Amsterdam Protest Calls for Tougher Dutch Action on Israel, Organizers and Amnesty Differ on Turnout

A mass rally in Amsterdam called on the Dutch authorities to take more decisive action against Israel. According to the Dutch branch of Amnesty International, more than 200,000 people joined the protest. No official estimate of turnout was provided, and the article’s headline describes the crowd as tens of thousands.

Several speakers at the rally have been accused of links to the terrorist organization Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups, according to Dutch News. Those named include Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the international BDS movement, which seeks to pressure Israel over its policies toward Palestinians, and Medhat Alamawi of the Palestinian Community in the Netherlands, who is linked to the activist group Utrecht4Palestine. Claims of this kind call for careful testing before they are repeated as settled fact, a matter of weighing a claim fairly before answering it (Proverbs 18:17).

In late September, the Dutch government banned the import of goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. In response, Israel’s Foreign Ministry stripped Dutch representatives in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority is based, of their diplomatic status. The Netherlands has not officially recognized the State of Palestine, unlike a number of other European countries.

Accusations of genocide in the Gaza Strip continue to be made, and Israel consistently rejects them. In October, the UN’s independent international commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territories stated that Israeli authorities and forces continue to commit genocide in the Gaza Strip despite the ceasefire reached in October of the previous year. Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva rejected the report, calling it an attempt to destroy the Jewish state.

The war in the Gaza Strip began in October 2023, when militants from the terrorist movement Hamas and its allies killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an attack on southern Israel and abducted another 251. Israel then launched a large-scale military operation.

Source: Read the original report