The Hague mayor urged to get tough after anti-Jewish chanting at rally

The Hague’s mayor Jozias van Aartsen is being urged to get tough on anti-Jewish demonstrators after people were heard chanting ‘death to Jews’ at a protest rally in the city on Thursday evening.

During the rally, in which some of the 100 protesters carried pro-Isis flags, Muslim youngsters were heard to shout ‘death to all Jews’, news magazine Elsevier reports.

Esther Voet of the Israel information centre CIDI said on Twitter: ‘people who made themselves unrecognisable, Isis flags, death to Jews and journalists take to safety. The Netherlands 2014.’

Police

Despite the anti-Jewish sentiment in some of the speeches, the police only got involved when a female journalist was verbally attacked by some of the demonstrators, the Telegraph says.

Many of the demonstrators had covered their faces – which is now illegal in Dutch law.

A spokesman for Van Aartsen told local broadcaster Omroep West no boundaries had been overstepped. ‘I have received no signals that was the case,’ the spokesman said.

However, the public prosecution department said in a statement on Friday afternoon it would be examining footage of the rally with an interpreter to assess if the law had been broken.

Earlier this month, Jewish groups met Van Aartsen after participants at another anti-Israel demonstration carried banners equating Israel with the Nazis.

Jewish organisations said they wanted to know why he did not take tough action against the ‘spreading of hatred and calls to violence’.

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