Egyptian and Turkish Cultural Enrichment in the Netherlands

The following two videos highlight two separate reports on the joys of living in the Modern Multicultural Netherlands. Many thanks to C for the translations, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling.

The first video reports on the knifing of two Jewish merchants in a market in Amsterdam. The perpetrator was a fellow merchant from Egypt who had recently become radicalized:

Below are excerpts from an article about the attack published by the The Times of Israel:

A Jewish father and son were stabbed at an iconic street marketplace in Amsterdam by an Egypt-born seller whom they and others said was a radicalised Muslim.

Martin Colmans, the father, and son Sharon sustained light to moderate injuries in the attack Saturday at the Albert Cuyp market, where the Colmans family has been selling furniture for decades. Sharon Colmans, whose mother is from Israel, was injured in his back, chest and arm, and suffered serious blood loss. Both have been released from the hospital.

A police spokesperson told De Telegraaf that they have no comment about the assailant’s alleged motives.

Known locally as Tarik, the alleged stabber has been selling hookahs and other smoking paraphernalia adjacent to the Colmans’ furniture shop since 2004. The stabber, who has not been named in the Dutch media, is under arrest awaiting an indictment.

Martin Colmans told De Telegraaf that the suspect had been away for several months, and that when he returned his behaviour had changed. He said Tarik was “reading the Koran a lot, stopped talking to us. Shaved his head. Prayed all the time. He also began giving us nasty looks.”

He had threatened a fellow seller, a Moroccan man who is not Jewish, with a knife recently, sellers told De Telegraaf of Tarik.

Asked whether he believes the assault was an antisemitic incident, Colmans told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “I don’t know, but he behaved very strangely to us in recent weeks.” Colmans also said he was “happy that we are alive” because Tarik seemed determined to kill them.

The second video is from a TV talk show in which the panelists discuss a liquor store in The Hague that was threatened by Turks for selling a vodka named for the Persian poet Rumi:

Video transcript #1:

00:00   So, you were talking about the motive for this crime. —Last Saturday, I missed it completely,
00:05   in Amsterdam, a stabbing at the Albert Cuyp market,
00:10   in which a man, who had been reported multiple times as having radicalized,
00:14   stabbed a Jewish man and his father,
00:17   Mr Colmans, very popular at the market; fortunately the father —
00:21   he had an arterial bleeding, Martin —
00:25   was saved by a Moroccan-Dutch fellow market salesman, who knew how to apply a tourniquet.
00:34   And it was reported [in the media] as a dispute between neighbours, but
00:39   the market salesmen had contacted police several times, and told them,
00:44   “This man is radicalizing, his behavior is erratic,
00:49   he was praying in front of his shop all the time,” etc.
00:54   And Saturday it escalated. The man slashed the father and son
00:58   with a large knife; people are calling it a sword.
01:02   And the father and son, the whole market knows they are Jewish.
01:09   Yet the Ministry of Public Affairs says there’s nothing to suggest this was terrorism.
01:12   Yes, but I beg to differ. And I hope that Herman Loonstein, the lawyer.
01:20   for the two victims, will initiate a thorough investigation,
01:27   because it was definitely clear the man was totally radicalized.
01:31   And, you know, the thing is, it’s so quickly dismissed, minimised.
01:37   We saw this too with the terrorist attack in Utrecht, it was initially dismissed as honor violence.
01:44   Let’s not jump to conclusions, let’s first find out what exactly happened
01:51   before. It feels like things are swept under the rug.
 

Video transcript #2:

00:00   A wine seller in The Hague is receiving serious threats.
00:03   These are part of a hate campaign coming from Turkey.
00:06   The threats the shopkeeper received were so serious, he even closed his shop down for several days.
00:12   Today, in De Telegraaf [newspaper], he told his story.
00:15   The problems began when he started selling a vodka
00:18   with the name of a 13th-century Persian philosopher.
00:21   Apparently this offended an influential Turkish pundit,
00:26   and he called on his readers to harass this business owner from the Hague.
00:31   Demands for an apology appeared on Turkish-Dutch websites.
00:35   He received terrible phone calls and emails; groups of Turkish-Dutch people dropped by his shop.
00:42   There is now extra camera surveillance on the premises,
00:46   and also police are keeping an eye on that shop.
00:49   [Turkish-Dutch] MP for the VVD Dilan Yesilgöz called the situation bizarre.
00:53   She knows the business owner personally.
00:56   She says that all he wants is to sell good wine and vodka.
01:00   She says this is a free country, and this is unacceptable.
01:04   Yes, Mr Krol, we’ve seen such hate campaigns from Turkey before. —How dangerous is this?
01:09   I find it very dangerous. And especially in this case:
01:13   the liquor is named after the philosopher Rumi, a man who preached tolerance.
01:18   After his death, Jews, Christians and Muslims competed
01:22   for the honor of carrying his body to the grave.
01:25   And to unleash [a harassment campaign] for somebody like this,
01:29   of all people, a champion of tolerance. Bizarre.
01:32   How do we counter this? —Just… crack down on this hard.
01:36   I mean, this is unacceptable. We live in a free country, we determine our norms and values.
01:42   No indoctrination from foreign countries.
01:45   Jean-Paul Heck, what do you think? —I find it shocking.
01:49   Because it’s kind of an hommage to the man, as Mr Krol says. So…
01:54   bizarre that it comes to this, and that it’s so extreme, this criticism and even threats.
01:59   As you said, the man sells a vodka and a nice wine, and that’s it.
 

2 thoughts on “Egyptian and Turkish Cultural Enrichment in the Netherlands

    • I’m sure the victim whose life was saved was grateful.

      It illustrates the point that of course any group of immigrants contains moderate, humane, deserving people. But, can immigration itself be good for society? No. The majority of people coming in, at best, are alien to the culture, and at worst, actively hostile to it.

      One way of approach might be to set an absolute ceiling to the number of immigrants coming in each year: like one hundred. It’s up to the immigration agencies to find the best. If they blow it, and find they missed someone they really wanted, that’s the breaks.

      Another strategy is to require a sponsor for each immigrant. The sponsor would be responsible for any welfare costs or criminal costs incurred by the immigrant. A bond or proof of insurance for this contingency would be required before the immigrant was admitted.

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