A judge in The Hague last week dismissed the legal defense of an asylum seeker from Gaza who had claimed that his destruction of a wreath for Holocaust survivors last year was not motivated by antisemitism.
The defendant, Muayad A., and another man destroyed the wreath in November at Rabbi Maarsen Square in The Hague on Nov. 9, 2024, the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms against Jews in Germany, Austria and parts of France in 1938.
The trial of Muayad A. is taking place amid heightened awareness of antisemitic violence in the Netherlands following the events of Nov. 7, 2024. On that day, hundreds of Arabs and Muslims were implicated in the coordinated assaults of dozens of Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam.
Two days after those events, Muayad A. kicked the freshly-laid flower arrangement in The Hague and screamed in Arabic about Jews and Israel before hurling the object in the air, according to the prosecution. The defendant is also standing trial for a violent incident and two acts of theft.
The prosecution requested a prison sentence of 120 days for the incident, but the defendant’s lawyer said this was excessive for what he argued was a minor act of vandalism that the defendant perpetrated without realizing the Jewish and historical connotations of the wreath.
“It must have been absolutely clear that this is a Jewish monument,” the judge said last week of the site, which features a large Star of David monument. “Given your own background, you come from Gaza, I assume an antisemitic motive and I will take that into account as an aggravating factor,” broadcaster Omroep West quoted the judge as telling the defendant in court on Thursday.
The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, Dutch Jewry’s watchdog on antisemitism, recorded 379 antisemitic incidents in 2023, more than double the tally for the previous year and an all-time record high. The CIDI report for 2024 has not yet been published.
The increase in antisemitic incidents in the Netherlands corresponded to similar increases across Western Europe in connection with the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Thousands of Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people in Israel on that day and abducted another 251, triggering a military campaign by Israel in Gaza.
