A 14 year-old boy has been suspended from school in the Netherlands after posting a video in which he said he belonged to Islamic State and wanted to decapitate Jews. The student is said to be of Balkan decent and was identified only as Ilhan M.
The pupil at the De Spindel High School in Hengelo, which is a city in the east of the Netherlands, has a history of disruptive behavior.
In the video, which he posted online, he said, “Hi, I am from ISIS and I would like to cut off the heads of Jews,” followed by a triad of insults about Jewish women, according to the De Telegraaf newspaper.
Police and school authorities are treating his actions as “misguided,” and have tried to play down the incident.
Loes Koop, who is a spokesman on behalf of the school’s board of directors said, “The police have watched the video and they say there is nothing serious – A joke? The police are calling it a misguided action and after all they are the professionals.”
However, according to the Dutch newspaper, Ilhan M’s school friends were horrified and are not as willing to believe this was just a childish act. “The main question now is how seriously we should take him,” said one terrified school child.
Another pupil who did not want to be identified said, “A lot of this is being constantly downplayed, but everyone is talking about this at school, especially given the trouble he has caused in the past.”
Previously, the teenager has brought fireworks to school, while recently he took what teachers believed to be a hand gun to class. However, when the police were called he was found to be carrying a fake.
Koop says the child is currently at home and says that everything is being done within the school to ease the anxiety of those pupils who have been affected.
Netherlands committed to ISIS fight
The Dutch government has been an active player as part of the US-led coalition to fight Islamic State. On September 24, it announced it would be sending six F-16 fighter jets to help combat the Islamic militants in Iraq.
"We regard IS as a grave threat, not just for the region it is destabilizing, not just for the (non-Muslim) minorities who are being put through the most terrible torment, but for the whole world," Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher said, while also mentioning that a maximum of 380 personnel could be deployed to the region to help provide training and advice to government forces.
The Netherlands has a relatively high Muslim population, with a number of Turks and Moroccans having settled in the country. AIVD, which is the General Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands, estimated in the summer that there were in excess of 100 Dutch passport holders fighting for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
The organization acknowledges there is a greater risk of Dutch fighters returning home from the Middle East wanting to carry out attacks. A report by the Security Service also warns of the danger that different sections of the Dutch population will become more polarized. This includes a risk of wider divisions within the Muslim community.
At the height of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations over the summer, two public rallies in July in the Netherlands displayed support for IS, who were then known as ISIS. Chants advocating the murder of “dirty Jews from the sewers” could be heard, according to Newsweek.
This prompted Doctor Shimon Samuels, from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, whose mission is to confront anti-Semitism and hate, to write a letter to the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, asking him not to allow a third demonstration.
“This rally had little to do with Gaza solidarity. It was unambiguously targeted against Jews, but also according to the Dutch press sought to lynch journalists, who were pulled to safety by the police, otherwise serving as silent spectators.”
Samuels also presented video footage of the rally, which shows a crowd larger than 50, waving ISIS flags and yelling “Death to the Jews,” Newsweek added.