February 24, 2009

Shoe trials continue

I got an email on this but the link to the Ma'an News Agency didn't work at first so I googled shoes israeli amsterdam and see for yourself what I got. 910,000 sites might actually not be the number of reports of shoes being thrown at Israelis in Amsterdam but top of the list at the time of writing is the Jerusalem Post report:
Ron Edelheit was about to begin a speech on the Gaza war to a gathering of Dutch Jews in Amsterdam on Sunday when he counted four shoes hurtling toward him.

"Two of them hit me," he said, both on the legs. He spoke to The Jerusalem Post by phone on Monday from The Hague, where he had just finished pressing charges against the three "youngsters" who assaulted him.

Edelheit, who holds both Israeli and Dutch citizenship, travels to Holland about once a year to visit his mother, a resident of The Hague.

As a reservist in the IDF Spokesman's Unit, he was asked by the Women's International Zionist Organization to speak at a gathering of its members and affiliates in Amsterdam. It was at that event that he was attacked.

From the beginning, Edelheit's speaking engagement - which was intended to be a simple affair and in which he had participated in the past - was troubled by pro-Palestinian activists in Holland. Their threatening letters and phone calls succeeded in having the event canceled at its first location.

When it was rescheduled for the Apollo hotel in Amsterdam, not even a significant police presence outside the venue could protect Edelheit. The three youths who assaulted him, all of them ethnically Dutch in appearance, simply paid the entry fee and walked into the engagement.

Israeli soldier goes to the Hague? Now that is courageous.

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