Rob Oudkerk is, as he says, officially Jewish. His father is Jewish and so is his mother. He feels has been Jewish since October 7, 2023, the Saturday that Hamas militants attacked Israel and indiscriminately sowed death and destruction among Israeli civilians. 1,200 people were killed, the largest mass murder since the Holocaust. In the war that has been raging between Israel and Hamas since Saturday, people are being killed every day by rocket attacks and bombings. According to the Gazan ministry, 22,835 people were killed. And those deaths are the Jews’ fault.
At least that’s how Rob Oudkerk experiences it. He is tapped on the shoulder at Albert Heijn by a stranger who says to him: “You’re doing well, there in Gaza.” He finds such a comment painful. And idiot. As if he holds the Turkish shopkeeper responsible for what President Erdogan does or the owner of the Indonesian restaurant blames the fate of the Moluccans.
Rob Oudkerk experiences firsthand what was previously expressed in figures by the Center for Information and Documentation Israel, the CIDI. The number of reports of anti-Semitism has increased by 818 percent since October 7. This applies to the Netherlands, but also happens in the rest of Europe. So then you already know more or less which direction Rob Ouderkerk will take with his two-part series After 7/10, anti-Semitism in the Netherlands. It will not fewer have become.
What are you actually fighting, Oudkerk asks Eddo Verdoner, the National Coordinator for Combating Anti-Semitism. “A many-headed monster,” he answers. A monster that, according to him, is shaped according to the crisis in society. And with the war between Israel and Hamas, a Janus-head has been added. The Jew as colonist, as occupier and aggressor. Why, Oudkerk wonders, is Israel identified “one-on-one” with Jews and Jewishness? “I have nothing to do with Israel.” Singer Mirjam van Dam became na 7/10 asked by an organizer whether she still wanted to call what she sang Yiddish jazz. Didn’t Middle Eastern jazz sound better, given the circumstances? “That’s like na 9/11 says to Muslims: we don’t need you for a while.” I think that is exactly what Muslims experienced at the time.
Mart Smeets and Johan Derksen
A whole bunch of people pass by – young, old, male. woman, student, businessman – who list the prejudices they hear about Jews. We see Mart Smeets in it Stars on the canvas one of the artists accuses him of portraying him “in an Amstelveen-Jewish, punitive manner.” We hear Johan Derksen say again that “the Jews have somewhat brought it on themselves”, the Hamas attack of October 7. Oudkerk wonders aloud whether he is allowed to “mention” that hatred of Jews has not decreased since more than a million Muslims live in the Netherlands. He can certainly do that, says national coordinator Verdoner. Hatred of Jews comes from the left, the right, and certainly also from the “Muslim corner”. “Some are taught it from a young age.”
Oudkerk and the national coordinator then compare anti-Semitism with misogyny, homophobia and ‘ordinary’ racism. The bad thing about anti-Semitism, says Verdoner, is that it is always dismissed as “oversensitive” and “victim behavior.” While, he says, you should always listen to the victim. “If you experience racism, I, as a white man, do not decide whether or not you are discriminated against.” That’s exactly how it often goes.
Hitler and Mussolini crash in the car. Whose fault was it? From the Jews, of course. Old joke, which brings Oudkerk to a not too new insight and a killer conclusion: Jews are the ideal scapegoat. “If they didn’t exist, you’d have to invent them.”