With his crocheted Keppeltje in the colors of the Palestinian flag, with the sign of ‘another Jewish sound’ that he holds up, Jaap Hamburger is constantly getting encouraging bangs on the shoulder, an Aai over his back, thumbs in the air, consenting nods of the other demonstrators. “Strength,” one shouts. “Thank you for being there,” says another.
According to the organization, 250,000 protesters (“not at all” thought the police thought so), but the group in which Hamburger is walking this Sunday gets the pat on the back and the stumbled thumbs. That comes, they are Jewish, some Israeli. And they speak out in Amsterdam against the destructive war that Israel ways in Gaza, before the right of Palestinians to determine their own lives and “the frame that Israel represents the Jews throughout the world,” as artist Yael Wass says. The latter explains the text on most signs that are carried in the ‘Jewish block’ this afternoon: ‘Not in my name’.
Jaap Hamburger from a different Jewish sound.
Photo Simon Lenskens
Miriam Guttmann, one of the organizers, says that five Jewish organizations plus a large number of individual Jews consciously wanted to go to this demonstration. “Many of us have often demonstrated since the war in Gaza started, but now we are one group, consciously visible as Jewish protesters.” The group, which collects at the Barlaeus Gymnasium one hour before the start of the manifestation, has about one hundred and fifty people. Occasionally a rain flush and they struggle with rain ponchos or the pre-printed red t-shirt with ‘Jews for Palestinian Liberation‘ on top.
Representatives of Jewish groups.
Photo Simon Lenskens
Guttmann also recognizes the encouragements that Hamburger received on the Museum Square, she says. “We are sometimes praised too high, because we are Jewish. That is almost painful. As if it is so special that we demonstrate against violence because we are Jewish. We demonstrate because we, as people, cannot see what Israel is doing the Palestinians in Gaza.”
For me as a Jewish woman, the ‘never again’ applies to all the oppressed and marginalized people
Her sister Tamar says that Jewish history brought her to this. “With Pesach we commemorate the oppression of Jews as a marginalized people. For me as a Jewish woman, and that was also the case at our home, it will be ‘never again’ that in the commemorations of persecutions from the Second World War, all the oppressed and marginalized people will be proclaimed.”
Umbrella
Yael Seggeg just grabs her umbrella and has her cardboard with ‘Stop the Genocide‘Giving it off if the pandemonium of more professional activists erupts. Behind a huge banner with “military embargo now!” Are campaigners with masks of Dutch politicians and ‘I-Hartje-Genocide’ on it. Drums, pans and woods are being struck. One of the leaders whipping things up with a megaphone: “From the river to the sea, Palestine Will Be Free“.
Does Seggeg find that intimidating? She is Israeli, but consciously emigrated to the Netherlands in 2006, when Israel waged war against Hezbollah in Lebanon for the second time. “Israel always grabs violence, not in diplomacy in a conflict,” she says. “And if it is quiet in the region for a while, they do not take the opportunity to guarantee sustainable peace.”
Many of the Jewish demonstrators wore slogans.
Photo Simon Lenskens
But it remains her motherland. So what does a massive scanned ‘From the river to the sea‘ her? She doesn’t shock that, she says, taking a folder. “I know it is often explained as if the Jews have to be driven out of Israel, but I see it more as a call for the liberation of the Palestinians.”
Jaap Hamburger misses Prime Minister Dick Schoof on Museumplein today. In the previous red-line demonstration, Schoof wrote on X that he had ‘heard’ the sound of the demonstrators. Hamburger: “But nothing else did with it. And this morning he will go to a commemoration of the Hamas attack organized by the official Jewish Netherlands on October 7, 2023, but he does not show himself here.”
Boycot Paracetamol
Everywhere brochures are distributed who ask for boycots from some Israeli company. ‘Do not swallow Teva’ refers to medicines such as paracetamol that are made with the products of the Israeli company Teva that the Israeli army would help.
Zohar Ianovici also moved from Israel to the Netherlands, just like Benno ter Kuile with his Israeli wife. Ter Kuile left for the Netherlands in 1989 because he did not want to serve in the army. “The idea that you have to take the brain in occupied territory only because they want to determine their own lives.”
Ianovici has demonstrated against the war much more often, since January 2024 there has been a wake on the Spui every Sunday. There the group has grown from about ten, twelve protesters in the beginning, to sometimes one hundred now. He is skeptical but slightly optimistic about the developments of last week. “Very light. Because this war is about protecting Prime Minister Netanyahu, and he neither Donald Trump is certainly reliable. We are fighting until we know if a serious result is achieved.”
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