The Times of Israel reports that an unprecedented number of Dutch Jews are contemplating emigrating to Israel.
The Times of Israel reports that an unprecedented number of Dutch Jews are contemplating emigrating to Israel.
Numbering between 30,000 and 50,000 people, many Dutch Jews say they feel crushed by the combined pressures of antisemitism among migrant groups and anti-Zionism within the Dutch political left.
Maaike Smole, a 48-year-old college policy worker, said: “It’s too late. The Netherlands are schluss” (a Yiddish term for “closed,” or “over”). She said: “Pandora’s box has opened, and even when the wars in Gaza and Lebanon are over, things in Europe will never be the same.”
Shraga Evers, CEO of Shivat Zion, which assists with the immigration and integration process, said that last week 40 people attended meetings. “That’s about as many as we would normally get in a year. We haven’t seen this kind of interest in decades.”
This included Jews across the religious and political spectrum, people who have lost friends for being Jewish, and people who have been sought out and assaulted.
Evers says: “In Israel, the threat is mostly external. In the Netherlands, your attacker can live next door. The Dutch police can’t protect the Jews anymore; when Muslims work together, their numbers are just overwhelming.”
Daniel, a 47-year-old doctor, worries about when will it be too late to leave, and whether they are back in the 1930s? Two of his grandparents survived Auschwitz.
Daphna Kuhr immigrated to Israel in 2000 and a family visit in January was marked by antisemitic experiences. When people realised that she was speaking Hebrew to her children, children screamed ‘Free Palestine’ at her five-year-old daughter.
Chief rabbi Binyomin Jacobs has been the victim of considerable verbal racial abuse in the streets.
Jacobs says that the authorities are not antisemitic. Every time violence against Jews is mentioned, the conversation switches to Islamophobia.
[Photo: Courtesy Maaike Smole]