Dutch judge rejects Jewish group’s bid to block Kanye West concerts

A judge in Amsterdam has rejected an appeal by a Jewish organisation to block two performances by the rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, ruling that the concerts are not a threat to public order.

Ye has drawn widespread controversy in recent years for a series of antisemitic remarks, leaving Dutch authorities under mounting pressure to cancel the events on June 6 and 8.

The Central Jewish Council filed the emergency lawsuit on Tuesday, arguing that Ye should be banned from the country for voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler and selling T-shirts featuring swastikas.

According to the Amsterdam District Court, there were no grounds to bar Ye from performing. “There are no indications that West’s presence in the coming days will lead to concrete public order dangers,” the court said in a statement.

The Central Jewish Council expressed disappointment with the ruling.

“The feeling we are getting is that it is OK if you are antisemitic,” Chanan Hertzberger, the organization’s chairman, told The Associated Press.

Lawmakers in the Netherlands supported a motion to bar Ye from entering the country but the country’s immigration minister said there was no legal basis for such a move. Ye’s remarks were “reprehensible” but there was “no reason to bar him”, Bart van den Brink told journalists last week.

The 48-year-old was set to perform his first European dates in more than a decade. In April, he was barred from entering the UK over his remarks, setting off a series of cancellations. Shows in Italy and Poland have been scrapped.

More than 100,000 fans turned out in Istanbul on Saturday evening to watch Ye’s first performance in Turkey.

Concert organizers say 70,000 tickets have been sold for the two shows at the Gelredome in the eastern Dutch city of Arnhem.

Ye apologised in January through a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal, stating that his bipolar disorder led him to fall into “a four-month long, manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behaviour that destroyed my life”.