Anti-Semtisim increasing in secondary schools, history teachers say

There has been a clear increase in anti-Semitism in Dutch secondary schools since October 7, history teachers said in a survey by the Nederlands Dagblad. They mentioned drawings of swastikas on school desks, remarks about the Hitler salute, and even Holocaust denial.

The newspaper surveyed about 250 history teachers at secondary schools throughout the country. They completed a questionnaire about the Holocaust and the current war in Israel and Gaza. About half of the respondents teach at a public school, and almost a fifth work at a “mixed school,” with between 25 and 75 percent ethnically diverse students. The private school teachers mostly teach at some denomination of Christian schools.

A quarter of teachers have noticed an increase in anti-Semitism since the war broke out. In “mixed schools,” 46 percent of teachers reported an increase. In schools with predominantly white Dutch students, it was 13 percent. In these schools, just as many teachers reported an increase in Islamophobia.

Esme Oosterveen, a history teacher in a Christian school in Meppel, sometimes gets provocative “jokes” from students, like questions about what would happen if they do the Hitler salute. “I immediately told the student that it is a punishable offense in the Netherlands and that he will no longer be welcome in class if he does that.” She’s also found a swastika drawn on a school bench. “I took a photo of it and showed it to the students in my class. I asked them: do you know what this is? Why would you draw this? I hope I got them thinking.”

A teacher in Amsterdam likes to start lessons on the Second World War with a question. “Imagine: a Jewish friend shows up at your door and asks if you can hide him. What would you do? When I asked that question to a boy in one of my classes, he responded fiercely: ‘I don’t have a Jewish friend, what do you think?! This is not my problem.’” Still, the problems aren’t too bad at his school, he said. “In the context of the Holocaust, we had a guest speaker, a Jewish woman. Her grandfather had survived the death march in Auschwitz. She said that a student at a school in Amsterdam Nieuw-West had shouted at her, ‘All Jews must die!’”

Rob Roenhorst, who teaches at a Christian high school in Apeldoorn, notices that students quickly link lessons about the Holocaust with the current war in Israel and Gaza. “I think it’s great to talk about that. But I do find it problematic when it happens based on unreliable sources in combination with strong emotions. There are students who consistently call Jews ‘those Zios.’ And I had a girl in my class who even denied that the Holocaust happened.”

The teachers’ observations fit into a broader trend of more anti-Semitism throughout society, Eddo Verdoner, the National Coordinator for Combating Anti-Semitism, told the newspaper. He thinks the teachers need to take immediate action if students make provocative comments like those mentioned by the teachers. “Zios is a well-known term to insult Jews as a group. You do not see people as individuals but revile them as a nation. In such a case, a teacher must immediately indicate that this behavior is not normal. If it happens again, the school should take action.”

Verdoner thinks that social media has made young people more susceptible to anti-Semitism. “Some children already get a phone when they are nine years old and can be confronted with disinformation, horrible images, and also with hatred of Jews via social media. While they are still young and vulnerable. It seems as if inhibitions are disappearing more and more among young people. I recently heard about a Jewish student being verbally abused by another student on the grounds of camp Westerbork. I really wonder: how could we let it get to this point?”

On October 7, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas committed multiple terrorist attacks in Israel, killing around 1,137 people. Israel immediately responded in force and has been incessantly bombing the Gaza Strip ever since.

As of 10:50 a.m. on April 4, Israeli attacks have killed at least 33,037 people in Gaza, Al Jazeera reported based on figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The dead include more than 13,000 children and 8,400 women. Over 75,668 people in Gaza are injured, and more than 8,000 are missing.