A group that has claimed responsibility for setting off explosions outside Jewish buildings in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Liège appears to be unorganised and was unknown until recently, experts have told broadcaster NOS.
A small explosion went off in the night from Friday to Saturday outside a Jewish school in Amsterdam and a day earlier at a synagogue in Rotterdam. There was a similar explosion in Liège, in Belgium last weekend.
No one was injured and damage was minimal, but the incidents have worried Jewish residents and have been widely condemned by politicians.
Videos shared on social media suggest that one organisation calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyyah is behind the attacks. The explosions appear to have been carried out in a similar way, but Dutch justice minister David van Weel said it is too early to conclude they are linked.
Police are looking at a possible link between the incidents in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Four teenagers have been arrested for the incident at the Rotterdam synagogue and police are looking for two youngsters in connection with the Amsterdam school attack.
“Police and the public prosecution service have of course also seen those videos,” Van Weel said.
Political anthropologist Younes Saramifar from Amsterdam’s VU university said the group was “completely unknown” until this month. “Based on what I have seen, this is absolutely not an organised and coherent group,” he told NOS.
Saramifar said language mistakes in statements accompanying the videos suggest the makers are not native Arabic speakers and may not be part of a trained militant network.
The footage itself also appears amateurish, judging by the camerawork, clothing and behaviour of those involved. “It looks as if it was poorly planned and that they have had no training,” he said.
Newspaper
A statement released with one of the videos referred to the current conflict involving Iran, the United States and Israel, which has led some observers to suggest a possible link with pro-Iranian militant groups.
“Jewish institutions have been targeted before from different directions, so other scenarios cannot be ruled out,” security expert Koen Aartsma from the Clingendael institute told NOS.
Van Weel has also denied social media claims by the Israeli foreign ministry that an “epidemic of anti-semitism is raging” in the Netherlands.
Nevertheless, he said, anti-semitisim is clearly “a growing poblem” and that the first priority is to make sure the security of Jewish institutions and people have been properly taken care of.
