Dutch lawmaker who fled Turkey says pro-Palestinian protests turned anti-Semitic

Dilan Yezilgöz, a Kurdish-origin Dutch lawmaker who fled Turkey in 1980’s, urged the Netherlands’ justice minister to take action against anti-Semitic behaviour at protests in the country.

“Some of the demonstrations were more anti-Jewish than pro-Palestine,” Yezilgöz said in a radio interview,  Algemeiner magazine reported on Thursday.

Last weekend, Muslim protestors chanted Islamist slogans referring to the battle of Khaybar in Arabia between Muslims and Jews in the year 628, in demonstrations held in several Dutch cities, Algemeiner said.

Since the flare-up of clashes between Israel and Hamas on May 9, anti-Israel protests have been held in several European cities with protesters chanting anti-Israeli slogans and burning Israeli flags.

Yezilgöz asked Dutch Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus if he has any plans to prevent any similar displays. “If you allow antisemitism and trivialise it, you are saying to everyone who stands for freedom, go figure it out yourself,” she said.

Pro-Palestinian protestors drove through Jewish neighbourhoods in north London last week threatening to “kill the f__ Jews” and “rape their daughters,” Algemeiner said.

On Monday, Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of the German state of Bavaria held Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan partially responsible for “the anti-Semitic” protests in his country.

"These protests are predominated not by the far right, but rather by those who are Muslim oriented and provoked by the brutal speeches of Erdoğan and others who believe that clashes must spread to the German streets," he said.