THE HAGUE: Dutch parliamentarians clashed Wednesday in a heated debate to discuss the attacks on Israeli fans after a football match last week, with some lawmakers pointing fingers and others urging unity.
The Netherlands is still dealing with the political fallout from last week’s violence in Amsterdam, when fans of Tel Aviv Maccabi were assaulted by men on scooters in several parts of the capital.
Five Macabi fans were briefly hospitalized after being beaten up following a match with the local Ajax team last Thursday, in what Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof termed an incident of “unadulterated anti-Semitism.”
After the match, groups of men on scooters engaged in “hit-and-run” attacks on Maccabi fans in areas of the city.
Police said the attackers were mobilized by calls on social media to target Jewish people.
Far-right MP Geert Wilders, leader of the biggest party in the coalition government, said the perpetrators of the violence against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were “all Muslims” and “for the most part Moroccans.”
The anti-Islam Wilders called for the attackers to be prosecuted “for terrorism.”
“For the first time since the Second World War there was a hunt on Jews,” Wilders said, adding “I am sick of being criticized when I tell the truth.”
But the firebrand MP drew the ire of opposition parties, who accused him of “adding fuel to fire.”
While unanimously condemning the violence, left-wing parties have called for dialogue with the Muslim community instead of “dividing the country.”
“I share the condemnation of the violence in Amsterdam and yes, there was indeed anti-Semitic violence,” left-wing opposition leader Frans Timmermans said.
“You are simply stoking the fires while this country has a need for politicians to unite people and find solutions,” Timmermans told Wilders.
Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema on Tuesday called the attacks a “poisonous cocktail” of anti-Semitism and hooliganism.
Events ahead of the match heightened tensions, including anti-Arab chants by Maccabi fans, who also set fire to a Palestinian flag on the city’s central square and vandalising a taxi.
After the match, which passed off peacefully, reports emerged of social media calls to attack Jews, Amsterdam police said.
The violence took place against the backdrop of an increasingly polarized Europe, with heightened tensions following a rise in antisemitic, anti-Israeli and Islamophobic attacks since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
The Dutch PM indicated that the government would present concrete steps to tackle antisemitism on Friday.
Eight people remained in custody over the violence.
Heated debate on Amsterdam violence in Dutch parliament
https://arab.news/4575t
Heated debate on Amsterdam violence in Dutch parliament
- The Netherlands is still dealing with the political fallout from last week’s violence in Amsterdam
- Far-right MP Geert Wilders said the perpetrators of the violence against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were “all Muslims” and “for the most part Moroccans“
Investigators not ruling out sabotage in Air India crash
- Air India’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed soon after take-off from Ahmedabad on June 12
- Minister of state for civil aviation says probe materials include 30 days of city CCTV footage
NEW DELHI: Indian investigators are not ruling out sabotage in connection with the crash of the London-bound Air India flight that killed at least 260 people earlier this month, a minister has said, as officials began examining the plane’s black box.
The London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in the western Indian state of Gujarat on June 12.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation has confirmed that investigators had recovered from the crash site both components of the black box — the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — and brought them to the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau in New Delhi last week.
“Right now, the investigation is ongoing. But this is a rare incident. It has never happened before that both the engines got shut at the same time,” Murlidhar Mohol, minister of state for civil aviation, told the media on Saturday evening.
He did not dismiss the possibility of “sabotage” when New Delhi Television asked if it was being considered.
“We are investigating it from all angles to find out what was the cause of this accident,” Mohol said.
“We are looking at CCTV footage of Ahmedabad over the last 30 days, (of) those who came, those who went through screening, all the passports — we are probing it from all the angles.”
Data from the black box has been downloaded and the final report was expected in three months.
“Was it due to a bird strike, was there some technical issue with the engine, was there a fuel-supply issue, why both the engines shut down at the same time ... we will know only after the investigation,” the minister said, adding that the black box would be investigated domestically and “there is no need to send it abroad.”
The Air India flight was carrying 242 people — 230 passengers, two pilots and 10 crew members. Only one person, a British national sitting in an emergency exit seat, survived the crash.
It was initially unclear how many more people were killed on the ground as the aircraft fell on the B. J. Medical College and hostel for students and resident doctors of the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital.
After two weeks of DNA testing, authorities in Gujarat state announced on Saturday the final toll, saying they had recovered 260 bodies.
The number is lower than the initial number reported by the Junior Doctors’ Association at the B. J. College, whose president told the media a day after the crash that the hospital had received the bodies of 270 victims.
Bus crash blaze kills 38 in Tanzania
DAR ES SALAAM: A collision between a bus and minibus in Tanzania has killed 38 people after both vehicles were set on fire by the crash, the presidency said Sunday.
The accident in Sabasaba, in the Kilimanjaro region, on Saturday evening occurred after one of the bus’s tires punctured, causing the driver to lose control.
“A total of 38 people died in the crash, including two women,” a presidency statement said, adding that 28 others were wounded.
“However, due to the extent of the burns, 36 bodies remain unidentified,” the presidency said.
Six of the injured were still in hospital for treatment, it added.
Deadly crashes are frequent on Tanzania’s roads.
In a 2018 report, the World Health Organization estimated that 13,000 to 19,000 people in Tanzania were killed in traffic accidents in 2016, far higher than the government’s official toll of 3,256.
EU must be more assertive with Israel: Ex-foreign policy chief
- Josep Borrell: Europe has been ‘relegated to the sidelines’ in mediating conflict
- Country ‘carrying out the largest ethnic-cleansing operation since end of Second World War’
LONDON: The EU must adopt a more assertive posture against Israel over its violations of international law in Gaza, Josep Borrell, the bloc’s former foreign policy chief, has said.
In an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, Borrell argued that the EU has a “duty” to intervene over the humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian enclave, The Guardian reported.
Rather than relying on the US to bring an end to the war, Europe must launch its own plan, he said.
The article was co-authored with Kalypso Nicolaidis, a Franco-Greek academic who has advised the EU.
“Europe can no longer afford to linger at the margin. The EU needs a concerted plan,” the two authors said.
“Not only is Europe’s own security at stake, but more important, European history imposes a duty on Europeans to intervene in response to Israel’s violations of international law.
“Europeans cannot stay the hapless fools in this tragic story, dishing out cash with their eyes closed.”
Borrell’s successor, Kaja Kallas, said last week that it was “very clear” Israel had breached its human rights commitments during its war on Gaza.
However, the “concrete question” remains the choice of action EU member states can agree on in response, she added.
Last month, 17 EU member states, in protest against Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza, triggered a review of the bloc’s association agreement with Israel, which covers trade and other cooperation.
Borrell last month accused Tel Aviv of “carrying out the largest ethnic-cleansing operation since the end of the Second World War.”
Europe’s inconsistent response to the humanitarian crisis can be partly explained by the reluctance of some countries — including Germany, Hungary and Austria — to take action against Israel for historical reasons, Borrell and Nicolaidis wrote.
Yet there are ways for other EU member states to take action without requiring a continent-wide consensus, they said, highlighting the EU’s financial leverage and the utility of European programs for Israel, including the Erasmus student exchange scheme.
EU member states could also invoke Article 20 of the EU’s treaty to “allow for at least nine member states to come together to utilize certain foreign policy tools not related to defense,” they wrote.
“Because such an action has never been taken before, those states would have to explore what (it) … would concretely allow them to do,” the Foreign Affairs article said.
The EU has been rendered ineffective in applying pressure due to disunity, the two authors said, arguing that the bloc should act as a powerful mediator in the Middle East.
“Some EU leaders cautiously backed the International Criminal Court’s investigations, while others, such as Austria and Germany, have declined to implement its arrest warrants against Israeli officials,” they wrote.
“And because EU member states, beginning with Germany and Hungary, could not agree on whether to revisit the union’s trade policy with Israel, the EU continues to be Israel’s largest trading partner.
“As a result, the EU, as a bloc, has been largely relegated to the sidelines, divided internally and overshadowed in ceasefire diplomacy by the US and regional actors such as Egypt and Qatar. Shouldn’t the EU also have acted as a mediator?”
Ukraine on track to withdraw from Ottawa anti-personnel mines treaty, lawmaker says
KYIV: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a decree on the country’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, which bans the production and use of anti-personnel mines, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker said on Sunday.
Ukraine ratified the convention in 2005 and a parliamentary decision is needed to withdraw from the treaty.
The document is not yet available on the website of the president’s office.
“This is a step that the reality of war has long demanded. Russia is not a party to this Convention and is massively using mines against our military and civilians,” Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukraine parliament’s committee on national security, defense and intelligence, said on his Facebook page.
“We cannot remain tied down in an environment where the enemy has no restrictions,” he added, saying that the legislative decision must definitively restore Ukraine’s right to effectively defend its territory.
Russia has intensified its offensive operations in Ukraine in recent months, using significant superiority in manpower.
Kostenko did not say when the issue would be debated in parliament.
Germany seeks Israeli partnership on cyberdefense, plans ‘cyber dome’
BERLIN: Germany is aiming to establish a joint German-Israeli cyber research center and deepen collaboration between the two countries’ intelligence and security agencies, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said on Sunday.
Germany is among Israel’s closest allies in Europe, and Berlin has increasingly looked to draw upon Israel’s defense expertise as it boosts its military capabilities and contributions to NATO in the face of perceived growing threats from Russia and China.
“Military defense alone is not sufficient for this turning point in security. A significant upgrade in civil defense is also essential to strengthen our overall defensive capabilities,” Dobrindt said during a visit to Israel, as reported by Germany’s Bild newspaper.
Dobrindt, who was appointed by new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last month, arrived in Israel on Saturday.
According to the Bild report, Dobrindt outlined a five-point plan aimed at establishing what he called a “Cyber Dome” for Germany, as part of its cyberdefense strategy.
Earlier on Sunday, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soeder called for the acquisition of 2,000 interceptor missiles to equip Germany with an “Iron Dome” system similar to Israel’s short-range missile defense technology.
