Violent mobilization in Amsterdam during the opening of the Holocaust Museum

70

Pro-Palestinian followers protested in Amsterdam during the visit of the president of Israel

This Sunday, while the Holocaust Museum was inaugurated in Amsterdam, violent protests took place led by followers of the terrorist group Hamas.

The demonstration also took place during the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who asked for prayers for peace and for the immediate release of the hostages taken by Hamas in its attack on October 7 and who remain in the hands of the Palestinian terrorists, after attending the opening of the museum.

Upon his arrival at the Portuguese Synagogue to deliver a speech, Herzog was greeted with boos from protesters demanding an immediate end to the Israeli operation in Gaza.

“Hate and anti-Semitism are flourishing around the world, and we must fight them together,” Herzog said in his speech.

In a nearby square, protesters chanted “Cease fire now” while holding Palestinian flags. Some threw fireworks and eggs at police, while others attempted to climb over police vans as the protest grew more tense in the afternoon. Local media reported at least 1,000 protesters in attendance.

Near the new museum, a group of people carrying Israeli flags and photographs of hostages confronted some of the protesters, shouting “shame on you,” and police officers came to defuse the tension.

A spokesman for the president declined to comment.

The Dutch anti-Zionist Jewish organization Erev Rave, which organized the protest together with the Dutch Palestinian Community and the Socialist International, stated that, while it honored the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, it could not remain passive as long as the war in Gaza continued.

Before becoming president, a largely ceremonial position, Herzog led Israel’s Labor Party, which has historically advocated peace with the Palestinians.

The museum informed the media that it had invited Herzog before the Hamas attack and the subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza. In a statement he acknowledged that the president’s attendance raised doubts, but that he represented the homeland of Dutch Holocaust survivors who emigrated to Israel.

King Willem-Alexander met with Herzog this Sunday.

134 hostages who remain held in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when hundreds of Hamas terrorists attacked Israel in a coordinated and simultaneous operation that included airstrikes and the infiltration of hundreds of terrorists into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. In addition to taking hundreds of hostages, they murdered 1,200 people in a bloody raid: they burned down houses with people inside, executed entire families, beheaded and burned babies, and systematically mutilated and raped their victims. That day, Hamas terrorists paraded the bodies of civilians and soldiers through the streets of Gaza.

The main victims were the kibbutzim populations and the hundreds of young people attending a music festival for peace, Supernova, near the border with the Strip. In total, in five months of war, the Hamas terrorist group claims that more than 30,900 people died in the Gaza Strip.

(With information from Reuters)