The Nazi/Intifada Pogroms Go Global

    One of the most harrowing aspects, at least for me, of the Hamas-led sneak attack and massacre on October 7, 2023, which claimed the lives of approximately 1,200 Israelis, was the glee with which the Palestinian terrorists livestreamed their atrocities for the world to see. Atrocities including, but not limited to, rape, beheadings, and mutilation. Now, just 13 months later, Jews on social media were once again confronted with footage of an anti-Semitic rampage, a pogrom that would have made Hitler's Nazi party proud; one that shook the Dutch city of Amsterdam to its core this past Thursday evening, following a soccer match between Maccabi Tel Aviv from Israel and a local team, Amsterdam Ajax. 

    Many of the Dutch Jews that did not attend the match joined with local officials to commemorate the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") at the city’s Portuguese-Jewish synagogue—established by Jews who escaped the Inquisition—while this pogrom I write of was taking place outside. Following the soccer match, Jewish and Israeli fans of the visiting club were ambushed and beaten in the city’s streets and alleys. 

    Social media was soon flooded with videos of hundreds of jeering and cheering attackers marauding through the city, throwing Israeli soccer fans into the river, beating them unconscious, and forcing them to chant “free Palestine” before assaulting them further. “Jewish, Jewish, IDF, IDF,” some shouted as they identified the Israelis. Though Dutch authorities have arrested 62 suspects, the shockwaves from this incident will not fade easily. 

    Footage shows an Israeli soccer fan being struck by a car, cartwheeling across the windshield. More footage shows the scenes in downtown Amsterdam, where Israelis are pleading with their assailants, “not Jewish, not Jewish.” They were then beaten mercilessly.  

    In video of other attacks, a victim is struck and lies injured on the ground, seemingly unconscious. A father can be seen fleeing with his son. A man jumps into one of Amsterdam’s canals to escape his assailants. In the recording, where he is forced to say “Free Palestine,” his assailants laugh and jeer that he is a “cancer Jew”—a classic slur in Dutch, where both diseases and the Jewish ethnicity are deployed as put-downs.

    The shame these events bring to Amsterdam—where 75 percent of Amsterdam’s Jews perished in the Holocaust, and which takes pride in being the city of Anne Frank who, despite her betrayal and murder, has been embraced by the city as an emblem of its liberal, postwar attitude of tolerance—should be lost on no one. 

    Many are shocked, wondering how this could happen in the Netherlands. To me, their bafflement is what’s shocking. 

    “We disappointed Dutch Jewry during the Holocaust, and tonight, we disappointed you again,” the King of the Netherlands told Israel’s president Isaac Herzog on Friday.

    What makes the Amsterdam incident particularly disturbing is that it did not occur in some distant, non-Western region, but in the heart of so-called “enlightened” Europe, in a city known for its progressive ideals and cultural sophistication. Even more troubling is that the attack appears to have been premeditated and telegraphed, yet nobody with the ability to stop it did so.

    And while violent, anti-Semitic assaults have more recently become increasingly regular occurrences in Holland, anti-Semitism runs deep in The Netherlands, as it does in most European countries. In May, a student at the University of Amsterdam, a young man, was assaulted by a protester in a keffiyeh, struck in the head with a wooden plank. In August, a statue of Anne Frank was defaced—for the second time—with anti-Israel graffiti. Today, walking around with a kippah in The Netherlands is an act that requires more than a little bravery. 

    For the North Africans living in Holland, the dominant Jewish story of the twentieth century is not Auschwitz, it is Israel, which in their distorted conception is an illegitimate, one-directional criminal enterprise directed at an innocent population. Nor—and this is crucial—is this merely an attitude about a conflict. They believe it is the crime of the twentieth century, conferring ultimate guilt on the Jewish people. “Palestine” is a phrase felt to carry the gravity of “Holocaust,” grotesquely inverting the perception of the Jewish experience. 

    On Friday, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli, posted on X that his office had relayed multiple warnings to local Dutch authorities, who failed in their duty to protect civilians. On November 5, the Jerusalem Post reported that members of Mossad—Israel’s national intelligence agency—had accompanied the approximately 2,600 Israeli fans who traveled to The Netherlands to provide additional security. This involvement spurred some conspiratorial journalists to suggest that the incident was a false flag operation aimed at garnering support for Israel. Yes, of course. It's always Israel's fault. 

    Despite overwhelming evidence pointing to a premeditated assault, some American media outlets tried to frame the violence as an escalation of a brawl between opposing soccer fans, alleging that Israeli fans had torn down a Palestinian flag and chanted anti-Arab slogans before the game. Even if true—and it’s still unclear that it is—nothing justifies hordes of bloodthirsty troglodytes rampaging through a city and attacking anyone they suspect of being Israeli. To suggest otherwise should be unthinkable in the twenty-first century. For the love of Anne Frank, people...this is the West! People may say and do ugly things, but that never warrants the violence that transpired the other night. 

    For their part, Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew both condemned the attack. I don't believe it's a stretch for me to type that the events in Amsterdam could easily be replicated here, where American Jews have faced surging anti-Semitism since October 7. 

    In fact, the other night, pro-Palestinian activists attempted to derail comedian Michael Rapaport’s event in Chicago, promoting flyers that read, “Racists and Zionists are not welcome in our cities.” Simultaneously in Bergenfield, New Jersey—home to a significant Jewish population—pro-Palestinian groups intimidated the community by chanting for “intifada” and brandishing images of Adolf Hitler. This follows over a year of calls echoing across the U.S., from public squares to college campuses, where radical activists have shouted, “Globalize the intifada.” Not to worry, people. The intifada has indeed been globalized.

     So what have we learned. Well, it seems to me the leap from “Zionists not welcome” and Hitler imagery, to events like the Amsterdam rampage is not nearly as vast as it seems. Just as it was in Amsterdam, the writing is on the wall in America. If only those in power would pay more attention. Again, what happened in The Netherlands can easily happen here. American officials and law enforcement must remain vigilant before Amsterdam’s horrors find their way to the U.S.

 

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com