Explosions keep going off in the Netherlands. Why? Who knows? Who’s behind it? Let’s not talk about that!
The New York Times devotes an entire article to the subject of bombs going off in the Netherlands while bringing slightly less clarity to the matter than trying to read a Chinese crossword puzzle through a microscope after soaking it in vinegar.
European voters are increasingly frustrated at establishment parties ignoring their demands for tougher migration controls. In the Netherlands over the weekend, a group of citizens gathered near the border with Germany near Ter Apel to stop cars and conduct asylum seeker checks themselves.
They decided to take action after ‘centre-right’ coalition parties blocked asylum reforms, prompting Geert Wilders to take his right-wing populist Freedom Party (PVV/PfE) out of the government.
The Dutch government faces collapse after Geert Wilders announced on Tuesday morning that his hard-right Party for Freedom (PVV) has pulled out of the country’s fractious conservative coalition.
On Monday night a coalition meeting failed to agree on tough asylum demands from Wilders, which would breach European Union law. Emergency talks on Tuesday to resolve the situation lasted minutes.
“No signature for our asylum plans,” Wilders said on social media. “PVV leaves the coalition.”
As a former Spitfire pilot who flew 60 missions over Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War, George Brewster is not one to be rattled easily.
But he says experiencing the warmth and gratitude of the Dutch people who have come out to cheer him and other Canadian Second World War veterans this weekend has left him speechless.
Well done.
Police on Saturday said they had arrested a man suspected of fatally stabbing an 11-year-girl in the Dutch town of Nieuwegein.
The girl was attacked in the street at 3:00 pm local time (1400 GMT) and medics were unable to save her life, police said.
ANP news agency reported that police had confirmed that the suspect was originally from Syria.
BREAKING:
An 11-year-old girl was stabbed to death today on the streets of Nieuwegein in the Netherlands today.
The police have arrested a 29-year-old Syrian asylum seeker for the murder pic.twitter.com/bCIIiUr8cB
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) February 1, 2025
The names of around 425,000 people suspected of collaborating with the Nazis during the German occupation of the Netherlands have been published online for the first time.
The names represent individuals who were investigated through a special legal system established towards the end of World War 2. Of them, more than 150,000 faced some form of punishment.
The full records of these investigations were previously only accessible by visiting the Dutch National Archives in The Hague.
Authorities in Amsterdam are grappling with unrest after violent assaults targeting Israeli soccer fans last week sparked outrage around the world and kicked off a charged debate over migration and integration in the Netherlands.
Amsterdam police said they had arrested five more people in connection with last week’s violence, which included targeted assaults on Israeli soccer fans by attackers who chased them through the streets on motorbikes. Four of those remained in custody as of late Monday, police said. Four others detained on Thursday and Friday also remained in custody, the Amsterdam prosecutor’s office said.
Amsterdam vanavond.
Ze roepen “Kankerjoden!”. pic.twitter.com/YlO1lV65DB
— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) November 11, 2024
Wave of violence targeting Israeli soccer fans followed calls to hunt them down on popular messaging apps
AMSTERDAM—Israeli financial adviser Ofek Ziv had just emerged from the metro, heading to the Dutch capital’s central Dam Square with a group of Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans, when he says he was struck in the back of the head with a rock. A firecracker exploded near him. Men in ski masks later appeared, wielding knives and bats.
The assailants, he said, “had fire in their eyes. They want to catch you.”
Ziv and scores of other Maccabi supporters had traveled to the Dutch capital for a match with local team Ajax on Thursday night. Little did they know that, earlier in the day, they had become a topic of discussion on popular messaging apps, where users were calling for a Jodenjacht, or “Jew hunt.”
Renewed clashes in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam vanavond.
Ze roepen “Kankerjoden!”. pic.twitter.com/YlO1lV65DB
— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) November 11, 2024
BREAKING NEWS
Anti-Israeli Muslim gangs are causing chaos in Amsterdam. The Muslim gangs have begun clashing with the police and setting buildings on fire. pic.twitter.com/N6SFQzcJYK
— Europe Invasion (@EuropeInvasions) November 11, 2024
The Netherlands today officially asked the European Commission for an exemption from the EU asylum rules. In a letter, asylum and migration minister Marjolein Faber told the Commission the new government “aims to drastically reduce the volume of migration to the Netherlands” and that this is necessary to “fulfill our constitutional duties—providing for public housing, health care, and education.”
From January 1, 2025 the Dutch government will end payments to failed asylum seekers, with all national government funding of the National Aliens Facility (LVV) to cease next year.
Asylum Minister Marjolein Faber announced:
From January 1, 2025, the state contribution to the accommodation of people who should have left the country long ago will be stopped.
The country’s population has grown by a million in eight years, straining housing and public services
The population of the Netherlands officially passed the 18 million mark this week, but the Dutch are not celebrating as the small country struggles with housing and public service shortages amid growing resentment over immigration.
Immigration from other European Union countries, especially Poland as well as war-torn Ukraine and from Syria, is driving a faster rate of population growth, which has nearly doubled in pace in the last eight years.
Parliamentarians in the Dutch lower house narrowly voted this week to criminalise the chant “from the river to the sea,” which calls for Israel to be wiped off the map. There are questions over how the motion, passed by just 74-73 votes, will be enacted. But more importantly, it strikes at the heart of the debate over the limits of free speech.
Members of Geert Wilders’ populist Party for Freedom said the ban was in response to “a disturbing increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the Netherlands.” The motion adds that “from the river to the sea” comes “right off the Hamas charter and is therefore a call for violence against all Jews worldwide.”
Erik van Sabben released a Stuxnet computer worm that compromised Tehran’s weapons programme. Weeks later, he was dead
A Dutch engineer played the “crucial role” in a mission to sabotage Iran’s nuclear weapons programme with a sophisticated computer virus as part of a US and Israeli mission, without the knowledge of his country’s government.
Erik van Sabben released the “very advanced” computer worm known as Stuxnet into the Natanz underground nuclear plant’s computer systems at the end of 2008, bringing the Iranian nuclear programme to a grinding halt. He was killed in a road accident two weeks later.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -The Dutch government collapsed on Friday after failing to reach a deal on restricting immigration, which will trigger new elections in the fall.
The crisis was triggered by a push by Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD party to limit the flow of asylum seekers to the Netherlands, which two of his four-party government coalition refused to support.
The Dutch farmers’ party has called for a cap on asylum seekers in the Netherlands as polls predicted it would challenge the prime minister’s party to become the country’s strongest political force in a general election.
The Farmers-Citizen Movement (BBB) came from nowhere to become the largest party in all 12 Dutch provinces in regional elections in March after a campaign dominated by large-scale tractor protests against compulsory farm buy-outs to hit EU climate change targets.
