AMSTERDAM UNSAFE FOR JEWS

More and more Dutch Jews are leaving the country of their birth for a safe haven elsewhere. That, in short, is the message of an article by Charles Sanders in the Telegraaf newspaper and a related piece by Jeroen Langelaar in Elsevier magazine in the Netherlands.


QUOTE:
“'Grote delen van de stad zijn voor ons niet meer toegankelijk, het is wachten tot de eerste slachtoffers vallen,' zegt hoogleraar Herman Loonstein zaterdag in De Telegraaf.”

[Translation: “Large parts of the city (Amsterdam) are no longer safe for us, it’s a matter of time before the first victims occur”, said professor Herman Loonstein, in the Saturday edition of the Telegraaf’.]

Sources (in Dutch): Telegraaf article, Elsevier’s magazine.


According to Hirsch Ballin, former minister of Justice and current minister for the interior in the decommissioned Dutch government, the Jews just have to report their victimhood more often - if there is any anti-Semitism in Holland, it is up to them to let the authorities know. He himself disagrees with the idea that there has been any noticeable increase.

QUOTE:
"In de Tweede Kamer stelde Hirsch Ballin dat dat Joden meer aangifte moeten doen als ze slachtoffer van antisemitisme zijn. Hij vindt het moeilijk een trend te constateren. Cijfers zouden niet uitwijzen dat sprake is van toename."


[Translation: In the Second Chamber, Hirsch Ballin postulated that Jews have to complain more if they are victims of anti-Semitism. He finds it difficult to discern a trend - figures apparently do not indicate any increase.]



This is flatly contradicted by the Centre independent Jewish watchdog group CIDI, which calls the ministers statement utter balderdash.


QUOTE:
"Het Centrum Informatie en Documentatie Israël (CIDI) noemt de uitleg van de minister beneden alle peil. "Hij beroept zich nota bene op het Antidiscriminatiebureau Amsterdam dat juist signaleerde dat gevallen van antisemitisme het meest gestegen zijn van alle soorten discriminatie." "

[Translation: The Centre for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI) considers the explanation of the minister unacceptably base. "He bases this on the Antidiscrimination Bureau Amsterdam, which nota bene declared that cases of anti-Semitism have increased more than any other kind of discrimination".]


Recent CIDI figures show a disturbing increase in serious incidents, almost always perpetrated by Euro-Arabs.

["Bijna altijd zijn jonge Marokkanen de aanstichters. Het aantal gemelde incidenten groeide vorig jaar met 55 procent tot 167 gevallen." (Almost always it is young Moroccans who are the offenders. The number of incident-complaints rose last year by 55% to 167 cases'). - De Telegraaf, third paragraph of cited article.]



THE TELEGRAAF ARTICLE

As usual, the commentary underneath the Telegraaf article, by the salt of the earth, shows a remarkable level of bias, pooh-pooing, denialism, and outright Jew-hate. Several comments have been removed because they were unacceptable, EVEN to the famously tolerant editors of that newspaper.

Readers said that the CIDI figures had been tweaked by orders of the Israeli government, that it was the Jews' own fault, that it was justified because of Israeli behaviour towards the Palestinians, and that in any case it was perfectly understandable and normal.


This statement, by reader Luuk in Groningen, is indicative of attitudes among the Dutch: "Laat de Joodse belangenorganisatie's hun thuisland Israël maar eens op de vingers tikken over de discriminatie van Palestijnen. Geen wonder dat er steeds meer mensen een hekel krijgen aan Joden" ('Better the Jewish interest groups should criticise their home country Israel over the discrimination of Palestinians. No wonder that more and more people have started despising Jews').

Note here the combination of several ideas: Jews are foreigners in the Netherlands (where they have been for centuries), Jews are to blame for what Israel does, Jews in Europe belong in Israel but also don't belong in Israel because it belongs to the Palestinians (!), and it is both natural and good to despise Jews. The contradictions and conflation in his thinking is largely typical of European muddle-headedness - as is the repulsive quality of his opinion.


Several readers postulated that Amsterdam Jews should loudly demonstrate against Israel and the misbehavior of their own people.
If they didn't do so, then they deserved to be hated and discriminated.

A few reactions were from Jews relating incidents - largely outnumbered by anti-Israel vituperation.

Several others showed a marked racism towards Arabs, loathing of politicians, hatred of Islam, and general European xenophobia, as well as completely bagatellizing the issue and expressing politically correct Dutch sentiments - 'if Israel was destroyed, there wouldn't be any problem, the Holy Land was stolen by Jews from Arabs in any case. Foreigners (by which was meant native-born non-Germanics) were despicable and both Arabs and Jews should just shut up!'



THE ELSEVIER ARTICLE

What bothers many of Amsterdam's Jewish citizens especially is the behaviour of the police, who refuse to act, and usually do nothing. Given that the Dutch police are primarily an extension of the infamous Dutch governmental bureaucracy, that is not surprising - this author has had reason to complain about official apathy while living in the Netherlands - but professor Herman Loonstein particularly mentioned an incident in Buitenveldert where a Jewish man was pelted with eggs, and the Amsterdam police flat-out refused to pursue the matter.


"Nope, if you-all ain't got photos of the perps, we ain't gonna do jack"


['Nee, als jullie geen foto’s van de daders hebben, is er voor ons écht geen beginnen aan']


Even Job Cohen (former mayor of Amsterdam, now important national politician) has no interest in Jewish problems, and prefers to go and express his sympathy to Moroccans whenever there have been anti-Islamic incidents. The departure of Jews from Amsterdam because of discrimination, according to professor Loonstein, is a non-issue for Cohen.

He reports that many Jews are emigrating to England and Israel to rebuild the peaceful and safe life they once knew in Amsterdam.