Following the arrests, older footage surfaced of three males hitting a 14-year-old boy and telling him to say "Free Palestine."
Police in Antwerp, Belgium, arrested six people on Sunday, including a 17-year-old, on suspicion of conspiring to attack Jews from the city’s heavily haredi community.The suspects were apprehended after exchanging messages on social media following the assault of dozens of Israelis in Holland’s capital of Amsterdam, Belgian police officials told De Morgen daily on Monday.
The incident in Antwerp coincided with concern that the assaults in the Netherlands—the country’s biggest series of antisemitic assaults in decades—mark the beginning of a new wave of coordinated attacks by Muslims in Europe against their Jewish neighbors.
“Some young individuals agreed to perpetrate a similar action in Antwerp in the Jewish Quarter, which is why we heightened security,” the city’s police commissioner Wouter Bruyns told De Morgen.
Following the arrests, footage of the beating of a haredi Jew in Antwerp in October surfaced on social media on Sunday. It shows three males following a Haredi male, shouting “Free Palestine” and beating him.
The victim is 14 years old, according to Michael Freilich, a Jewish federal lawmaker from Antwerp. The family did not file a police complaint “as this is a regular occurrence in town,” he told JNS on Monday.
The teenager received bruises from the beating. His family has decided to file a police complaint following the video’s surfacing, Freilich said.
Separately, the Dutch parliament is set to hold an emergency debate on Tuesday on last week’s assaults in Amsterdam. At least 100 young Muslim men participated in the preplanned attacks on Israeli soccer fans leaving a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local Ajax team. Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the event a “pogrom,” as did many local Jews including Herman Loonstein, a prominent lawyer.
Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom, the largest party in the Netherlands and part of the ruling coalition, demanded that the perpetrators be deported. He also demanded an emergency debate to discuss how the assaults were made possible and again after hearing that all 62 detainees in police custody were arrested before or after the assaults, but none during them. He also called the incident a “pogrom.”
Israel’s National Security Council on Sunday advised Israelis not to travel to international soccer matches in Europe this week. Kan News reported Friday that the Mossad intelligence service had warned Dutch authorities of a threat to Israelis and Jews in the Netherlands ahead of the soccer game.
But Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel denied this on Monday, the AD news site reported.
The Israeli national team will compete against France in Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, on Thursday, in a UEFA Nations League match.
