Outrage, focus on Muslim migrants after Amsterdam ‘pogrom’

[shalom]

Outrage, focus on Muslim migrants after Amsterdam ‘pogrom’

Some Dutch officials said that the attacks were due to unchecked immigration from the Middle East, while others avoided the subject of the attackers' identity.

Canaan Lidor

(Nov. 8, 2024 / JNS)


Amsterdam police detained 62 people in connection with a series of antisemitic assaults against Israeli soccer fans, which resulted in five moderate injuries and about 20 to 30 minor ones, in the Dutch capital, the city’s prosecutor René de Beukelaer said at a Friday press.



The five injured people were treated in the hospital and discharged, De Beukelaer said during the briefing with Femke Halsema, the Amsterdam mayor.

Witnesses described about 100 men, whom they described as Arabs, assaulting Israelis in a coordinated manner on Friday morning. The country’s largest-scale antisemitic incident in decades has shocked many Dutchmen and especially Jews and Holocaust survivors, who said that it is a reminder of what led up to the Holocaust.



The Nazis occupied the Netherlands in May 1940. Less than a quarter of Dutch Jews survived the Holocaust, and the country has many Holocaust memorials, including a museum in the former home of Anne Frank, which is one of the nation’s most visited sites.



Friday’s incidents prompted Israel to send two airplanes to evacuate its citizens from Amsterdam, and the Israeli government told Israelis in the city to remain in their hotels and to remove signs that could identify them as either Jews or Israelis. The attacks also generated an international uproar, including by King Willem-Alexander, the Dutch ceremonial head of state.


“We must not look away from antisemitic behavior on our streets,” the king stated. “History has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse, with horrific consequences. Jewish people must feel safe in the Netherlands, everywhere and at all times. We embrace them all and hold them close.”



Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated that Willem-Alexander told him that “we failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again.”



“We see with horror this morning, the shocking images and videos that since Oct. 7, we had hoped never to see again: an antisemitic pogrom currently taking place against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and Israeli citizens in the heart of Amsterdam, Netherlands,” the Israeli president added in his own statement.



Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s incoming foreign minister, and Amir Ohana, the Knesset chair, flew to Amsterdam on Friday to help the embassy coordinate efforts to evacuate Israelis who decided to cut their stays short in the Netherlands.



Femke HalsemaAmsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema speaks at a press conference about antisemitic violence in her city on Nov. 8, 2024. Photo courtesy of the Municipality of Amsterdam.

Amsterdam police chief Peter Holla said that 800 officers had been deployed nationwide to prevent attacks on Israelis or Jews ahead of the events in recent days. He noted that before the incidents on Thursday night, there had been “small upheavals” involving Maccabi supporters, who he said had removed a Palestinian flag from a building facade and had “destroyed a taxi.”



A journalist asked at Friday’s joint press conference about the alleged provocations. “There can be no excuse for what happened,” the mayor said.



The incidents, which followed a match between the Ajax soccer club and Maccabi Tel Aviv, also drew a response from French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is home to Europe’s largest Jewish community. France has also experienced a lot of antisemitism in recent months, and Israeli companies were banned recently from a defense fair in the country.



“The violence against Israeli citizens in Amsterdam recalls history’s darkest hours,” Macron stated. “I strongly condemn it and express my sympathy for the injured. France will relentlessly continue to fight against heinous antisemitism.”



Dick Schoof, the Dutch prime minister, called the incidents “utterly outrageous and abhorrent antisemitic attacks on Israeli citizens in Amsterdam.”



Christians for Israel, an international organization based in the Netherlands, lowered the large Israeli flag, which flies atop its Nijkerk headquarters, to half-mast in solidarity with those attacked.



“Last night’s attack chillingly echoes the events of Kristallnacht,” wrote Frank van Oordt, the group’s director. “That such a violent hunt for Jews could occur again in 2024 in our capital city is both incomprehensible and unacceptable.”



Halsema, the Amsterdam mayor, said that “we have seen an outburst of antisemitism tonight, and it is very unlike Amsterdam.”



“Telegram groups where a Jew-hunt is being discussed,” she said. “It’s so shocking. I am furious and I’m expressing, in the city’s name, the harshest condemnations over what happened.”



“I’m ashamed of the behavior of rioters and criminals,” she added.



A journalist asked at the press conference if Halsema had a comment on the accounts of victims, who said that all of the perpetrators looked Middle Eastern.



“This is an issue that needs to be researched. The background and ethnicity of people, that’s not something I can comment on right now, nor do I want to,” she said. (Halsema is a former leader of D66, a pro-immigration, left-leaning party.)



Geert Wilders, leader of the largest political party in the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom, which is right-leaning, showed no such reservations.



In a series of furious posts on social media, Wilders, a strident critic of immigration and Islam, referenced the alleged ethnicity of the perpetrators repeatedly.



“A pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam. We have become the Gaza of Europe. Muslims with Palestinian flags hunting down Jews. I will not accept that. Never,” he wrote. “The authorities will be held accountable for their failure to protect the Israeli citizens. Never again.”



“We weren’t allowed to speak of Islam as the source of antisemitism, and they didn’t deport criminals. Now we have Jew hunts in Amsterdam,” he added in another post.



Wilders, a passionate supporter of Israel whose party is a senior coalition member, called for the perpetrators to be deported.



The incident, which happened shortly before the anniversary of the Nov. 9-10, 1938 Nazi pogrom called Kristallnacht, comes amid polarizing debate in Europe about Muslim immigration.



In September, Marjolein Faber, the minister of asylum and migration who is part of Wilder’s party, unveiled a plan that she called “the strictest asylum policy ever.”



“We need to change course,” she said. “We are taking measures to make the Netherlands as unattractive as possible for asylum seekers.”



The Party for Freedom received the highest number of vote in the 2023 elections, amid widespread dissatisfaction with mass immigration, primarily from Muslim countries.



On Sunday, an overwhelming majority of lawmakers in the lower house of Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, passed a resolution that for the first time named Muslim antisemitism as a driver of that phenomenon.



Yanki Jacobs, a prominent Dutch Chabad rabbi from Amsterdam, urged Muslim community leaders to speak out against the assaults. “I think at this moment, Muslim faith leaders need to condemn this vocally,” he told JNS. “I will be asking them to do so today.”



The incidents in Amsterdam prompted a slew of condemnations from Jewish organizations.



Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, expressed “profound concern and solidarity with the victims of

last night’s unprovoked attack on Jews.”



“Antisemitism cannot be thwarted by words alone,” stated Dani Dayan, Yad Vashem’s chair. “We call upon world leaders to recognize and take immediate and decisive action to fight against antisemitism and hate before the disease metastasizes to catastrophic proportions. History has shown us that we cannot afford to be complacent in the face of antisemitism.”



Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, stated that the “unprovoked violence—resulting in serious injuries and reports of missing persons—has not only shaken the Israeli and Dutch Jewish communities but underscores the global resurgence of antisemitism that continues to metastasize across societies worldwide.”



“We are horrified by the organized and vicious antisemitic attack on Israelis in Amsterdam,” the Orthodox Union stated. “Coming days before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, it is time for world leaders and individuals of conscience to recognize that brazen attacks against Jews is what protestors are calling for when they chant ‘globalize the intifada.'”



The Jewish Federations of North America stated that it is “horrified and outraged at the hate-filled antisemitic attacks in Amsterdam, in which anti-Israel mobs terrorized and beat Israelis and Jews trying to enjoy a soccer game.”



“This modern-day pogrom, just two days before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, should make it clear that the entire world must act now to condemn and prosecute to the fullest all the perpetrators and take every necessary step to protect the Jewish community,” the Federations said. ” We are in close contact with our partners in Israel and The Jewish Agency for Israel as we continue our commitment to the security of Jewish communities around the world.”



The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, called for “concrete measures” to be taken to prevent such events from recurring.



The Combat Antisemitism Movement warned that tolerating such incidents would cause Jews to leave Europe. “Europe should remember this: Jews won’t wait around like they did in 1939. They’ll leave, leaving you to deal with the extremism that has been allowed to fester,” Sacha Roytman Dratwa, the group’s CEO, wrote.

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[shalom]

Amsterdam highlights Israeli hooligans in first report on pogrom

Dutch Jews protest the account, with one saying that the municipality is trying to claim that "the Jews did it."
(Nov. 12, 2024 / JNS)


In its first report on the mass assaults on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam, the city’s municipality has accused them of chanting “hateful and racist songs against Arabs.”



This language, which appeared in the fifth sentence of the 12-page report published on Monday, marked a shift from city officials’ rhetoric so far, including Mayor Femke Halsema’s statement that “there is no excuse” for the assaults.


Herman Loonstein, a prominent Dutch-Jewish lawyer, accused the municipality of victim-blaming, telling JNS that the document suggests that “the Jews did it.”



The report, titled, “Violence in Amsterdam Around the Ajax-Maccabi Match,” was published ahead of a debate scheduled for Tuesday about the events of Nov. 7, when at least 100 Arabs perpetrated a coordinated series of assaults against Israeli soccer fans following a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local Ajax team.



It was the largest-scale series of antisemitic incidents in the Netherlands since the Holocaust and one of the largest events of its kind in Europe in recent decades.


The report’s release coincided with a fresh wave of unrest in Amsterdam that featured the torching of a tram amid antisemitic shouts about “cancer Jews” and anti-Israel protest actions across Amsterdam and Utrecht.



Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the Nov. 7 event a “pogrom,” as did many locals, including Geert Wilders, the leader of the Netherlands’ largest political party and ruling coalition partner. Wilders tweeted following the tram’s torching: “First a Jew hunt, now intifada.” He has called for deporting all perpetrators of the Nov. 7 assaults.



Prime Minister of the Netherlands Dick Schoof reportedly called the attacks a source of “shame,” as did Dutch King Willem-Alexander, who referenced the abandonment and near annihilation of Dutch Jewry during the Holocaust.



Yet amid intense media coverage of the assaults locally and internationally, some voices criticized the Israelis and asserted or suggested that they had instigated the violence.



The introduction of Monday’s report by the municipality reads: “On Nov. 8, the world awoke to terrible images from the pitch-black night Amsterdam had experienced. Four days later, anger and fear and disbelief are still felt. Images of Israeli soccer fans chased, assaulted and abused. Screenshots of antisemitic messages like the call for a ‘Jew hunt.’ Films of hateful and racist chants against ‘Arabs.’ Of pulling down and burning of a Palestinian flag and targeted assaults of Jewish and Israeli fans, featuring many antisemitic statements. With regards to this, city authorities declare that one party’s violence is never an excuse to more violence. Our city’s heart bleeds due to these events. Amsterdam residents everywhere feel pain.”



“It’s a hopelessly naive report, a terrible piece of bureaucratic-speak,” Rabbi Meir Villegas Henriquez told JNS. He called it “cover for officials to not take responsibility.”



Loonstein, the lawyer, noted that the municipality’s reference to the behavior of Maccabi fans fails to explain why hundreds of people on Sunday defied a ban on anti-Israel protests on the Dam, which led riot police to arrest dozens. It also does not explain why dozens of people participated in rioting on Monday night, where a tram was torched on 40-45 Square, named for the victims of the Nazi occupation, he said.



“I haven’t heard yet that the Jews also torched the tram yesterday,” said Loonstein.



Femke HalsemaAmsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema speaks at a press conference about antisemitic violence in her city on Nov. 8, 2024. Photo courtesy of the Municipality of Amsterdam.

In the report’s timeline, Maccabi fans were “walking in a large group around midnight near Dam Square, some with sticks, and causing vandalism.” After that, “problems began involving small groups of rioters spread out across the center. They staged violent hit-and-run actions” against Israelis.



Several eyewitnesses told JNS that groups of Arab men were scanning the city center for Israelis systematically and not in response to any violence by Maccabi supporters that they’d witnessed. Three riot police officers who were on the streets of the city center on Thursday night told the De Telegraaf daily on Sunday that the Maccabi fans had not acted violently.



“I absolutely don’t see why it’s being claimed that Maccabi fans were out to stage confrontations, the opposite is true,” one officer told the Dutch daily on condition of anonymity.



Amsterdam Police Chief Peter Holla on Friday said at a press conference that Israelis had damaged a taxi cab and stolen a Palestinian flag in the city center. One of the riot police officers interviewed by De Telegraaf said the flag had been hung prominently and deliberately to provoke the Israelis. Another police officer said that the circumstances surrounding an incident involving a taxi were not yet clear.



The police report says a group of taxi drivers “was mobilized” and headed towards the Holland Casino, where some 400 Israelis were present. “Police led out the Israelis to avoid a large-scale confrontation,” the report said. It did not say whether the taxi that was allegedly damaged was part of the “mobilization.”



Earlier in the day, footage surfaced online of two men attempting to burn a Palestinian and a Dutch flag at a soccer stadium. Men were chanting “Gaza is a cemetery” in the background. The dozens of people in the video are wearing short-sleeved T-shirts in sunny weather and clear skies. Amsterdam was heavily overcast on Nov. 7, with temperatures around 11°C (51.8°F) in the daytime.



Amsterdam, NetherlandsPolice face off against anti-Israel protesters at Dam Square in Amsterdam on Nov. 10, 2024. Credit: Courtesy of Bart Schut.

Footage also showed dozens of men shouting “Let the IDF win” and “F**k the Arabs” in Hebrew as they entered a metro station after sunset.



Jazie Veldhuyzen, a councilman on the City Council of Amsterdam for the BIJ1 party, which says it promotes anti-racist policies but has often been accused of espousing antisemitism, is one of several Dutch politicians and opinion shapers who have blamed the Maccabi fans for the assault against them.



“Video footage of armed Maccabi hooligans, attacking people from Amsterdam that look like Arabs or Muslims with metal pipes, stones and fireworks. All under the protection of the Dutch police. Here you have your ‘victims,’” tweeted Veldhuyzen. He was among those present at the illegal demonstration Sunday at Dam Square. Lucas Winnips, a senior municipal adviser, was also present.



On Nov. 8, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema, who was a leader of the left-wing D66 Party, was asked by a journalist at a press conference about the alleged provocations by Israelis. She replied: “There can be no excuse for what happened.” Asked as to reports that the perpetrators were all Arab or Muslim, she said: “This is an issue that needs to be researched. The background and ethnicity of people, that’s not something I can comment on right now, nor do I want to.”



On X, De Telegraaf journalist Wierd Duk anticipated an inversion of the narrative about Nov. 7 which would turn the Israelis from victims to perpetrators. “From this evening on, there will be a new dominant narrative in media, the political echelon and public opinion,” he tweeted on Nov. 10. “The framing is that the Jews again brought it on themselves—in this case that Maccabi hooligans misbehaved terribly, which is true—prompting our Moroccan-Islamist street heroes to react appropriately, with a few minor excesses here and there.”



Police arrested 62 people before and after the assaults, but none during them, police officials confirmed on Sunday. Of those, 10 were Israeli residents, 49 were residents of the Netherlands and the residence of the remaining three was still being determined, according to Monday’s report. Currently, only four people are in custody, all of them Dutch. Police or prosecutors are looking into taking legal action against only 11 people, the report said. It did not say whether those suspects facing potential prosecution were Israeli or Dutch.



The report stated that police and city authorities had taken “extensive action” to avoid violence. It does not name any failures in their actions, stating that these may be outlined in independent research into the events of Nov. 7.



The document notes that, despite efforts to avoid violence, “nasty incidents happen regularly in Amsterdam, affecting Jews but also increasingly Muslims, Palestinians and other minority groups.”



In the conclusions of the report, the authors wrote: “What has happened in recent days is the result of antisemitism, hooliganism, and anger over the war in Israel and Palestine and other countries in the Middle East.” The report also said the ethnic identities of the perpetrators will be looked into in the independent research of the events of Nov. 7.



On Monday, police in Belgium arrested six suspected copycats of the Amsterdam assaults who are suspected of planning, using instant messaging, to attack ultra-Orthodox Jews.



The assaults in Amsterdam happened on the eve of the anniversary of the Kristallnacht Nazi pogroms of 1938 in the Third Reich.



Some victims of the Nov. 7 assaults were made to beg for mercy on their knees and say “Free Palestine.” Others, including at least one woman, were set upon by men without any verbal exchange. At least one man jumped into a canal to escape his attackers; another was hit by a vehicle. According to reports, attackers asked to check the passports of people they confronted on the street.



About 25 people were hurt during the assaults, with injuries ranging from moderate to minor.



As many as 2,000 Israelis returned to Israel on eight emergency flights out of Amsterdam over the weekend, El Al, Israel’s flag carrier airline, reported.



Following the Hamas-led onslaught on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and abducted another 251, Israel went to war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.



Israel’s critics in Europe have accused it of genocide, including at weekly rallies in European capitals that have featured numerous calls for violence against Israelis and Jews. Several countries reported an explosion in recorded antisemitic incidents. In the Netherlands, the Center for Information and Documentation recorded an increase of 245% in antisemitic incidents in 2023 over 2022.

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[ExquisiteGerbil]

Amsterdam Erupts Into Riots, Youth Mob Set Fires, Chant ‘Cancer Jews’ in Fallout From ‘Pogrom’ Attacks
Kurt Zindulka
11 Nov 2024

Riots broke out in Amsterdam on Monday evening as hordes of young men dressed in black set fires, threw rocks, and shot off makeshift missile fireworks, just days after a “Jew hunt” in the city following an Israeli soccer match.



Chaos continued in the Dutch capital on Monday as riots erupted in the borough of Nieuw-West. Videos on social media showed young men waving Palestine flags and others shouting, “Cancer Jews!”



Broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting reported that the youth rioters pelted cars and a bus with rocks and heavy fireworks. They also set fire to a tram in the area. During the violent outburst, chants of “Free Palestine” could be heard.

In a statement provided to De Telegraaf, Amsterdam police said: “A large group of people is causing a nuisance and throwing fireworks, among other things. This caused a tram to catch fire. The Mobile Unit is on-site to restore order.”



The police said that several arrests have been made, however, the exact number has yet to be revealed at the time of this reporting.



The Times of Israel reported that there have been suggestions online that the perpetrators were “Arab and North African gangs,” but this has yet to be verified.

The riots come as the city remains on edge since horrific scenes following the Ajax—Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer match on Thursday, after which men on scooters conducted “hit and run” attacks on Israeli supporters, leaving over two dozen injured.



The attacks were reportedly premeditated and organised on pro-Palestininan group chats in Amsterdam. Taxi drivers are also said to have assisted in providing the locations of groups of Jewish soccer fans to be targeted.



Some on social media and elsewhere have sought to justify the “pogrom” attacks by pointing to footage purporting to show Maccabi supporters tearing down Palestinian flags on the previous night and chanting pro-war messages such as: “Let the IDF win. fudge the Arabs!” and “fudge you Palestine.”



Anti-Israel activists sought to stage a protest over the weekend, however, as an emergency decree was put in place following the “Jew hunt” last week, the demonstration was banned. Numerous people still attempted to rally in Dam Square, but police broke up the gathering, and over 50 people were arrested.



On Monday, five people were arrested for their alleged role in the attacks on Israelis on Thursday. While police have implied that they were all Amsterdam residents, they have yet to release any names, ethnicities, or religious affiliations.

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