Last straw: Amsterdam ‘Jew hunt’ triggers push for Dutch Jewish migration to Israel

AMSTERDAM — Maaike Smole, a 48-year-old college policy worker from the central Dutch city of Amersfoort, no longer has any hope that there is a future for Jews in her country.

“It’s too late. The Netherlands are schluss,” she said, using a Yiddish term for “closed,” or “over.”

“Education has failed, integration [of Muslim minorities] has failed. Respect for us Jews has disappeared and will never come back. There are simply too few of us, the other side is so much larger and more aggressive. All that’s left is to do is to count down to our aliyah,” Smole said, using the Hebrew term for immigration to Israel.

Smole’s feelings appear to reflect those of a growing number of Jews in the Netherlands — a community that has been in the country, once known for its religious and ethnic tolerance, for centuries. Both anecdotally and through the chief rabbi’s office, The Times of Israel learned that an unprecedented number of Dutch Jews are contemplating leaving their homes for the Jewish homeland.

Now numbering between 30,000 and 50,000 depending on the criteria by which they are counted, many local Jews say they feel crushed by the combined pressures of antisemitism among migrant groups and anti-Zionism within the Dutch political left. It is historically a country where pogroms are an alien phenomenon.

That changed on the night of November 7, when bands of mostly Arab and Muslim youth — with the assistance of taxi drivers of the same ethnic and religious background — went on a self-described “Jew hunt” in the streets of Amsterdam.

Israeli officials said 10 people were injured in the violence, while hundreds more Israelis huddled in their hotels for hours, fearing they could be attacked. Many said that Dutch security forces were nowhere to be found, as the Israeli tourists were ambushed by gangs of masked assailants who shouted pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel slogans while they hunted down, beat and harassed them.

Politicians including the Dutch capital’s left-wing Mayor Femke Halsema called the riots a “pogrom,” the first organized violence against Jews in the Netherlands since the Nazi occupation.

And not only Jews are feeling the vitriol: On Monday, the Christians for Israel Center in the central Dutch city of Nijkerk came under attack as anti-Israel demonstrators vandalized the organization’s offices due to its support for Israel, daubing the site with slogans that accused its members of supporting genocide and killing babies.

Motivated by fear

Shraga Evers moved to Israel from the Netherlands 12 years ago and now helps Western European Jews make that same transition as CEO of Shivat Zion, an organization that assists with the immigration and integration process.

“Last week, we organized an event in Amsterdam for Dutch Jews interested in making aliyah,” Evers said. “Forty people showed up. That’s about as many as we would normally get in a year. We haven’t seen this kind of interest in decades.”

Before the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war, Evers saw potential immigrants who were ideologically motivated. Now, fear seems to be a primary driving force.

This is true not just among what Evers calls “visible Jews,” but across the religious and political spectrum: “Young, old, Orthodox, Reform, left- and right-wing… People who have lost friends for being Jewish but also those that are being sought out and assaulted,” Evers said.

“Jews who would have never considered aliyah before now understand there’s no future for them in Europe,” said Evers, echoing the words of Smole.

“Even if Israel may statistically be more dangerous, the nature of that danger is different,” he said. “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.

“Pandora’s box has opened and even when the wars in Gaza and Lebanon are over, things in Europe will never be the same,” said Smole.

Daniel, a 47-year-old doctor who asked that his real name not be used and that identifying information be withheld to protect his safety, is one of those Jews who only a year ago would have never considered making the move to Israel.

“I am not recognizable as a Jew in the street, but my surname is clearly Jewish,” he said.

Even before this month’s riots in Amsterdam, Daniel asked himself questions about his family’s future in the Netherlands.

“I am usually an optimist, a very happy person, but I worry about my children. Will they be able to go to university safely? When will it be too late to leave if things get worse? Are we back in the 1930s? Two of my grandparents survived Auschwitz. Even after October 7, we thought we could tough it out, the war would end and antisemitism would eventually die down. We didn’t want to make aliyah, we wanted to stay here in the hope that everything would be alright,” he said.

Then the violence of November 7 struck and Daniel felt how much things had really changed in his country.

“It looks like Jews no longer have a right to exist in the Netherlands, like we can’t live our own identities,” he said. “I always thought I could. A lot of my patients say they feel ashamed of what is happening and that they pray for me. Personally, I don’t get any animosity from Muslim patients, but in all fairness, I don’t get any support from them either.”

Daniel and his family haven’t fully made up their minds yet.

“Ninety-nine percent of me wants to stay, but the threshold for aliyah has become a lot lower,” he said. “There’s only one place in the world we would be safer, so even though I hope to still be here in five years, I’m afraid we’ll be in Israel by then.”

You can’t go home again

On a different side of the same coin are Dutch Jews who moved to Israel and are now afraid to go back to the Netherlands even for a visit.

Forty-four-year-old fitness instructor Daphna Kuhr immigrated to Israel in 2000 and now lives with her family in the central Israeli city of Ramat Gan. A family visit in January was marked by new and antisemitic experiences.

“When we were in an amusement park, children asked what language I spoke with my two kids. When I told them it was Hebrew, people started insulting us. Children screamed ‘Free Palestine’ at my five-year-old daughter,” Kuhr said.

It wasn’t the only incident Kuhr experienced. In a fast food restaurant in the central city of Utrecht, Kuhr and her children were refused service when migrant youth behind the counter heard them speak Hebrew. And in a hotel, a receptionist of Palestinian descent said he couldn’t find their reservation when he noticed they were Israeli citizens.

“He asked me if my husband was in the army while standing right in front of me, his face just centimeters from mine,” recalled Kuhr.

Now Kuhr wonders if it’s wise to go visit family and friends over the Christmas break. She is not worried about herself — being tall and blonde, no self-styled “Jew hunter” would ever expect her to be Israeli, but Kuhr’s children don’t speak Dutch and she knows that makes them a target.

“My mother lives in a small village in the south of the Netherlands; I guess we should be alright there. But I’m not taking my children to Amsterdam. Since November we know that it’s accepted there to hate Israelis and Jews. I’m not taking any chances,” she said.

Children indoctrinated to hate Jews

Dutch chief rabbi Binyomin Jacobs knows the risk of being visibly Jewish all too well. “I’m not afraid, but I need to be alert,” he said.

Jacobs has been the victim of verbal racial abuse in the streets, and people frequently honk their car horns when they pass him.

“I was yelled at from a mosque this week. That was a first, an interesting new experience,” Jacobs said sarcastically. “Muslim children are sometimes scared to death of me — they are told I will take out their eyes and give them to children in Israel.”

The rabbi also sees himself confronted with physical violence. He’s had bricks thrown through his windows and on one occasion a driver tried to ram him with his car.

Jacobs has noticed that lately, more and more people are asking him for a certificate confirming their Jewishness, a necessary document for Jews who wish to move to Israel.

“Just in case things get even worse and they need to go on aliyah in a hurry,” he said, “at least they will have taken that bureaucratic hurdle.”

The rabbi has given out more of these certificates in the past few weeks than in the full year leading up to the November Amsterdam attacks, a trend that he said is “driven by fear.”

Jacobs has no qualms about where to lay to blame for the deteriorating situation for Dutch Jews.

“It’s not like in Nazi Germany. The authorities are not antisemitic,” he said. “But for every word spoken about violence against Jews, immediately a whole conversation on Islamophobia is started to deflect from the problem. There is a powerful Islamic and left-wing political lobby at work. I don’t want to over-generalize, but the other day I took out my calculator and added up all the support I received from the left and from Muslims. The final number was zero.”

Politics also plays a part in Smole’s decision to accelerate her move to Israel.

“Everything got twisted around. Media and politicians turned the victims in Amsterdam into perpetrators and perpetrators into victims,” she said. “A couple of months ago there was a protest in my city, ‘Amersfoort against Zionism.’ We went to have a look from a safe distance. My 15-year-old said to me, ‘Mom, how can I raise my children here?’ Imagine a child thinking that, that’s not a thought any child should ever have.”

Smole’s oldest son already made the move to Israel. Her daughter has just started a new course of study, so the Smoles would ideally like to immigrate to Israel after she’s finished.

“I don’t think we’re going to last here that long,” said Smole. “My husband Leo always wore his kippah visibly, but since what happened in Amsterdam, he covers it up with a cap. Normally here in Holland we worry about the well-being of Israel, and now it’s the other way around, it’s so unreal.”

“Israel may not be the safest country in the world, but at least there we are protected by the army and the police,” she said. “We no longer have that feeling here in the Netherlands.”