Schijndel – Dutch Chief
Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs called on authorities to identify and punish high school
pupils who during their graduation ceremony sang about burning Jews.
The incident happened
last week during the graduation gala of the Elde College in the town of Schijndel,
70 miles southeast of Amsterdam, the Brabants Dagblad daily reported on
Wednesday.
As they approached the
party, several graduates sang: “Together we’ll burn Jews, because Jews burn the
best.”
The phrase is part of a
chant heard several times in recent years during soccer matches connected to
the Amsterdam’s Ajax football team, whose players and supporters are often
dubbed “Jews” because of the historic Jewish presence in the city, which is
sometimes colloquially called “Mokum” after the Yiddish word for “place.” But
the gala incident had nothing to do with soccer.
The student body and
organizing committee of the Elde College gala expressed their sincere apologies
for the incident, but Jacobs said the guilty parties “must be prosecuted for
hate speech.”
The frequency of antisemitic
chants and other hate crimes “means Dutch Jews are less inclined to report hate
crimes, when they occur around them all the time,” Jacobs told JTA. His home in
Amersfoort has been attacked five times in recent years, especially during
periods of unrest in Israel.
