“I don’t know if I’ll see him again,” says Meital as we get in my car. The fact that she even considers not making it to her son’s bar mitzvah in a few weeks shows how scared the soccer fan from Petah Tikva is.
Meital is one of half a dozen Israelis that I ferry from their hotels to the apartment of Esther Voet, editor-in-chief of the Dutch Jewish Weekly NIW. They are stranded without protection from the Amsterdam police force, or anyone else for that matter.
This is why Voet has called on her extensive Jewish network in the Dutch capital to send me by car all across the city center of the Dutch capital to pick them up.
Throughout the night, more and more calls come in from young Israelis who ask to be evacuated. Some are anxious to leave their hotel rooms and need to be convinced to come down with their luggage, get in the car, and be driven to the safety of Voet’s apartment on one of Amsterdam’s most idyllic canals, ironically a stone’s throw from away from the world-famous Anne Frank House.
At a hotel on Rembrandt Square, two young Israeli men are waiting for me. One is crying. He hugs me when I tell him they’re going to be safe soon. The other one is labeled as a ‘high-value target’ for the assailants since his passport was stolen and put on social media, together with a picture of him in IDF uniform. The hotel entrance can’t be reached by car, so we need to walk 250 meters. The two young Israelis seem understandably nervous, but their mood lightens considerably once we’re on the road.
'The safest country in the world'
At the apartment, it’s slowly getting crowded; the dominant language – through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke – is Hebrew, which, as a non-Jew, I neither speak nor understand.
My next two ‘pick-ups’ are at an upscale hotel on the Amstel, the river that gives the Dutch capital its name. They also ask me if I’m Jewish. ‘Good’, Shlomi says when he hears I’m not, ‘good’. I explain that most Dutch are actually pro-Israel. Parties of that nature scored a hundred seats out of 150 in parliament in The Hague at last year’s November elections.
The behavior of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Amsterdam was an important factor in the outcome of that election. The majority of the Dutch population didn’t seem particularly charmed by Muslim immigrants calling for the murder of Jews in the streets of the capital and the refusal by the then government to address the problem. Which led to a rightwing landslide in which anti-immigration parties reaped the benefits. Populist Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) became by far the largest for the first time in its history.
When my last two ‘passengers’ are dropped off at Esther Voet’s cozy apartment, the atmosphere is notably more relaxed. In the morning, the Israeli soccer fans we collected will be taken to the airport with help from the embassy in The Hague. They will join almost 3000 others, many of whom will remain stranded for several more days – now finally protected by the police - in what is considered one of the safest countries in the world.
Those days are gone for Israelis, just like they are for the Dutch Jewish community, whose members wonder if they will be next to feel the wrath of pro-Palestinian activists and Muslim youths.
Bart Schut is deputy editor and reporter for NIW, the Dutch Jewish Weekly.