Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Dutch Justice Ministry Employees Claims ISIS is a Zionist Conspiracy

An employee of the Dutch Justice Ministry said the jihadist group ISIS was created by Zionists seeking to give Islam a bad reputation.

Yasmina Haifi, a project leader at the ministry’s National Cyber Security Center, made the assertion Wednesday on Twitter, the De Telegraaf daily reported.

“ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It’s part of a plan by Zionists who are deliberately trying to blacken Islam’s name,” wrote Haifi, who described herself on the social network LinkedIn as an activist for the Dutch Labor party, or PvdA.

She later removed her original message, explaining, “I realize the political sensitivity in connection with my work. That was not my intention.”

Two right-wing lawmakers have asked the ministry how a person with such views reached a prominent position within the ministry. The lawmakers, Joram van Klaveren and Louis Bontes of the VNL faction, asked whether the minister thought Haifi’s employment constituted a security risk.

ISIS, which is considered a terrorist organization in many Western countries, has been in the news in the Netherlands because of a series of pro-ISIS demonstrations in the Hague in July and earlier this month. Some demonstrators called for violence.

Two of the demonstrations, on July 2 and 24, featured calls to kill Jews. When anti-ISIS demonstrators tried to march through the heavily-Muslim neighborhood of Schilderswijk on August 10 to express their disapproval, a crowd of approximately 200 men barricaded the neighborhood’s main street and staged an illegal counter-demonstration in support of ISIS.

When riot police tried to remove the obstacles, some of the local protesters hurled stones at them. Six people were arrested.

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.