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Protesters Taunt Amsterdam Cops With Pogrom Slogan

Anti-Israel protesters face Dutch police during a banned demonstration in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Esther Verkaik

JNS.org — Dozens of people chanted “Say ‘Free Palestine,’ then we go” at police officers at an illegal rally in Amsterdam on Wednesday night.

The phrase heard at the protest, where many participants had a Middle Eastern appearance, echoes those an assailant was filmed telling an Israeli who had jumped into a canal in the city to avoid a beating on Nov. 7. In the video, the swimming man says “Free Palestine” almost immediately after being prompted, drawing laughter from his attackers watching him from the embankment.

That incident was part of a series of preplanned assaults, which many Dutch Jews and others consider a pogrom, by at least 100 Muslim men against Israeli soccer supporters returning from a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local Ajax team.

The chants, which were widely interpreted as a celebration of the violence exercised against Israelis on Nov. 7, were heard during the second anti-Israel gathering on Wednesday night at Dam Square, a central location that features a large monument for the victims of World War II.

Also on Wednesday night, demonstrators clashed with police at an illegal protest in Paris against a pro-Israel benefit held by local Jews.

Earlier this week, Belgian police arrested suspects whom detectives said were inspired by Amsterdam rioters to attack Jews in Antwerp.

These and other events are causing concern across Europe about a new security reality for Israelis, Jews, and law enforcement agents. The Amsterdam assaults showed the ability of local groups of Muslim rioters to use instant messaging to mobilize quickly and coordinate concentrated attacks on moving targets that they pursued in real-time.

“The nature of this event is a new development,” Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, told JNS Wednesday about the assaults in Amsterdam.

Chikli said that “several groups pursuing Jews in city centers” was something “we have not encountered before.”

His ministry’s situation room had monitored online preparations for the assaults. The information gathered was transmitted to Israeli security authorities and from there on to local law enforcement in Amsterdam, “who clearly dropped the ball,” Chikli said.

During the first gathering on Amsterdam’s Dam Square on Wednesday night, police provided transportation services to 265 people who had gathered there in violation of the municipality’s temporary blanket ban on demonstrations, the De Telegraaf daily reported. Police vans dropped off the protesters at least one location in the city’s west where the municipality decided to make an exception to the ban.

But many protesters returned to Dam Square, according to the paper. When police told them to leave, they chanted, “Say ‘Free Palestine,’ then we go.”

The handling of Wednesday’s protests in Amsterdam gave fresh ammunition to critics who accused the municipality of laxness — and who had already lambasted city authorities for not preventing the violence on Nov. 7.

“We have an emergency situation in the city, and yet another demonstration is being allowed. It completely undermines the sovereignty and credibility of the city government,” Cas van Berkel, a member of the Amsterdam City Council for the JA21 party, told De Telegraaf.

Some of the demonstrators at Dam Square shouted at police: “Whose streets? Our streets.”

When police attempted to arrest some protesters, they ran away, some of them shoving the officers, according to Bart Schut, the deputy editor-in-chief of the Dutch-Jewish weekly NIW.

“This is how a city looks when the mayor has no control of it,” he wrote on X, adding a hashtag calling for the resignation of Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema. At around midnight, Dam Square was empty, the AT5 television channel reported. It was not immediately clear how many people, if any, were arrested on Wednesday.

In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Wednesday about the assaults on Israelis by Muslims in Amsterdam, left-wing lawmakers accused the victims of instigating the violence and blamed the right-wing, pro-Israel politician Geert Wilders for stoking racial tensions.

The rhetoric on display in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of parliament, was part of an emerging narrative in the aftermath of the events of Nov. 7.

The incidents, which Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Wilders have called a pogrom, initially prompted blanket condemnations and expressions of shame. Some of those expressions, including by Dutch King Willem-Alexander, referenced the near annihilation of Dutch Jewry by the Nazis and their helpers during the Holocaust.

The assaults took place on the eve of the Nov. 9-10 anniversary of the Kristallnacht Nazi pogroms that took place in the Third Reich in 1938 — a fact that many Dutch officials referenced in speaking about the attacks.

Increasingly, however, the premise that the Israelis were the victims is being debated along the party and ideological lines that divide Dutch society, which is already polarized on issues of immigration and law enforcement.

At the parliamentary debate on Wednesday, Stephan van Baarle, a lawmaker for the Denk party, which has been colloquially described as a “Muslim political party” and is often been accused of antisemitism, presented the Israeli soccer fans as the aggressors.

Facing Wilders, he asked where Wilders was when “Maccabi rioters said to women with head covers: ‘You Arabs, we will kill you?’” and said that “Maccabi hooligans went hunting for Palestinians, to search for them.” The Dutch mainstream media and authorities have not reported on any such events.

Wilders said he condemned any expressions of violence by Israeli visitors, but said “it does not compare in any way to the Jew-hunt that we witnessed by Arab, Muslim men.”

Halsema, who on Friday said there was “no excuse” for the assaults against Israelis, at a debate at the City Council of Amsterdam juxtaposed the assaults of the Israelis with actions attributed to them.

“Israeli supporters, guests in our city, were searched, chased and attacked, accompanied by antisemitic calls on social media and on the streets. There were also Amsterdam residents who were attacked by Maccabi hooligans. Hooligans who used racist and hate speech in our city, against residents,” she said.

Prominent Dutch Jews, including attorney Herman Loonstein and Rabbi Meir Villegas Henriquez, accused the mayor of victim blaming. Villegas Henriquez has called on Dutch Jews to make aliyah following the assaults.

Footage from Nov. 7 shows dozens of men shouting “Let the IDF win” and “F—k the Arabs” in Hebrew as they enter a metro station after sunset. Another video shows Israelis stealing a PLO flag from a facade. A third shows Israeli men running in the city’s center, some of them holding sticks. It was not clear whether that video was filmed after or before the Muslims attacked the Israelis. Police said Israelis damaged a taxi cab, but some officers disputed this account, saying the driver had attacked Israelis.

On Wednesday night, Wilders, whose Party for Freedom is the country’s largest and a coalition partner, wrote on X that Prime Minister Dick Schoof had confirmed that perpetrators of the pogrom may be tried for terrorism and lose their Dutch citizenship. “Antisemitism can be considered extra reason for de-naturalization! Fantastic!” Wilders wrote.

Police are considering prosecuting 11 perpetrators of the assaults, in which 25 Israelis were wounded.

Following the Hamas-led invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and abducted another 251, Israel went to war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s critics in Europe have accused it of genocide, including at weekly rallies that have featured numerous calls for violence against Israelis and Jews. Several countries reported an explosion in recorded antisemitic incidents. In the Netherlands, the Center for Information and Documentation recorded an increase of 245 percent in antisemitic incidents in 2023 over 2022.

The post Protesters Taunt Amsterdam Cops With Pogrom Slogan first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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UN Data: Nearly 90 Percent of Gaza Aid ‘Intercepted’ Before Reaching Intended Recipients

Palestinians collect aid supplies from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled

The vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients, newly released data from the United Nations shows, fueling growing concerns among Israeli officials and international observers about systemic aid diversion by armed groups in the enclave.

According to figures tracking humanitarian assistance for Gaza from May 19 to Aug. 1 of this year, out of the 2,010 UN trucks (carrying 27,434 tons of aid) collected from any of the crossings along Gaza’s perimeter, only 260 trucks (4,111 tons) reached their intended destination. That equates to a staggering 87 percent of all trucks and 85 percent of all tonnage of aid being stolen and not getting into the hands of civilians at the intended destination.

The UN’s own data, posted on the website of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) as part of the “UN2720 Monitoring & Tracking Dashboard,” reveals that almost all the aid — 1,753 trucks (23,353 tons) — has been “intercepted, either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors” while being transported inside Gaza over the past few months.

No breakdown is provided of how much aid has been seized by armed groups versus civilians.

The data also shows that much of the UN aid offloaded at any of the crossings along Gaza’s perimeter has not been collected to enter the war-torn enclave during this period. Out of 40,012 tons of aid (2,134 trucks) being delivered to the crossings, just 27,434 tons (2010 trucks) have been picked up. It’s unclear what exactly led to this discrepancy, with issues such as poor internal coordination and security concerns potentially delaying aid shipments.

The UN2720 mechanism, created earlier this year, was intended to boost transparency by verifying and tracking aid shipments via QR codes at key checkpoints. The system monitors each pallet from offloading to delivery and flags any discrepancies in a centralized database.

Israel has facilitated the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, with Israeli officials condemning the UN and other international aid agencies for their alleged failure to distribute supplies, noting much of the humanitarian assistance has been stalled at border crossings or stolen by the ruling Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

On Sunday, Israel announced a halt in military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza and new aid corridors as Arab and European countries began airdropping supplies into the enclave.

However, the UN and several Western governments have increased pressure on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, blaming the Jewish state for what they described as a hunger crisis and insufficient amounts of aid reaching civilians.

Israeli officials have said that claims of mass starvation in Gaza are false and being amplified by not only Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, but also international humanitarian organizations and media organizations to manipulate global opinion.

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Dutch Nurse Under Police Investigation for Alleged Threats Against Israeli Patients

Pro-Hamas demonstrators march in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. Photo: Reuters/Romy Arroyo Fernandez

A Muslim nurse in the Netherlands is under police investigation after allegedly threatening to administer lethal injections to Israeli patients — an incident that has sparked public outrage and intensified fears over rising antisemitism and patient safety in Europe’s health-care systems.

The comments were widely circulated by Israeli influencer Max Veifer, who also exposed a recent case in Australia where two nurses were suspended for two years over antisemitic threats and remarks.

In a video shared on social media, Veifer denounced Dutch-Muslim nurse Batisma Chayat Sa’id’s remarks as a serious violation of medical ethics.

“Someone like that should be prosecuted and barred from treating patients. Imagine your grandparents being cared for by someone so hateful,” the Israeli influencer said.

The incident was sparked when an Israeli-Dutch woman living in the Netherlands commented on a social media post by far-right politician Geert Wilders, who cautioned about what he called the country’s looming radical Islamization by 2050.

A social media account belonging to the Muslim nurse also commented on the post, claiming it would happen by 2027, to which the Israeli woman responded, “Your dream is our nightmare. But people wake up from nightmares. Our Netherlands, our Israel.”

“Nothing belongs to you! My grandparents built the Netherlands. I was born and raised here, and I will do everything in my power to help this country get rid of the Zionist cancer,” the nurse further replied.

“You know what I’m doing with Zionists — giving an extra injection as a nurse specialist. Letting them go to heaven!” Sa’id continued.

When the Israeli woman threatened to report her, Sa’id replied: “Haha, try your best! I don’t have a boss — I’m the boss! All Zionists can die, inside healthcare and beyond, and I’m happy to help with that!”

Shortly after her posts gained widespread attention, Sa’id deleted all her social media accounts, insisting that her identity had been stolen and that she was not responsible for such comments.

On Wednesday, local police detained Sa’id for questioning, but she denied the allegations, asserting that someone had impersonated her online.

“It seems someone is pretending to be me, posting false and defamatory statements,” the nurse said. “I want to make it clear — I hold no hatred toward Jews or any people, race, religion, or identity.”

Even after announcing plans to file an identity theft complaint, she faces skepticism from authorities, who have assigned a digital forensics expert to scrutinize her online accounts.

Last year, an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”

Earlier this year, two Australian nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — gained international attention after they were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night-shift conversation with Veifer.

The widely circulated footage, which sparked international outrage and condemnation, showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.

Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide.

They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.

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French Authorities Halt Gaza Evacuations After Palestinian Student Expelled Over Viral Antisemitic Posts

Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

French authorities have halted evacuations from Gaza after a Palestinian student was expelled from the prestigious Sciences Po Lille and placed under investigation, following the viral circulation of hundreds of antisemitic posts praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and calling for the murder of Jews.

The incident drew widespread condemnation and public outrage, prompting French ministers to demand answers and call for an investigation into how the Gazan student was allowed into the country in the first place.

On Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced that all further evacuations from Gaza would be suspended pending the completion of the investigation into the student’s background.

After receiving a scholarship, 25-year-old Nour Atalla, a Palestinian from Gaza, arrived in the country in early July to begin her master’s degree in law and communications this fall at the Institute of Political Science in Lille, northern France.

Barrot confirmed that discussions are ongoing about the student’s possible return to Gaza, making clear that she must leave the country pending the investigation’s outcome.

“She has no place at Sciences Po, nor in France,” the top French diplomat said.

On Thursday, local authorities reported that a criminal investigation is underway into Atalla, with the public prosecutor in Lille confirming the case was opened for “apology of terrorism, apology of crimes against humanity using an online public communication service.”

Barrot admitted lapses in the screening process that allowed her entry and has mandated a comprehensive review of everyone evacuated from Gaza to France.

“The security checks, carried out by the French services and Israeli authorities, did not detect the antisemitic content,” the French diplomat said.

Atalla is one of 292 Gazans admitted to the country following a court ruling that opened the door for Gazans to seek refugee status based on their nationality.

She was offered a place at Sciences Po Lille University based on “academic excellence” and following a recommendation by the French consulate in Jerusalem.

On Wednesday, the university announced it had revoked Atalla’s enrollment after hundreds of her past antisemitic and violent social media posts went viral, sparking widespread condemnation from political leaders and members of the local Jewish community.

In several of these posts, she glorified Hitler, praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, called for the execution of Israeli hostages and the killing of Jews, and expressed support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

In one post, Atalla shared a video of Hitler giving a speech about Jews, writing, “Kill their young and their old. Show them no mercy … And kill them everywhere.”

In another post shared on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, she wrote, “We must do everything we can to match the bloodshed — as much as possible.”

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