Rioters chant against ‘Jewish murderers’ in Muslim Dutch neighborhood

Cnaan Liphshiz

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Dozens of people chanted anti-Semitic slogans during riots that broke out in a predominantly-Muslim neighborhood of The Hague over the slaying of a suspect by police.

More than 100 people chanted about “Jewish murderers” on Thursday night in the Schilderswijk, a neighborhood where a handful of Jews live in a Jewish-owned enclave surrounded by project apartments populated by low-income families, according to a report on the The Post Online.

The riots took place at a theater stormed by protesters approximately a mile away from the enclave, the De Telegraaf daily reported.

More than 200 people were arrested since protests broke out in the Schilderswijk over the death of Mitch Henriquez, an Aruban citizen, at the hands of police officers who suffocated him during his arrest at a park.

The Schilderswijk has one of the highest crime rates in the Netherlands. Last year, the neighborhood saw riots that broke out on the margins of rallies in support of the ISIS terror group and featured its flags. Protesters hurled stones at riot police during an anti-ISIS march last year. During Israel’s war in Gaza, at least two demonstrations in Schilderswijk against Israel featured calls to slaughter the Jews.

The Jewish-owned enclave was purchased in the 19th century by the Jewish community to accommodate impoverished Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe. But the Jewish population of The Hague was almost totally annihilated during the Holocaust. The area around it became populated by families of migrant workers in the 1960s and 1970s. The city is now believed to have a few hundred Jews.

Lody van Der Kamp, a Dutch rabbi who has spoken out on the need to facilitate dialog between Muslims and Jews, wrote in an op-ed for the Joodse Omroep Jewish broadcaster Thursday that “when the calm returns, it is time to take these young men by the hand and show them their own Schilderswijk’s history.”