Man holding Palestinian flag smashes windows of kosher restaurant in Amsterdam

Police are investigating the smashing of windows of a kosher restaurant in Amsterdam by a man wearing a Palestinian flag.

The incident at HaCarmel restaurant occurred on Thursday morning.

The AT5 television station showed a video of the incident, in which a man holding a large stick while holding a Palestinian flag and wearing a Palestinian keffiyah on his head, proceeds to smash the window and kick down the restaurant’s doors as passersby and two police officers look on. The officers wait until he breaks into the restaurant. They pause as he returns out to the street from the restaurant’s interior holding an Israeli flag that he took from there. He throws it at their feet. They then overpower the man and arrest him.

Contacted by JTA, an employee at HaCarmel declined to comment on the circumstances of the incident, which the Federative Jewish Netherlands group reported online with a pictures of a Dutch police officer kneeling in front of a shattered glass window, with a Star of David hanging on the restaurant’s wall in the background.

“Shocking! It is unbelievable that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is playing out here, and against the Jewish Dutch community,” the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, which is the Dutch Jewish community’s watchdog on antisemitic incidents, tweeted.

Police beefed up their presence around the restaurant and other Jewish institutions in the capital following the incident.

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