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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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New Poll: Majority of NYC Voters ‘Less Likely’ to Support Mamdani Over His Refusal to Condemn ‘Globalize the Intifada’

Zohran Mamdani. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
In a warning sign for the campaign of Democratic nominee for mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani, a majority of city voters in a new poll say the candidate’s hardline anti-Israel stance makes them less likely to vote for him.
In the survey of likely city voters conducted by American Pulse, 52.5 percent said Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” coupled with his backing of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement made them less likely to vote for him in November. Just 31% of city voters polled were more likely to support him because of these positions.
At the same time, a significant share of young New York City voters support Mamdani’s anti-Israel positioning, a striking sign of shifting generational views on Israel and the Palestinian cause.
Nearly half of voters aged 18 to 44 (46 percent) said the State Assembly member’s backing for BDS and “refusal to condemn the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’” made them more likely to support him.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist from Queens, has been under fire for defending “globalize the intifada,” a slogan many Jewish groups associate with incitement to violence against Israel and Jews. While critics argue it glorifies terrorism, supporters claim it’s a call for international solidarity with oppressed peoples, especially Palestinians. Mamdani has also voiced support for BDS, a movement widely condemned by mainstream Jewish organizations as antisemitic for singling out Israel.
The generational divide exposed by the poll comes amid a broader political realignment. Younger progressives across the country are increasingly critical of Israeli policies, especially in the wake of the Gaza war, and more receptive to Palestinian activism. But to many Jewish leaders, Mamdani’s rising support is alarming.
Rabbi David Wolpe, visiting scholar at Harvard University, condemned the phrase with a sarcastic analogy.
“‘Globalize the intifada’ is just a political slogan,” he said. “Like ‘The cockroaches must be exterminated’ was just a housing authority slogan in Rwanda.”
Jewish organizations have reported a surge in antisemitic incidents in New York and across the U.S. since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war last fall. The blending of anti-Zionist slogans with calls for “intifada,” historically linked to violent uprisings, has deepened fears among Jewish communities that traditional red lines are being crossed.
Whether this emerging coalition reshapes New York politics remains to be seen. However, the poll indicates that among younger voters, views that were once considered fringe are quickly moving into the mainstream.
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Report: Jews Targeted at June’s Pride Month Events

A Jewish gay pride flag. Photo: Twitter.
The research division of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) released a report on Wednesday detailing incidents of hate against Jews which took place last month during demonstrations in celebration of LGBTQ rights and identity.
Incidents reported by the group include:
- At a Pride march in Wales, the activists Cymru Queers for Palestine chose to block the path and show a sign that said “Profiting from genocide,” an attempt to link the event’s sponsors — such as Amazon — to the war in Gaza.
- A Dublin Pride march saw the participation of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which labeled Israel a “genocidal entity.”
- In Toronto at a late June Pride march, demonstrators again attacked organizers with a sign declaring, “Pride partners with genocide.”
CAM also identified a recurring narrative deployed against Israel by some far-left activists: so-called “pinkwashing,” a term which the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement calls “an Israeli government propaganda strategy that cynically exploits LGBTQIA+ rights to project a progressive image while concealing Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies oppressing Palestinians.”
The report notes that at a Washington DC Pride event in early June Medea Benjamin, cofounder of activist group Code Pink and a regular of anti-war protests, wore a pair of goofy, oversized sunglasses and a shirt in her signature pink with the phrase “you can’t pinkwash genocide.”
Other incidents CAM recorded showed the injection of anti-Israel sentiment into Pride events.
A musical group canceled a performance at an interfaith service in Brooklyn, claiming the hosting synagogue had a “public alignment with pro-Israel political positions.” In San Francisco before the yearly Trans March, a Palestine group said in its announcement of its participation, “Stop the war on Iran and the genocide of Palestine, stop the war on immigrants and attacks on trans people.”
CAM notes that this “queers for Palestine” sentiment is not new, pointing to a 2017 event wherein “organizers of the Chicago Dyke March infamously removed participants who were waving a Pride flag adorned with a Star of David on the grounds that the symbol ‘made people feel unsafe.’”
In February, the Israel Defense Forces shared with the New York Post documents it had recovered demonstrating that Hamas had tortured and executed members it suspected of homosexuality and other moral offenses in conflict with Islamist ideology.
Amit Benjamin, who is gay and a first sergeant major in the IDF, said during a visit to New York City for Pride month that “All the ‘queers for Gaza’ need to open their eyes. Hamas kills gays … kills lesbians … queers cannot exist in Gaza.”
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IAEA pulls inspectors from Iran as standoff over access drags on

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 23, 2025. REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl/File Photo
The UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday it had pulled its last remaining inspectors from Iran as a standoff over their return to the country’s nuclear facilities bombed by the United States and Israel deepens.
Israel launched its first military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in a 12-day war with the Islamic Republic three weeks ago. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors have not been able to inspect Iran’s facilities since then, even though IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said that is his top priority.
Iran’s parliament has now passed a law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA until the safety of its nuclear facilities can be guaranteed. While the IAEA says Iran has not yet formally informed it of any suspension, it is unclear when the agency’s inspectors will be able to return to Iran.
“An IAEA team of inspectors today safely departed from Iran to return to the Agency headquarters in Vienna, after staying in Tehran throughout the recent military conflict,” the IAEA said on X.
Diplomats said the number of IAEA inspectors in Iran was reduced to a handful after the June 13 start of the war. Some have also expressed concern about the inspectors’ safety since the end of the conflict, given fierce criticism of the agency by Iranian officials and Iranian media.
Iran has accused the agency of effectively paving the way for the bombings by issuing a damning report on May 31 that led to a resolution by the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said he stands by the report. He has denied it provided diplomatic cover for military action.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Thursday Iran remained committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“[Grossi] reiterated the crucial importance of the IAEA discussing with Iran modalities for resuming its indispensable monitoring and verification activities in Iran as soon as possible,” the IAEA said.
The US and Israeli military strikes either destroyed or badly damaged Iran’s three uranium enrichment sites. But it was less clear what has happened to much of Iran’s nine tonnes of enriched uranium, especially the more than 400 kg enriched to up to 60% purity, a short step from weapons grade.
That is enough, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. Iran says its aims are entirely peaceful, but Western powers say there is no civil justification for enriching to such a high level, and the IAEA says no country has done so without developing the atom bomb.
As a party to the NPT, Iran must account for its enriched uranium, which normally is closely monitored by the IAEA, the body that enforces the NPT and verifies countries’ declarations. But the bombing of Iran’s facilities has now muddied the waters.
“We cannot afford that … the inspection regime is interrupted,” Grossi told a press conference in Vienna last week.
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