local Ajax team.
Five Israelis were moderately wounded and another 20 suffered light injuries. Some 2,000 people left the Netherlands for Israel over the weekend in eight emergency flights organized by El Al, Israel’s flag carrier airline. The assaults, which Israeli President Isaac Herzog called a “pogrom,” shocked many in Israel and beyond.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted in a filmed address how the event coincided with the annual anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms that happened throughout the Third Reich on Nov. 9-10, 1938.
“Unfortunately, we have seen in recent days images that are reminiscent of that night. On the streets of Amsterdam, antisemitic perpetrators assaulted Jews, Israeli citizens, only because they are Jewish,” Netanyahu said. But, he added, “there’s a difference between that night and our times: Now we have our own state, government and army. We have the ability, will and determination to defend ourselves and also to demand others fulfill their duties.”
Netanyahu said he had called his Dutch counterpart, Dick Schoof, and demanded to bring the perpetrators to justice and protect the local Jewish community. Schoof said he was “ashamed” of the assaults of Nov. 8, Netanyahu said.
In the Netherlands, the assaults were widely seen as part of the immigration crisis that has divided locals for decades, and especially following the entry of hundreds of thousands of people to that country and elsewhere in Europe after 2011. In that year, the Syrian civil war erupted, triggering the arrival of millions from the Middle East to Europe, many at the invitation of the German government.
Geert Wilders, the head of Netherlands largest party and senior coalition partner, called to deport the perpetrators, lamenting on X that “we have become the Gaza of Europe.”
Israeli journalists covering the aftermath of the assaults were intimidated by locals over the weekend, they said. Kan journalists Michal Reshef and Micah Rizov said that youths had followed them around in Amsterdam after they had filmed a segment there. The youths shouted “Free Palestine” until police pushed them away, they said.
Yossi Eli, a reporter for Channel 13, wrote on X that dozens of police officers escorted him and a cameraman to film in a heavily Muslim neighborhood of Amsterdam, where locals took photos of him and shouted insults. Police advised Eli to move to a hotel outside Amsterdam for his safety after the visit, he wrote, fearing the photos that Muslims had taken of him would be shared online with the intent of tracking him down and assaulting him.
On Sunday, Bart Schut, the deputy editor-in-chief of the NIW Dutch Jewish weekly, documented how shopkeepers in stores on the Nieuwndijk shopping street near Dam Square were holding up cell phones displaying the PLO flag in solidarity with the participants of the illegal protest, after some them moved to that street.
The assaults of Thursday night followed smaller altercations involving Maccabi fans, who reportedly damaged a taxi cab, stole a PLO flag hanging from a building façade and chanted at a metro station about “letting the IDF win and f***k the Arabs.”
The assaults were the largest-scale antisemitic assault in the Netherlands since the Holocaust. Video filmed by perpetrators showed scenes of public humiliation, including of an Israeli who was forced to his knees and made to say “Free Palestine” before being beaten up. At least one Israeli jumped into a canal to escape his attackers. At least one suspected car ramming was reported.
Law enforcement agents apprehended 62 people ahead of the assaults, Amsterdam Police chief Peter Holla said on Friday.
But Wilders, the head of the Party for Freedom, revealed on Saturday that “Amsterdam Police just confirmed that NO ONE has been arrested during the Islamic Jew-hunt in Amsterdam Thursday night. All arrests have been made before and during the soccer match and NOT during the pogrom.”
Prime Minister Dick Schoof said in a statement Saturday that a “thorough investigation” will be carried out about how the event was allowed to happen and to “bring the perpetrators to justice.”
The Municipality of Amsterdam is carrying out its own independent investigation, Mayor Femke Halsema said at a press conference on Friday.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander in a statement on Friday wrote: “We must not look away from antisemitic behavior on our streets. History has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse, with horrific consequences. Jewish people must feel safe in the Netherlands, everywhere and at all times. We embrace them all and hold them close.”
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US Immigration Judge Rules Palestinian Columbia Student Khalil Can Be Deported
Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of media about the Revolt for Rafah encampment at Columbia University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, in New York City, US, June 1, 2024. Photo: Jeenah Moon via Reuters Connect
A US immigration judge ruled on Friday that Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported, allowing President Donald Trump’s administration to proceed with its effort to remove the Columbia University student from the United States a month after his arrest in New York City.
The ruling by Judge Jamee Comans of the LaSalle Immigration Court in Louisiana was not a final determination of Khalil’s fate. But it represented a significant victory for the Republican president in his efforts to deport foreign pro-Palestinian students who are in the United States legally and, like Khalil, have not been charged with any crime.
Citing the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, Trump-appointed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined last month that Khalil could harm American foreign policy interests and should be deported for his “otherwise lawful” speech and activism.
Comans said that she did not have the authority to overrule a secretary of state. The judge denied a motion by Khalil’s lawyers to subpoena Rubio and question him about the “reasonable grounds” he had for his determination under the 1952 law.
The judge’s decision came after a combative 90-minute hearing held in a court located inside a jail complex for immigrants surrounded by double-fenced razor wire run by private government contractors in rural Louisiana.
Khalil, a prominent figure in the anti-Israel student protest movement that has roiled Columbia’s New York City campus, was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, holds Algerian citizenship and became a US lawful permanent resident last year. Khalil’s wife is a US citizen.
For now, Khalil remains in the Louisiana jail where federal authorities transferred him after his March 8 arrest at his Columbia University apartment building some 1,200 miles (1,930 km) away. Comans gave Khalil’s lawyers until April 23 to apply for relief before she considers whether to issue a deportation order. An immigration judge can rule that a migrant cannot be deported because of possible persecution in a home country, among other limited grounds.
In a separate case in New Jersey, US District Judge Michael Farbiarz has blocked deportation while he considers Khalil’s claim that his arrest was made in violation of the US Constitution’s First Amendment protections for freedom of speech.
KHALIL ADDRESSES THE JUDGE
As Comans adjourned, Khalil leaned forward, asking to address the court. Comans hesitated, then agreed.
Khalil quoted her remarks at his hearing on Tuesday that nothing was more important to the court than “due process rights and fundamental fairness.”
“Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process,” Khalil said. “This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, a thousand miles away from my family.”
The judge said her ruling turned on an undated, two-page letter signed by Rubio and submitted to the court and to Khalil’s counsel.
Khalil’s lawyers, appearing via a video link, complained they were given less than 48 hours to review Rubio’s letter and evidence submitted by the Trump administration to Comans this week. Marc Van Der Hout, Khalil’s lead immigration attorney, repeatedly asked for the hearing to be delayed. Comans reprimanded him for what the judge said was straying from the hearing’s purpose, twice saying he had “an agenda.”
Comans said that the 1952 immigration law gave the secretary of state “unilateral judgment” to make his determination about Khalil.
Khalil should be removed, Rubio wrote, for his role in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”
Rubio’s letter did not accuse Khalil of breaking any laws, but said the State Department can revoke the legal status of immigrants who could harm US foreign policy interests even when their beliefs, associations or statements are “otherwise lawful.”
After Comans ended the hearing, several of Khalil’s supporters wept as they left the courtroom. Khalil stood and smiled at them, making a heart shape with his hands.
Khalil has said criticism of the US government’s support of Israel is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism. His lawyers told the court they were submitting into evidence Khalil’s interviews last year with CNN and other news outlets in which he denounces antisemitism and other prejudice.
His lawyers have said the Trump administration was targeting him for protected speech including the right to criticize American foreign policy.
“Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent,” Van Der Hout said in a statement after the hearing.
The American immigration court system is run and its judges are appointed by the US Justice Department, separate from the government’s judicial branch.
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Hamas Releases Video of Israeli-American Hostage Held in Gaza
FILE PHOTO: Yael, Adi and Mika Alexander, the family of Edan Alexander, the American-Israeli and Israel Defense Forces soldier taken hostage during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, pose for a photograph during an interview with Reuters at the Alexander’s home in Tenafly, New Jersey, U.S., December 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stephani Spindel/File Photo
Hamas on Saturday released a video purportedly of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander, who has been held in Gaza since he was captured by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023.
In the undated video, the man who introduces himself as Edan Alexander states he has been held in Gaza for 551 days. The man questions why he is still being held and pleads for his release.
Alexander is a soldier serving in the Israeli military.
The edited video was released as Jews began to mark Passover, a weeklong holiday that celebrates freedom. Alexander’s family released a statement acknowledging the video that said the holiday would not be one of freedom as long as Edan and the 58 other hostages in Gaza remained in captivity.
Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda that is designed to put pressure on the government. The war is in its eighteenth month.
Hamas released 38 hostages under a ceasefire that began on January 19. In March, Israel’s military resumed its ground and aerial campaign on Gaza, abandoning the ceasefire after Hamas rejected proposals to extend the truce without ending the war.
Israeli officials say that campaign will continue until the remaining 59 hostages are freed and Gaza is demilitarized. Hamas insists it will free hostages only as part of a deal to end the war and has rejected demands to lay down its arms.
The US, Qatar and Egypt are mediating between Hamas and Israel.
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Some Progress in Hostage Talks But Major Issues Remain, Source tells i24NEWS
Demonstrators hold signs and pictures of hostages, as relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas protest demanding the release of all hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Itai Ron
i24 News – A source familiar with the ongoing negotiations for a hostage deal confirmed to i24NEWS on Friday that some progress has been made in talks, currently taking place with Egypt, including the exchange of draft proposals. However, it remains unclear whether Hamas will ultimately accept the emerging framework. According to the source, discussions are presently focused on reaching a cohesive outline with Cairo.
A delegation of senior Hamas officials is expected to arrive in Cairo tomorrow. While there is still no finalized draft, even Arab sources acknowledge revisions to Egypt’s original proposal, reportedly including a degree of flexibility in the number of hostages Hamas is willing to release.
The source noted that Hamas’ latest proposal to release five living hostages is unacceptable to Israel, which continues to adhere to the “Witkoff framework.” At the core of this framework is the release of a significant number of hostages, alongside a prolonged ceasefire period—Israel insists on 40 days, while Hamas is demanding more. The plan avoids intermittent pauses or distractions, aiming instead for uninterrupted discussions on post-war arrangements.
As previously reported, Israel is also demanding comprehensive medical and nutritional reports on all living hostages as an early condition of the deal.
“For now,” the source told i24NEWS, “Hamas is still putting up obstacles. We are not at the point of a done deal.” Israeli officials emphasize that sustained military and logistical pressure on Hamas is yielding results, pointing to Hamas’ shift from offering one hostage to five in its most recent agreement.
Negotiators also assert that Israel’s demands are fully backed by the United States. Ultimately, Israeli officials are adamant: no negotiations on the “day after” will take place until the hostage issue is resolved—a message directed not only at Hamas, but also at mediators.
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