The cancellation of a Hanukkah concert organized by the Jewish community of Amsterdam has sparked a major international controversy. The local concert hall justified its decision by citing the participation of Lieutenant Colonel Shai Abramson, chief cantor of the Israel Defense Forces, provoking outrage among Dutch Jews and fierce criticism from Israeli authorities.
Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Zvi Aviner-Vapni, immediately condemned the cancellation. “In Israel, military service is a duty for everyone, because we must defend our democracy and our people. By excluding an artist because of his service, the government betrays its own stated mission of uniting through music,” he said, calling the decision “shameful and appalling.”
The ambassador went on to denounce what he considers blatant hypocrisy. “This discrimination is not a matter of culture. It is more like a concession to a hateful mob,” he stated.
The debate took a particularly sensitive turn when Dutch lawyer Oscar Hammerstein, of Jewish origin, revealed that the concert hall director’s grandfather had personally signed the 1940 decree, under Nazi occupation, expelling Jews from public office in the Netherlands. This revelation added a disturbing historical dimension to the ongoing controversy.
Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli issued a scathing statement that went viral in the Netherlands. “75% of Dutch Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Out of 140,000 Jews, 102,000 were killed, most of them at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Sobibor. And yet, human nature does not change, and perhaps the character of this place has not changed either,” the minister wrote.
Chikli emphasized that the current Dutch Jewish community, numbering around 35,000, continues to struggle to live openly and without fear. He recalled that just last year, Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters were violently attacked by “jihadist groups” who had taken control of the streets of Amsterdam.
The minister also referred to the recent Dutch national elections at the end of October. “The Dutch voted and chose clearly left-wing parties, many of which adopt a deeply hostile position towards the State of Israel, like the far-left party,” Chikli wrote.
He then issued a solemn warning to the Dutch Jewish community. “The Netherlands is now rapidly following in Belgium’s footsteps, becoming a country where Jews are no longer safe and are increasingly forced to conceal their identity in public. It is with sorrow that I say to the Jews of the Netherlands: think carefully about your future in a country that seems hardly concerned with protecting your lives, your rights, and your identity.”
The minister’s statement has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times and shared over a thousand times, notably by Dutch MP Claudia van Zanten. She added a poignant personal account: “In April 2024, the sister of one of my closest friends left Amsterdam for Israel with her family because she saw no future for Jews in the Netherlands. She told me, ‘The situation is only getting worse, and I’m not going to wait.’ Unfortunately, she was right. I completely understand Chikli’s statement. The Netherlands has learned nothing from the past and is once again abandoning the Jewish people.”
