The Netherlands is in the midst of a heated public and political discussion about ‘integration’ following streetfights in early November between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax of Amsterdam.
November’s fighting, instigated by racist chants and anti-Palestinian violence from Maccabi Tel Aviv’s supporters, who were in Amsterdam for an away game, led to counter attacks by Dutch locals – which the Israeli government, and others, swiftly labelled as “an anti-Semitic pogrom”.
In the six weeks since, the Netherlands’ right-wing coalition government, which includes populist Geert Wilders’ unabashedly anti-Islam Freedom Party, passed a series of motions with dangerous implications for protesters, migrants and Muslims, according to advocacy groups in the country.
These began, most notably, on November 19, when the Dutch parliament voted two-to-one in favour of Dutch security services “scrutinising” pro-Palestine activists and students, following a motion put forward by the conservative Reformed Political Party (SGP).
While ‘motions’ are not legally binding in Dutch politics, they are weather vanes that lay the groundwork for future legislation.
Announcing the results, the SGP party wrote on X: “Organisations that spread Hamas ideologies, and thus create a breeding ground for anti-Semitism, must be dealt with severely! It is good that our motion was adopted, calling on the government to examine these kinds of organisations and place them on the national terror list.”
The motion, first submitted by SGP on November 13, warned Dutch parliamentarians that the “Hamas network is active in Europe” and “consists of a forest of umbrella organisations under varying names.”
It added that “individuals within this network speak at universities and demonstrations [breed] anti-Semetism.”
It also called for the creation of a “national steering committee to combat anti-Semitism in higher education” and to intensify efforts to ban anti-Semitic speakers and activities at universities.
“This is a measure they can realistically implement,” says Lyra from Samidoun (Netherlands), the international Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
“Such a steering committee would likely operate under [Holland’s] National Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism, which is [highly influenced by Israeli lobbyists]. All of this could have potential implications for academic freedom of expression and political organisations relating to Palestine in higher education institutions.”
This “terror-tagging” of Palestinian organisations hinges on the conflation of anti-zionism and anti-Semitism, adds Lyra.
Israeli influence in plain sight
SGP’s aforementioned motion openly states that it came off the back of an Israeli report distributed among Dutch politicians by Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism, following early November’s street fighting in Amsterdam.
On November 14, the leader of the conservative Farmer-Citizen Movement party, Caroline van der Plas, was seen waving the report in a parliamentary debate about SGP’s motion, the week before the November 19 vote.
On the same day, Israeli minister, Chikli, published an article with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf discussing the Amsterdam violence via the headline: “Israel sees the hunt for Jews as an Islamist terror attack: the Palestinian Community in the Netherlands (PGNL) incited the pogrom.”
Demanding tough measures, Chikli told the newspaper: “This [PGNL] terrorist network must be eradicated [and that] the Dutch authorities must take legal and economic measures against the criminals and, as Geert Wilders suggested, deport those involved.”
Chikli also took to X to share the report, where he stated: “The PGNL has a network of connections with the local Muslim community and occasionally arranges pro-Palestinian protests and rallies in various cities in the Netherlands… [On November 7], they were involved in the pogrom against Israeli tourists and Jewish people in Amsterdam.”
Following these interventions, the Dutch newspaper, de Volkskrant, revealed that several ministerial sources working in and around Dutch national security said there is “unwanted Israeli interference in Dutch politics” and that these concerns exist at the “highest official level.”
Chikli has a history of collaborating with right-wing parties across Europe. This summer, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that he had rallied behind France’s Marine Le Pen, gaining the ire of numerous Israeli diplomats.
It does not stop there
SGP’s motion is just one of several that have sent chills across migrant communities and civil rights groups in the Netherlands.
“After whipping up moral panic around the ‘integration’ of Muslims following the ‘Maccabi incidents’ in early November, the far-right majority in parliament has used the climate of controversy to pass a spree of motions that propose draconic new surveillance and policing measures on pro-Palestinian organisations and muslim communities,” says Rahma Bavelaar, the chair of Report Islamophobia (Meld Islamofobie), a non-profit documenting and analysing racism and Islamophobia.
On November 25, the Dutch government also passed a motion entitled: “Keeping data on cultural and religious norms and values of Dutch people with a migration background.”
Mpanzu Bamenga, a Dutch MP for the progressive Democrats 66 party, called it “a new social low” on a LinkedIn post, while others have said it has “racist starting points” given that it seeks to collect data exclusively from migrants, Dutch Muslims and people not originally from the Netherlands on the assumption that they are antisemitic, homophobic or misogynistic.
The list of motions goes on. Another, submitted in November, called for “a financing ban for organisations boycotting Israel, and to [label] any pro-Hamas statements as anti-Semitic”.
The repression of Muslim and pro-Palestinian communities is nothing new among the Dutch far-right, but rather the work of more than two decades, explains Bavelaar.
“They are using the disinformation and manufactured moral panic around the incidents in Amsterdam to attempt to quash protest against Holland’s foreign policy, which has been uncompromisingly pro-Israel. A confluence of the Islamophobic and Zionist platforms of the far right.”
Advocates for Israel in the Netherlands have long pushed against the Dutch government’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which includes criticism of Israel.
“These motions are an attempt to prepare political and legal ground for the imposition of a definition of antisemitism as terrorism, something that would expand the jurisdiction of anti-terror legislation to potentially include all organisations and individuals that mobilise against Israeli apartheid and genocide,” says Bavelaar.
All things considered, the situation in the Netherlands is a reflection of the “worrisome rise in fear-mongering and criminalisation of the Palestinian Liberation Movement”, as well as Israel’s “increasingly hysterical attempts at cracking down on its interests in the face of a growing popular movement in different parts of the world,” says Samidoun.
Sebastian Shehadi is a freelance journalist and a contributing writer at the New Statesman
Follow him on X: @seblebanon
