OCTOBER 7: Cunning Halsema Has Plotted Entire Script in Advance

reading time: 11 minutes

It was another chaotic day in Amsterdam. The riot police, which were present in large numbers, were looking for confrontations with pro-Palestine demonstrators. Halsema’s goal was to escalate it and for that she used agent provocateurs.

In the Nieuwsuur report, an ‘activist’ was asked why they were demonstrating today. The activist gave an incoherent answer, while it is actually very simple: because today the genocide started exactly one year ago. So October 7 is not exclusively the day of the Israeli victims.

And yes, the Jews may also commemorate their deaths, but what those people at the Dam Square also stood for is supporting the genocide. There were plenty of riot police present, mainly to protect these pro-genocide demonstrators. If we are to believe mayor Halsema, there were 4 platoons; one platoon has 54 officers. Although Halsema has every reason to downplay the number of riot police officers, she admits that the maximum number of riot police, spread across the country, was present.

The pro-Palestine demonstration started at 2:00 PM at the designated location, the Damrak, which is the road to the Dam Square. The pro-genocide demonstration was to start there at 4:00 PM, which was organized by the fundamentalist Christian party SGP.
A number of incidents occurred during those two hours: Zionists with an Israeli flag provoked by walking to the Dam Square via the Damrak. If provocation was not their intention, they should have taken the metro from Central Station to Rokin, which is a 2-minute walk from Dam Square. They could also have walked without a flag. Some Palestine protesters wanted to take the flag, but were immediately treated to beatings by the riot police and where the riot police were not present, the (agent) provocateurs were protected by undercover agents, see video below.

These incidents apparently prompted the mayor to push the protesters towards Central Station, to Prins Hendrikkade. At that point, the counter-demonstration was no longer within sight and hearing distance, a legal requirement. There, the protesters were surrounded by riot police from three sides, including officers on boats. Why such an excessive measure? You are not allowed to simply lock up a group of people without giving a reason. If it was for safety reasons, the demonstration could have been banned. This was absolutely an illegal action about which the media is totally silent about. The fact that there were also police officers on boats indicates that the enclosure was a pre-organised action; simply because you can’t just stand on a boat spontaneously.
After an hour, a police officer with a megaphone shouted that everyone had to move further back to clear the tram track while there were no trams running. Before the demonstrators could even respond, the riot police started beating them up and spraying them with water. The tram track was cleared so that the police vans could drive there; they drove to Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, the other road towards Dam Square. At about the same time, people saw the large bus of the Zionists passing by towards Dam Square. This was a ‘aha-moment’ for many people: we were being encircled to guarantee the safety of those SGP fundamentalists.
After being encircled for about 1.5 hours, a police officer with a megaphone shouted that the demonstration had been disbanded by order of mayor Halsema. Remarkably, it was only dissolved after the activists had been detained for 1.5 hours. It could have been earlier, if it was for safety reasons.
The demonstrators had to leave but were not allowed to walk towards Dam Square. It was then around 5:30 PM, half an hour before the ‘commemoration’ on Dam Square would end.
The enclosed group of demonstrators then marched towards Dam Square until they came across the riot police line who again used their rubber truncheons, to subsequently arrest all the demonstrators present, around 250.

To summarize the above briefly: at 2:00 PM the counter-demonstration started. A number of incidents occurred in which Zionists were waving Israeli flags in the area that had been designated as a demonstration location for the pro-Palestine activists.
The riot police chased this counter-demonstration towards the Prins Hendrikplein and at 4:00 PM, exactly when the ‘commemoration’ began, the group was surrounded without requisition or warning. For an hour and a half, until the mayor banned the counter-demonstration. So the anti-genocide demonstrators were illegally surrounded for the entire ‘commemoration’ and could not move.
What conclusions can we draw from this? Why did a number of Zionists start waving the Israeli flag in the midst of the Palestine demonstrators? Then you are putting yourself in danger, aren’t you? Normally yes, but not this time, since an army of police officers were present. These incidents were reason for Halsema to say that the demonstrators had not adhered to the conditions, and therefore to dissolve the counter-demonstration. So the entire counter-demonstration could not have taken place within sight and hearing distance, a legal obligation.

And then the question why the counter-demonstration started at 2:00 PM and not at 4:00 PM? If it is a counter-demonstration, it should start at the time of the thing you are demonstrating against and that was also the plan initially.

Dubious role of organizer Palestine Action NL

There is some confusion about who the organizer is. On the Instagram page of Palestine Action NL (PAN) and sister organization Palestine Action Amsterdam, the strong impression is given that they are the organizers; first with a post from September 17 and then with another post a few days before October 7. What makes it a bit contradictory is that they write on Instagram ‘We join the call’. But they also write that their plans have changed: it would now start at 2:00 PM, at the freedom monument opposite of the Dam Square. And with this post it is implicitly indicated that they are the organizers. The calls and flyers sound militant: there is a call for escalation and civil disobedience. The location was later changed by the mayor to the Damrak. In the WOM letter to the city council on October 4, Halsema writes further that the triangle does not doubt the good intentions of the organizers, but she does say that she is afraid of ‘Individuals who try to hijack the demonstration from outside’.

Furthermore there are two other notable events to report. First, the weekend before October 7 when PAN announced on its Telegram page that financial resources were available for people who wanted to organize a counter-demonstration on October 7. Filling out forms was not even necessary, it was possible to immediately start giving ‘cash’. The hammer in the image above refers to the counter-demonstration.
Perhaps even more remarkable was that on October 7, PAN suddenly handed out flyers with paragliders and a quote from a deceased Hamas militant a reference to the October 7 attack which they praised.

From left to right: photo paragliders/ text quote Hamas militant/ Telegram screenshot

Regardless of whether October 7 was a heroic or terrorist act, it is remarkable that they praise this action, something they have not done before.
TV Show Nieuwsuur also presented this leaflet to the same ‘activist’ who was titled as ‘spokesperson for pro-Palestine demonstration’ and her name is Laleh Almarjani. Her response was again vague: “It says resistance till liberation”, which did not address the condoning of the Hamas attack. Laleh comes from Groningen and is one of the leading figures of the Encampment organization of the University of Groningen. When asked what she thinks of the people who commemorate the Israeli deaths from 200 meters away, she gives a very black-and-white answer: “If you stand behind the Israeli flag, you support everything Israel does.”
It is clear that the interview, whether consciously or not, of this ‘spokesperson’ has been a stain on the image of the anti-genocide demonstrators. In addition, with her interview for Nieuwsuur (and at5), during the demonstration she gives them legitimacy.
The interview was so bad for the Palestine cause that the Zionist organization Joods.nl even shared it on its Instagram page.

After all the commotion, the organization did not even issue a statement or criticized Halsema for the police violence, or lash out at the (agent) provocateurs.

Charm offensive for Halsema: even ‘left-wing Netherlands’ is participating

Around October 7, Halsema received a lot of media attention to polish up her damaged image of the past months due to the police violence against pro-Palestine demonstrators. For example, she appeared on tv shows Buitenhof and Jinek, the latter was even said to be too fierce. Various politicians, including the prime minister and many mayors, even the Association of Dutch Municipalities, gave their support to Halsema. The national media joined in this charm offensive.
She ‘clashed’ with extreme right-wing politicians Wilders and Dilan Yesilgoz and in this clash it seemed as if Halsema stood up for the pro-Palestine demonstrators, at least that is how she made it seem. Wherever she was seen, she kept saying: ‘We must respect the right to demonstrate’.
That is why she had, according to her own statement, the counter-demonstration held on the Damrak.
It was clear that the damage to her image among the target group of pro-Palestine people had to be polished up again. And the right (actually the extreme right) criticized her, because she would be too soft on the ‘vandalizing’ pro-Palestine demonstrators. This criticism also suited her: it gives the impression that she is on the right side.
While the criticism should come from the left: Halsema has not once condemned an Israeli war crime. She has not once offered her condolences to Amsterdam Palestinians from Gaza or shown empathy in any other way.
She has not terminated the cooperation between Amsterdam and Tel Aviv, despite the fact that the conditions of an adopted motion in the city council have been violated. Where is the left in the Netherlands with its criticism of this pro-Zionist mayor? It should be clear: the left in the Netherlands is dead and buried.

It was in March of this year when Israeli President Herzog was in Amsterdam and the protests were within hearing and sight distance. This led to fierce criticism of Halsema and Halsema did not want to experience that criticism again. So she created an illusion that the counter-demonstration would be within the required distance as the law prescribes, while she had already a trick to circumvent this.
That is why the counter-demonstration started at 2:00 PM, so that there was two hours to provoke incidents by agent provocateurs, which gave her the excuse to ban the counter-demonstration. She did the whole project in collaboration with PAN, the organizer who called for escalation, praised the Hamas attack and this gave the national media the opportunity to create an image that the protesters were Hamas sympathizers instead of anti-genocide demonstrators.

PAN also did not criticize the mayor afterwards, nor did they complain about the illegal entrapment of the riot police. Conversely, Halsema has publicly expressed her confidence in the organizer. All this gives rise to the strong suspicion that PAN is a front organization.