A Dutch singer who on Sunday declined to perform at a Jewish event citing “expressions of Zionism” there has claimed police advised him to leave the Netherlands for his safety following threats, but a police source reportedly denied this on Thursday.
“This was a personal decision” of Douwe Bob, the source told De Telegraaf daily. Bob had complained of threats and police were ascertaining their nature when he asked a police representative whether police could 100% guarantee his safety. The officer replied that police cannot make such guarantees and Bob decided to leave, the source said.
“To ensure the safety of my family and myself, we have decided to leave for the time being. On the advice of the police,” Bob wrote on Wednesday on Instagram. “The media and politicians still paint the picture of me refusing to play for children because of their Jewish origin. If I heard that about me I’d honestly be livid too. Fortunately, this is a total lie,” he added.
Police detained on Wednesday a 38-year-old man from Amsterdam who they suspect threatened Bob, the AD newspaper reported.
Douwe, the Netherlands’ 2016 contestant in the Eurovision song contest, refused to play for children at the Jom Ha Votbal sports event in Amsterdam on Sunday, citing “expressions of Zionism on pamphlets and things.” He claimed he was “an Amsterdam Jew in a manner of speaking,” but later explained that he’d only dated a Jewish person in the past.
He also said he’d been pushed and threatened at the event, though witnesses, including the editor-in-chief of the NIW Jewish weekly, Esther Voet, disputed this.
Dilan Yesilgoz, leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD)—the party of former prime minister Mark Rutte—said Douwe’s actions echoed antisemitism from the Nazi era, but then appeared to express regret over this claim.
“Eighty years after ‘Never again,’ it’s happening again. Daily. In Amsterdam. Children are denied a performance because of who they are: Jewish. It won’t even make the news. That’s how common Jew-hatred has become. Pure hatred, in plain sight,” Yesilgoz wrote on X.
On Wednesday, she published on X a 7-minute video in which she said that her tweet “didn’t help focus the conversation” on antisemitism. She also wrote that: “I sometimes react sharply and crudely.” She added that she doesn’t think that Bob is a “Jew hater” but “denying that Jews have a right to have their own country and rejecting Zionism is Jew hatred.”
On X and beyond, many accused Yesilgoz of inciting against Bob and leading to alleged intimidation against him.
Bart Schut, deputy editor-in-chief of the NIW, was among the many commentators who doubted that such threats had happened, citing inconsistencies in Bob’s accounts since Sunday.
“Pathological liar Douwe Bob, who refused to perform for Jewish children, also completely fabricated the police advice to leave the country after ‘threats.’ Not surprising: all antisemites are liars, always,” Schut wrote.