[LottiFurmann]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...027880,00.html

From news article:
The Dutch government continues to refuse to pay for the security of its threatened Jewish citizens. The Jewish community has stated on various occasions that it is the only group in society which cannot organize activities without including guards or other security measures.

The other week during a debate in a parliamentary commission on the current anti-Semitism in the Netherlands, several MPs asked the Dutch government to pay for the Jews’ security. However, Minister of Security and Justice Ivo Opstelten stuck to the position of his predecessors saying that security is the responsibility of the Jewish community itself and if necessary, of the local authorities. The latter are rarely willing to pay for these expenses.

The Dutch Parliament has existed for almost 200 years. The first plenary meeting ever on contemporary anti-Semitism took place last June after a series of articles in the media about anti-Semitic incidents. One article in the prominent daily NRC Handelsblad was titled: “Anti-Semitism is more than an incident. It is normal.” The fact that a second parliamentary meeting was called for a few months later is a sign that nothing has been solved.

The main targets of anti-Semitic harassment in public are a small number of Jews who are recognizably attired as such. In past weeks, several newspapers have reported that Rabbi Raph Evers, the head of the Dutch Jewish Seminary, no longer travels on public transportation because of the harassment he encounters there. He walks out on the street as little as possible. Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs is also frequently insulted in public. His home is fitted with an alarm system which links him directly to the police. Jacobs says 35 year ago, no one insulted him.

What were not mentioned in the Dutch media are the experiences of those Jews who had been repeatedly harassed and now live elsewhere. One Dutch Jewish youngster living in Jerusalem told me that while he was a student at Amsterdam University, he earned a living working in a supermarket in the center of town. He wore a small yarmulke. He was insulted at work on the average twice a week with calls like: “cancer-Jew” of “Hamas Hamas, Jews to the gas.” All of this harassment came from customers of Moroccan ethnicity.