The Israeli flag flying at half-mast atop City Hall in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on Jan. 10, 2017. (Photo courtesy of NIW/David de Leeuw)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The seat of the municipality of Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second-largest city, flew an Israeli flag at half-mast in solidarity with the Jewish state following a terrorist attack in Jerusalem.
Rotterdam City Hall flew the Israeli flag Tuesday at the suggestion of Bart Schut, a journalist for the Nieuw Israelitisch Weekblad, the country’s main Jewish weekly, following the slaying of four soldiers on Sunday by a Palestinian terrorist who plowed a truck through a crowd of soldiers who had just alighted from a bus in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Arnon Hanatziv.
The decision to fly the Israeli flag in Rotterdam follows the projection of the Israeli flag on the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Monday.
Rotterdam’s mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb of the Labour Party, is a Morocco-born Muslim. But the gesture involving the Israeli flag was taken by Joost Eerdmans, the acting mayor and leader of the right-leaning and pro-Israel Livable Rotterdam party.
Founded in 2001, Livable Rotterdam is affiliated with the movement started by the late politician Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered in 2002 by a far-left activist.
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