“Between hope and fear.” This is how Naomi Mestrum, director of the Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), summarizes her mood on the first day of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Other representatives of the Jewish community in the Netherlands also have mixed feelings about this “fragile” file, as Rabbi Menno ten Brink of the Liberal Jewish Community puts it.
There is joy that the first three hostages have been released, and that the shootings on both sides have stopped. But it is a deal with many uncertainties, says Mestrum.
“What I especially hope is that anti-Semitism in the Netherlands, which has flared up so high since the start of the war, will weaken again now that the weapons have been laid down,” says Hans Weijel, vice-chairman of the Central Jewish Consultation. “That we can, I say cynically, return to normal anti-Semitism here.”
The war in Gaza has put the lives of Jews in the Netherlands under tension. No matter how unfair, says Ten Brink, Dutch Jews are criticized for Israel’s actions. Mestrum has worked at the CIDI reporting center for anti-Semitism for years and says she has never seen it as brutal as in the fifteen months since the war started. Over the phone she says that she was waiting at a traffic light with her five-year-old son when someone recognized her – “of course I am the face of CIDI” – and she was pulled off her bicycle. “This war gives people a license to be uninhibitedly anti-Semitic. Israel has become a stick to beat Jews with.”
I don’t see people demonstrating against Russia on Dam Square
Six Day War
The attitude towards Israel has changed, all three notice that. “During the Six-Day War of 1967, the Dutch drove with stickers ‘I support Israel’ on their cars,” says Ten Brink. “If you stick that on your bumper now, your car will be destroyed.”
This has been clearly translated into politics. The PvdA has traditionally been close to Israel. Since the collaboration with GroenLinks, the merged party has represented a completely different sound. “Now they are busy labeling Israel as a colonial power that practices apartheid and land grabbing,” says Mestrum.
Interest organization CIDI has difficulty contacting progressive parties in the Dutch parliament, she says. “I seriously wonder whether the Israeli perspective still interests them at all.”
Ten Brink and Weijel are surprised at how strongly this war resonates in the Netherlands and the entire world. “I don’t see people demonstrating against Russia on Dam Square,” says Ten Brink.
Hamas is still there
‘A bastion for Jews’
Do Dutch Jews look at Israel with different eyes after fifteen months of war? “I don’t speak for all Jews,” says Mestrum, “but I can say that people are shocked by the Israeli response. The suffering in Gaza is enormous. Of course we see that too. Israel’s response has been brutal. Even though the blame for this war lies with Hamas.”
Weijel: “Israel has always been proof that Jews will not allow themselves to be murdered without defense. The sudden attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 called that certainty into question. But look at the blows with which Israel has struck back against Hamas, against Hezbollah and Iran. Perhaps you should conclude that the idea of Israel as a bastion for Jews has only become stronger.”
All three hope that the six-week ceasefire will lead to a real and long-lasting peace. But Mestrum adds a caveat to this. “Hamas is still there. And what you don’t want is that after those negotiations, after this truce, we will return to the status quo before October 7. The status quo is that Hamas throws rockets from Gaza, and Israel keeps the borders closed so that Palestinians are locked up in the Gaza Strip. Then we have not actually made any progress and we have to wait for the next eruption.”