‘You Should All Be Shot,’ Man Tells Jewish Woman In Amsterdam
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A Jewish woman from Amsterdam told police that a man shouted at her and her children that they “should all be shot” and called them “cancer Jews” before getting into a taxi cab.
The incident occurred Wednesday in the heavily-Jewish Buitenveldert neighborhood of Amsterdam, the Het Parool daily reported based on a complaint to police by the 28-year-old woman, who was not named in the media, with help from the Federative Jewish Netherlands organization.
A witness wrote down the taxi’s license plate and gave it to police, who are investigating the incident, the report said. Police would not say whether the suspect implicated in the incident is a taxi driver or passenger.
Federative Jewish Netherlands on Twitter wrote on Thursday that the taxi belong to TCA, one of Amsterdam’s largest taxi companies. The firm is now also investigating the incident internally, the report said. In 2010, a TCA driver, a Dutch citizen of Turkish descent, placed red stickers on the side of his Mercedes car reading “Israel = terror country/state.” He was fired following that action.
Discrimination against Jews in the Netherlands nearly doubled in 2017, reaching a five-year high that accounts for 41 percent of all the xenophobic incidents recorded, according to a report published earlier this year by the the Dutch Public Prosecution Service. It listed 144 confirmed criminal offenses last year involving xenophobia, including intimidation, vandalism, assault and incitement to hate or violence.
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
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.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO