Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Amsterdam Pro-Israel Rally Scrapped Over Terror Worries

Citing security concerns, organizers of a pro-Israel rally in Amsterdam postponed the event indefinitely after meeting with police and city officials.

The rally, which was announced last month as scheduled to take place on January 11, was “postponed because of the current situation in Paris and in coordination with the police, the municipality and security,” members of the Holland4Israel group wrote Friday on their Facebook page. The group did not name a new date.

On Friday, several people were killed when an Islamist took over a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris. Police killed him when they moved in to free more than 20 hostages who survived the attack.

Two men who are believed to have been his accomplices were also killed at the same time in another takeover operation by police at a printing shop north of Paris, where they had been holding one hostage.

The two men, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, are believed to have killed 12 people on Wednesday at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo weekly, which ran numerous cartoons lampooning Islam.

“Currently, safety cannot be guaranteed and we, as an organization, do not wish to see you putting yourselves in danger,” the organizers of the rally from the organization Holland4Israel wrote.

Anti-Semitic attacks have increased in the Netherlands since July, when Israel went to war against Hamas in Gaza over the organization’s repeated targeting of civilians with rockets.

In September, Dutch police reportedly advised the City of The Hague against allowing the erection of a sukkah at a small Jewish-owned housing project that is surrounded by a heavily-Muslim neighborhood.

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.