Ex-undersecretary Nora Achahbar, who was born in Morocco, quit after right-wing pol Geert Wilders called for the deportation of those behind the Nov. 7 assaults, “most of whom” were Moroccan.
By JNS
A senior Dutch official resigned on Friday due to what she said were “polarizing attitudes” connected to the recent mass assaults by Arabs on Israelis in Amsterdam.
The resignation of Morocco-born Nora Achahbar as undersecretary for social benefits and customs underlined how the Nov. 7 assaults are widening pre-existing divisions on immigration and the rule of law between rightists and centrists in the country’s ruling coalition.
Achahbar did not cite an example or concrete manifestation in the resignation letter she sent to the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, on Friday.
“The polarizing attitudes of recent weeks have impacted me to the degree that I no longer can or wish to fulfill my position,” she wrote.
The resignation prompted speculation of a coalition crisis between Achahbar’s centrist New Social Contract party and the remaining three coalition partners, which are right-leaning, including the Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders. However, 48 hours after the resignation the coalition seemed no shakier than before.
A woman kneels at an anti-Israel protest rally at Dam Square in Amsterdam on May 16, 2021. Photo by Canaan Lidor.
Achahbar is one of 16 undersecretaries working under 13 cabinet ministers in the current government.
The Nov. 7 assaults were the Netherlands’ largest-scale antisemitic attack since the Holocaust, and to many echoed scenes that played out in Amsterdam and other European capitals in the leadup to the genocide. Many in the Netherlands, including Wilders, called it a pogrom.
“No more Jew hunts in this country, I will not accept it. And the perpetrators—most of them Moroccans—need to be punished very hard, their Dutch citizenship stripped from them and deported,” Wilders tweeted on Wednesday.
Whereas politicians like Wilders, who has spoken about the Nov. 7 assaults dozens of times in the media, remained outspoken in their outrage over these events, others have promoted a narrative shift.
Within days after the attacks, left-wing and pro-immigration politicians began presenting a version of events in which Maccabi fans had instigated the violence. Others claimed that their provocative chanting about letting the Israel Defense Forces win and “f**k the Arabs,” as some fans were filmed singing, invited attack.
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema, a former leader of the left-wing D66 party, in a debate last week juxtaposed those chants with the pre-planned assaults, which were coordinated in real time via instant messaging and which Israel’s Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism ministry said featured people and groups connected to Hamas.
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema speaks at a press conference about antisemitic violence in her city, Nov. 8, 2024. Credit: The Municipality of Amsterdam.
In some cases during the assault, victims were forced to say “Free Palestine” while on their knees before being beaten up. In others, Israelis jumped into canals to escape violence.
One man was filmed trying to stay afloat in a freezing canal as a man with a Moroccan accent told him: “Say ‘free Palestine’ then we go.” When the victim said this, several men standing over the canal could be heard laughing.
Some 25 Maccabi fans were injured, their wounds ranging from moderate to minor.
Last week, despite a municipal ban on demonstrations, dozens of anti-Israel protesters gathered at Dam Square in Amsterdam, where many of the assaults happened. They clashed with police and chanted “Say ‘Free Palestine,’ then we go” at police officers. The illegal protest was one of several since Nov. 7.
The assaults have been widely celebrated online; at a concert last week at Amsterdam’s iconic Paradiso music venue, St. Levant, a rapper who was born in Gaza and grew up in Jordan, thanked the “Moroccans for what they did.”