Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Jews Targeted In 41% Of All Racist Attacks In Netherlands

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The prevalence of illegal discrimination against Jews in the Netherlands nearly doubled in 2017, reaching a five-year high that accounts for 41 percent of all xenophobic incidents recorded.

The data appeared in a report published last month by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service of 144 confirmed criminal offenses involving xenophobia handled in 2017 by the judiciary. The cases surveyed include intimidation, vandalism, assault and incitement to hate or violence.

Of the 144 cases surveyed, 42 percent were directed against victims for their “skin color, ethnicity and national or ethnic origins,” the report said. Another 41 percent of incidents were “directed against Jews” — whose proportion of the Dutch population is 0.2 percent. Another seven percent of the 144 incidents were against victims for their “religion or way of life,” including Muslims. Criminal discrimination against homosexuals accounted for eight percent of the 144 cases.

In 2016, discrimination against Jews accounted for 22 percent of the 163 cases upheld by the Dutch judiciary.

In addition to cases of 144 clear-cut criminal discrimination, the report lists 187 cases involving convictions for other offenses where xenophobia was not the main motive, but where it nonetheless featured as an aggravating circumstance. Of those, nine percent involved anti-Semitism and in another nine percent Muslims were targeted for their faith.

Of the more than 60 cases involving direct criminal discrimination against Jews in 2017, more than three quarters were related to soccer. In the Netherlands, anti-Semitic rhetoric is common during soccer matches, in which both supporters of the Ajax team from Amsterdam and the supporters of rival teams refer to Ajax as “Jews.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.