By Cnaan Lidor
Police in Antwerp, Belgium, arrested six people on Nov. 10, including a 17-year-old, on suspicion of conspiring to attack Jews from the city’s heavily Orthodox community.
The suspects were apprehended after exchanging messages on social media, and after the assault on Nov. 8 of dozens of Israelis in Amsterdam, in the neighboring Netherlands, Belgian police officials told De Morgen daily on Nov. 11.
The incident in Antwerp coincided with concern that the assaults in the Netherlands — the country’s biggest series of ant-Semitic assaults in decades — mark the beginning of a new wave of coordinated attacks by Muslims in Europe against their Jewish neighbors.
“Some young individuals agreed to perpetrate a similar action in Antwerp in the Jewish Quarter, which is why we heightened security,” the city’s police commissioner Wouter Bruyns told De Morgen.
Following the arrests, footage of the beating of an Orthodox Jew in Antwerp in October surfaced on social media on Nov. 11. It shows three males following a male, shouting “Free Palestine” and beating him.
The victim is 14-years-old, according to Michael Freilich, a Jewish federal lawmaker from Antwerp. The family did not file a police complaint “as this is a regular occurrence in town,” he said.
The 14-year-old received bruises from the beating. His family has decided to file a police complaint following the video’s surfacing, Freilich said.
The Dutch parliament was set to hold an emergency debate on Nov. 12 on last week’s assaults in Amsterdam.
At least 100 young Muslim men participated in the preplanned attacks on Israeli soccer fans leaving a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local Ajax team.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the event a “pogrom,” as did many local Jews including Herman Loonstein, a prominent lawyer.
Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom, the largest party in the Netherlands and part of the ruling coalition, demanded that the perpetrators be deported.
He also demanded an emergency debate to discuss how the assaults were made possible and again after hearing that all 62 detainees in police custody were arrested before or after the assaults, but none during them.
He also called the incident a “pogrom.”
Israel’s National Security Council on Nov. 10 advised Israelis not to travel to international soccer matches in Europe this week.
Kan News reported Nov. 8 that the Mossad intelligence service had warned Dutch authorities of a threat to Israelis and Jews in the Netherlands ahead of the soccer game.
Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel denied this on Nov. 11, the AD news site reported.
The attacks in Amsterdam happened on the eve of the anniversary of the Kristallnacht Nazi pogroms of 1938 in the Third Reich.
Some victims were made to beg for mercy on their knees and say “Free Palestine.”
Others, including at least one woman, were set upon by men without any verbal exchange.
At least one man jumped into a canal to escape his attackers and another was hit by a car in a suspected car ramming.
According to some reports, the attackers asked to check the passports of people they confronted on the street, to see if they were Israeli.
About 25 people were injured in the assaults, with their injuries ranging from moderate to minor.
One victim, an IDF reservist who recently fought Hamas in Gaza, told Israel’s Channel 12 on Monday that he and his friend Ben tried to flee their attackers by entering a bar but were “kicked out.”
They ordered a taxi via Uber, he said, “but from an alleyway, another group of 10 men ran to us with clubs. They punched Ben and clubbed him in his back. I went berserk and jumped at them but they busted me up. Broke my teeth. I feared for my life. I saw they were waiting for us at every corner. It was all planned.”
The perpetrators belonged primarily to six groups in the Netherlands, according to a report Nov. 8 by the Network Contagion Research Institute.
The dominant group identified itself as PGNL, a Dutch-language acronym for “The Palestinian Community in the Netherlands.”
It is headed by Ayman Nejmeh, whom NCRI said is a Syrian-born former teacher for UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinians, which was complicit in the Oct. 7, 2023, massacres in the northwestern Negev. Nejmeh removed the UNRWA affiliation from his social media accounts following the assaults in Amsterdam.
ELNET, the European Leadership Network, in a report published last month identified PGNL as one of 15 entities it described as composed of “Hamas-affiliated individuals and organizations in Europe” connected to Hamas representative Amin Abu Rashed, head of the Conference of Palestinians in Europe.
Israel’s critics in Europe have accused it of perpetrating genocide, including at weekly rallies in European capitals that have featured numerous calls for violence against Israelis and Jews.
Several countries reported an explosion in recorded anti-Semitic incidents.
In the Netherlands, the Center for Information and Documentation recorded an increase of 245% in anti-Semitic incidents in 2023 over 2022.
