Three Dutch hospitals last month have canceled or declined to host lectures by a senior Israeli physician who specializes in intensive care treatment, the Dutch media reported.
Separately, a tour boat operator in Amsterdam said it had fired one of its guides after he cut short a canal excursion for Israeli tourists, reportedly explaining to them last week that he “can’t be around” them.
The incidents are part of a stream of cases of exclusion of Israelis in Western Europe and beyond amid a wave of hostility, which critics say often carries antisemitic undertones, toward the Jewish state over its war on Hamas in Gaza.
Radboud Medical Center, Amsterdam University Medical Center and Leiden University Medical Center have declined a request by their own staff to host a lecture by Dr. Amit Frenkel, head of intensive care at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, about treating victims of multi-casualty events, including terrorist attacks, De Telegraaf reported last week.
In a letter last week explaining to a staffer the decision not to host Frenkel, Radboud Dean professor Jan W.A. Smit, cited “serious concerns” over safety, referencing the possibility of violence by anti-Israel activists. He added: “The topic of medical response to terrorist calamities is indeed an important subject. However, addressing this issue in the context of October 7 places the lecture immediately in the broader tragedy of the Israel-Hamas war,” and cannot be done in a “politically neutral fashion.”
Smit’s stated commitment to neutrality drew ire from Dutch Jews, who noted that the university employs a lecturer, Harry Pettit, who has repeatedly called for violence against Israelis, including in an Aug. 26 tweet in which he wrote: “‘Israel’ will only be dismantled by force.”
Ronny Naftaniel, a former leader of the Central Jewish Board of the Netherlands, criticized Rabdoud on X, writing on Aug. 26 that its administration is “fully in the grip of extremists.” Pettit, Naftaniel wrote, “is free to incite against Israel and Zionism every day (a ‘cancerous tumor’ as he has called the Jewish state).” It is “deeply disturbing” and “incomprehensible that no steps are being taken against university administrators,” Naftaniel added.
In an interview with De Telegraaf, Frenkel said the refusal to host him raises concerns about the politicization of health care.
“I am here as a doctor, not as a politician,” Frenkel said. “When we put on our medical uniform, we leave our opinions behind. It is a shock to feel this hatred.”
In the incident involving the Amsterdam tour operator, Rozit Gad, an Israeli from the Netanya region, and her teenage son told Israel Hayom that the guide became erratic and silent as soon as he heard the passengers were from Israel.
“He started talking about the Holocaust and saying, ‘How dare you do this to another nation.’ Then he said he couldn’t continue the tour, that he couldn’t be in our presence, and told us to get off the boat,” she said.
After leaving the boat midway, Gad complained to the operator, Those Dam Boat Guys, who refunded her, apologized and said they’d fired the guide.
“We were very sorry to hear about the incident and immediately removed the operator in question from our schedule,” the company told Israel Hayom. “The operator sees his actions as a protest against the Israeli government. We see it as discrimination. Whether misguided or not, his behavior violated our core value of tolerance.”
