Canaan Lidor
Times of Israel, Apr. 12, 2024
“Before October 7, European Jewry’s general attitude “was always like this: We live here, we like it here, we’re home here — and we have a life insurance policy, and that’s Israel,” Muzicant said. But October 7 is leaving many “at a loss of a compass, not sure of what’s going to happen. There’s no clear answer right now.””
The three women who rang the doorbell of a Jewish nurse near Amsterdam last month initially seemed like neighbors paying a call.
After the nurse opened the door on March 27, however, the women called her a “child murderer” and told her to leave the Netherlands, the nurse said. The women likely targeted her in connection with angry fliers that had been circulated in her neighborhood, advertising the fact that the nurse’s daughter was an Israeli soldier. The fliers contained the nurse’s address and workplace, and accused her of being “complicit” in her daughter’s “crimes.”
This incident was one of hundreds of cases of antisemitic abuse in Holland following the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, which began with a devastating attack in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people in Israel. This surge is so dramatic that it’s causing many Dutch Jews, including the nurse, to recall the 1930s and question their future in a country that for centuries has stood for tolerance and acceptance.
“It feels like in World War II when the addresses of Jews were given out,” the nurse told the De Telegraaf daily on condition of anonymity for fear of further attacks.
In the Netherlands, which prides itself as being a global flag-bearer for religious tolerance, the Holocaust analogy is particularly painful because, during the genocide, the Nazis and collaborators murdered 75% of the Jewish population — the highest death rate in Nazi-occupied Western Europe.… [To read the full article, click here]
