AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Dozens of people chanted anti-Semitic slogans during riots that broke out in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood of The Hague after a man being arrested died in police custody.
More than 100 people chanted “Jewish murderers” on Thursday night in the Schilderswijk, where a handful of Jews live in a Jewish-owned enclave surrounded by project apartments populated by low-income families, according to a report on The Post Online.
The riots took place at a theater stormed by protesters approximately a mile away from the enclave, the De Telegraaf daily reported.
More than 200 people have been arrested since protests broke out in the Schilderswijk over the death of Mitch Henriquez, a citizen of the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba. Police officers are accused of suffocating Henriquez during his arrest at a park; preliminary autopsy findings appeared to support the allegation.
The Schilderswijk has one of the highest crime rates in the Netherlands. Last year, the neighborhood saw riots that broke out on the margins of rallies in support of the ISIS terror group and featured its flags. Protesters hurled stones at riot police during an anti-ISIS march last year. During Israel’s war in Gaza, at least two demonstrations in Schilderswijk against Israel featured calls to slaughter the Jews.
The Jewish-owned enclave was purchased in the 19th century by the Jewish community to accommodate impoverished Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe. But the Jewish population of The Hague was almost totally annihilated during the Holocaust. The area around it became populated by families of migrant workers in the 1960s and 1970s. The city is now believed to have a few hundred Jews.
Lody van Der Kamp, a Dutch rabbi who has spoken out on the need to facilitate dialogue between Muslims and Jews, wrote in an Op-Ed for the Joodse Omroep Jewish broadcaster on Thursday that “when the calm returns, it is time to take these young men by the hand and show them their own Schilderswijk’s history.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
