Why Israel Should Summon the Dutch Ambassador

Wanted Posters on Dutch Streets

Leon Khlebnikov travelled to the Netherlands to take part in the European Universities Debating Championship, Europe’s largest debating tournament. Before the championship had ended, his name, photograph and the dates of his stay in the Netherlands were circulating online. The Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation, together with the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), announced that it had filed a criminal complaint against him alleging war crimes. During the public campaign that followed, Khlebnikov was branded a “war criminal” and a “genocider.” A poster announced that he was in Utrecht. Publicly circulated material urged people to look out for him and later included calls for members of the public to carry out a citizen’s arrest.

As the championship progressed, controversy focused on the institutions around it. Utrecht University and University College Utrecht stressed that they were not organisers of the tournament. Utrecht University nevertheless made rooms available for debates, while University College Utrecht rented accommodation to the organisers. The venue, TivoliVredenburg, then cancelled the championship final after concluding that teams were participating on behalf of Israeli universities and that the event therefore fell within its cultural boycott. Parliamentary questions followed about the treatment and safety of Israeli participants.

An international university debating championship, organised to encourage the exchange of ideas across national borders, had become the setting for a public campaign against an Israeli participant, institutional controversy surrounding the event and parliamentary questions about the treatment and safety of Israeli participants.

The events in Utrecht differed from those in Amsterdam in November 2024. The comparison nevertheless deserves attention. Dutch police later described opponents actively searching for Israeli supporters, hit-and-run attacks directed at them, and a WhatsApp group in which information connected to violence was shared. The later assaults were therefore preceded by organised efforts to locate Israeli supporters.

That experience should have made Dutch institutions particularly alert when an Israeli attending an academic event once again became the subject of a public campaign while still present in the country. Instead, remarkably little urgency was visible. Public discussion centred on Israel, Israeli universities and the allegations against one individual. Much less attention was paid to the fact that someone attending an academic event in the Netherlands had become the subject of organised public targeting.

The Utrecht controversy reaches beyond one debating championship. Debates about Israel that gathered momentum on Dutch university campuses after October 7 gradually spread into other parts of Dutch public life. Universities, publicly funded cultural institutions, government departments and parliament all became part of the same discussion. By the time the championship opened in Utrecht, that discussion had reached individual Israelis attending academic events.

Internal government correspondence released under the Dutch Freedom of Information Act shows that similar questions had already reached several ministries in July 2025. The trigger was Utrecht University’s decision to suspend new institutional collaborations with Israeli organisations. One of the immediate concerns within government was the future of PARC, a major Horizon Europe partnership on chemical risk assessment in which an Israeli partner participated.

One email captures the discussion with unusual clarity. Officials referred to Utrecht University’s intention to withdraw from PARC because of “the participation of an Israeli party”. The message noted that other universities were considering similar steps. It then proposed “a possible solution”: that the Israeli partner might withdraw voluntarily. Before the matter was raised within the partnership itself, the author suggested coordinating first with the Ministries of Education and the Interior.

Dutch universities are frequently described as autonomous institutions. Once their decisions began affecting a major European research partnership, officials from several ministries were already coordinating their response. The proposed solution is striking. Rather than beginning by persuading Dutch universities to remain in the partnership, the correspondence raised the possibility that the Israeli partner might remove itself.

The same correspondence shows information moving between ministries and officials preparing for political discussion of the issue. Separate internal emails circulated information about parliamentary interest in Horizon Europe and knowledge security in advance of a committee debate. Ministries prepare for parliamentary scrutiny as a matter of course. The documents are relevant because they show how closely university policy, European research cooperation and the machinery of government had already become connected in discussions concerning Israel.

The controversy surrounding the debating championship also involved an institutional overlap at the highest level of the Dutch civil service. Maarten Schurink serves as Secretary-General of the Ministry of Defence, the ministry’s highest-ranking civil servant, while also chairing the Supervisory Board of TivoliVredenburg. Questions supplied to the author ask how those two positions should be viewed after the publicly funded venue cancelled the championship final because it concluded that Israeli universities were represented. Those questions do not establish that Schurink personally made the programming decision. They do place the familiar appeal to institutional autonomy in a more complicated setting.

Two months before the championship, Education Minister Rianne Letschert had written to parliament about country boycotts and antisemitism in the cultural sector. Her letter of 2 June 2026 rejected a general ban on country boycotts as a condition for public funding, citing freedom of expression and artistic freedom. She also stated that artistic freedom can never become a licence for discrimination. Collaborations should not be terminated because of a person’s Jewish background, she wrote, and performances should not be cancelled because of a Jewish theme or the Jewish background of an artist.

The explanation in Utrecht used different language. The dispute concerned Israeli universities. That distinction now sits at the centre of the parliamentary questions: when students bear the practical consequences of a boycott directed at their universities, where does institutional protest end and discrimination against individuals begin?

The same distinction runs through the PARC correspondence. Jewish identity is absent from the language of the documents. Officials discuss “the participation of an Israeli party”. The terminology is administrative and precise. The practical question remains who is expected to leave when an Israeli affiliation becomes unacceptable to Dutch institutions.

This is where the Dutch preference for procedure becomes relevant. Universities can invoke autonomy, cultural institutions can invoke their programming freedom, ministries can coordinate the consequences and each decision can be explained within its own administrative framework. The result is easier to see from outside those separate frameworks. Israeli participation has become a recurring problem to be managed.

The Netherlands has already experienced the danger of organised efforts to locate Israeli visitors. Amsterdam in November 2024 should have produced a lasting sensitivity to the stages that precede street violence. Utrecht offered ample reason to apply that lesson: a named Israeli, his photograph and his presence in the country were circulated while members of the public were encouraged to find him and, in material circulated around the campaign, to arrest him themselves.

A similar practice then appeared in Amsterdam. During WorldPride, a photographed poster in the capital carried the heading “Protect your community” and warned visitors to “Watch out for war criminals during WorldPride.” It displayed photographs and names of Israelis alongside a map marked with locations and directed readers, through a QR code, to report via RITA Community. The poster also carried Amsterdam City branding and the WorldPride Amsterdam 2026 logo. The City of Amsterdam itself lists RITA Community, together with Discriminatie.nl Regio Amsterdam, among the organisations to which Pride visitors can report discrimination. The available material does not establish who authorised the use of the city and WorldPride branding on this poster. Its presence nevertheless gave a campaign identifying Israelis as alleged war criminals the visual appearance of an official Pride safety notice.

The political response has since become more urgent. In sixteen written questions addressed to the Minister of Justice and Security, SGP parliamentarian Diederik van Dijk raised what he called the intimidation of Israelis and Jewish Dutch citizens.

Van Dijk asks whether Israeli participants in an international debating championship were confronted with intimidation, online searches, the publication of personal information and a hostile atmosphere. He asks whether Israeli students and other visitors can still move freely in the Netherlands without fear of intimidation, threats or doxing, and what responsibility the government bears for their safety.

Several questions go directly to the conduct described here. Van Dijk asks whether criminal investigations have been opened into possible doxing, threats, discrimination, incitement or other forms of intimidation. He also asks why existing provisions of Dutch criminal law are apparently not being used more forcefully against stalking, doxing and incitement, and whether online campaigns collecting and publishing the personal details of Israelis create a foreseeable risk of threats, intimidation and possible physical violence.

One question addresses private activist groups in Utrecht and Amsterdam that, in Van Dijk’s words, actively search for former Israeli soldiers and other Israelis in order to trace their whereabouts and personal details, publicly put them in the pillory, and exert pressure on organisers to exclude them. He asks whether such vigilantism, intimidation and social exclusion are compatible with the rule of law and whether the authorities should act forcefully against them.

The questions also widen the issue beyond Israeli visitors. Van Dijk refers to signals that growing numbers of Jewish Dutch citizens no longer feel safe and that some are considering emigration to Israel. He asks whether repeated antisemitic intimidation, doxing and threats are undermining confidence in the Dutch government’s willingness and ability to protect Jews and Israelis.

His final question returns to the debating championship. Van Dijk asks what the government will do to prevent activists, through intimidation and unilateral fact-finding, from determining whether Israeli participants can safely take part in public meetings and events in the Netherlands.

The urgency that was largely absent from the initial institutional response has now reached parliament. The question is whether the Dutch government will share it. Amsterdam in November 2024 should have produced a lasting sensitivity to the stages that precede street violence. The public identification of Israelis, calls to locate them and appeals for civilian action should not require an assault before they are treated as a security concern.

The Government of Israel should summon the Dutch ambassador and ask for an explanation. The issue is larger than Dutch criticism of Israeli policy, which will continue, or the ordinary disagreements that exist between democratic governments. The immediate question concerns the safety and equal treatment of Israelis on Dutch territory.

Israel should ask what concrete measures the Netherlands is taking when an Israeli visitor is publicly identified and located during an academic event, when civilians are encouraged to act against him, and when the surrounding controversy is simultaneously making Israeli participation itself a matter of institutional dispute.

Less than two years after Amsterdam, that question carries an urgency that procedural explanations cannot remove. The Netherlands should not wait for another night of violence before recognizing the significance of what appeared on the streets of Utrecht.