The world watches as pogroms, once believed to be relics of a faraway, brutal past, reemerge before our eyes.
Last week’s vicious attacks in the Netherlands, where Islamist gangs rampaged freely through the streets of Amsterdam brutalizing scores of Israeli soccer fans, drove home how deeply anti-Israel sentiment and Jew-hatred have infiltrated Dutch society.
Copycat attacks on Israelis in Germany the very next day—reported in the Tagesspiegel news outlet and on RBB 24 News–highlight the growing wave of anti-Semitism sweeping Europe unchecked, despite expressions of horror and condemnation by European leaders. [See sidebar]
Awareness is growing that the Amsterdam pogrom was not an isolated anomaly but rather a spark igniting a highly volatile landscape, where anti-Semitism has become alarmingly normalized.
Video footage of some of the atrocities could be mistaken for scenes lifted from Europe’s darkest history, when lynching of Jews was commonplace.
Whose blood did not run cold at seeing the terrifying scenes, and hearing eyewitnesses describe Arabic-screaming mobs chasing down Israelis and any one they could identify as Jews in the streets of Amsterdam, throwing them into a canal, car-ramming them, kicking them to the ground, stabbing and beating them with knives and wooden bars.
An Israeli named Gal told Israeli Channel 12 on his arrival in London after the assaults that he had been forced to the ground by assailants who had demanded to know if he was Israeli. He said he was beaten up by a gang of 8-10 people — “punched in the head; two teeth broken.”
He said he “woke up in an ambulance covered in blood” and was told afterward that he was found in a pool of blood.
“I’m not Jewish!” cried one man as he was beaten by a mob. Others were forced to prove this by presenting their passports. One man jumped into a canal to escape his tormentors. Still others were attacked with fireworks, punched in the head, and, in one case, kicked repeatedly while unconscious on the ground.
Other victims described how they were chased through the streets along with Jewish women and children, and left with broken teeth and black eyes. “This is not a soccer hooligan thing, this is a pre-planned attack of Muslims against Israelis and Jews,” one man said.
Some Israelis had their passports stolen, according to Israeli media outlets. Footage from cell phone videos showed individuals on the ground offering whatever money they had and pleading to be released.
Another clip showed a man in the street with a yarmulke being badgered by rioters as he tried to get away.
A 28-year-old soccer fan told an Israeli news correspondent he decided to turn his hotel room into a refuge for Israelis to flee the violent chaotic scenes outside. He hosted 10 other Israelis in his room, and he slept on the floor.
“Four of my friends did the same thing,” he said. “I was hiding Jews in my room. We were in danger of being beaten to death,” he said, his voice breaking in rage. “The Israeli government said they warned the Dutch several times about the likelihood of violence against Israeli fans. But they should have warned us as well.”
Timing of Pogrom on Kristallnacht Anniversary Reverberates Worldwide
The timing of the Amsterdam attacks on the eve of Kristallnacht, when Jews across Nazi Germany faced brutal attacks marking a terrifying escalation in Hitler’s onslaught against them, struck a profound nerve in Jewish communities worldwide.
“It is horrifying to witness anti-Semitic violence on the streets of Europe once again. It should not be lost on us that these attacks occurred on the eve of Kristallnacht,” wrote the National Post.
“On that night in 1938, Nazis and their enablers across Germany and Austria razed over 1,400 synagogues, smashed the windows of over 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, murdering almost 100 Jews in a violent pogrom that was a terrifying prelude to the greater evil that would follow.”
Kristallnacht underscores how a civilized society can regress to a barbaric state, tolerating hatred and demonizing a group of people. That moral collapse then paves the way for the rapid escalation to violence and wholesale murder.
Today we see this fatal pattern beginning to unfold again. The singling out and vilification of Jews — and by extension, the Jewish state of Israel — and the indifference of world leaders as the plague of Jew-hatred infects society—are chilling reminders of yesterday’s horrors.
Over a dozen Israelis were seriously injured in the Amsterdam attacks. Five were hospitalized, with many of the injured refusing to be taken to Dutch hospitals where they did not feel safe.
Rescue planes sent by Israeli Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu brought two thousand Israelis back to Israel on Friday night, after rabbonim ruled that the planes, which ordinarily don’t operate on Shabbos, were permitted to do so in what was deemed a life-death emergency.
During the height of the pogrom, the Israeli National Council of Safety issued wartime-like safety instructions for all Jews in Amsterdam: “Lock yourselves in your rooms. Don’t go anywhere. Avoid all externalized Jewish and Israeli symbols.”
Left unsaid by the National Council was the disturbing fact that the Israelis could not depend on Amsterdam’s law enforcement apparatus, as Dutch authorities had proved themselves unwilling or incapable of providing security to the city’s Jewish visitors and residents.
Coordinated, Premeditated Attacks
Screenshots of posts on social media sites confirm that the assaults were part of a coordinated Jew-hunt that was organized ahead of the soccer match. The Jew-hunt was announced well in advance in the messaging app Telegram, calling on rioters to travel from far outside Amsterdam to attack Israelis.
From the reports of victims of the attacks, it appears the marauders were placed at every street corner and alley stretching from the stadium where the Ajax-Maccabi game took place. They were also positioned in many places all across railway and subway stations, and notably, near the hotels in which Israeli tourists were staying.
Israelis reported being ambushed and hunted by violent Arabic-speaking thugs for hours after leaving the soccer stadium, with almost no intervention by local police. The victims were chased into hiding and forced to barricade themselves inside stores and buildings. They were hounded at their hotels, with some gangs trying to force their way inside, pelting stones at the windows and ramming the doors.
Israeli photographer Ami Shuman recalled having to walk through the sickening scenes with his son surrounded by a police escort as they tried to return to their hotel unscathed.
“We saw violence, we saw people with black eyes, deep cuts under their eyes,” he told the Times of Israel. Maccabi fan Tomer Taliasn added, “They didn’t distinguish between women, children, men or the elderly. They attacked everyone who looked Israeli to them.”
Footage circulating on social media show Israelis being chased by gangs of thugs wielding knives, knocked to the ground, kicked senseless and narrowly avoiding being run over. The attackers went door-to-door, hotel-to-hotel searching for Jews, reported the Jerusalem Post.
Taxi drivers, particularly Uber drivers, allegedly played a role in the attacks by sharing information on Telegram and other messaging apps about where they were taking their Israeli passengers.
‘Jew-hatred Mushrooming Like Cancer Across the Continent’
The morning after the pogrom, Chief Rabbi of the Netherlands Binyomin Jacobs, and Chairman of the European Jewish Association Rabbi Menachem Margolin, called on Dutch and European leaders to “wake up” in the face of the wave of anti-Semitism engulfing the continent.
“We are shocked but not surprised at the disgusting scenes we saw last night in the Dutch Capital,” they wrote. “This was not hooliganism. Hooliganism is a regular occurrence at football games. Anti-Semitism was the only motive here. The heavy presence of police and security forces in Amsterdam in the stadium last night attests to something else. They were prepared and ready for it.
“But what followed afterwards, when security was withdrawn—these disgusting and brutal assaults—are the strongest example of the extreme antisemitism, the all-pervading Jew hatred, that is running like a cancer throughout the continent,” the Jewish leaders wrote.
Dutch Police Accused of Collaborating with Attackers
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema said Maccabi Tel Aviv fans had been “attacked, abused and pelted with fireworks” around the city, and that “riot police intervened to protect them and escort them to hotels.”
Several victims attested to the absence of any police presence, however, until many hours after the attacks began when the media began carrying the story.
“Police cars were passing by without taking action,” one said. “Police cars were standing idle…We asked a policeman to escort us to our hotel, but he refused saying that they do not provide escort services,” another attested.
Far-right Dutch leader Geert Wilders, whose party is a member of the Netherlands’ government, strongly denounced the attacks. “Looks like a Jew hunt in the streets of Amsterdam,” he posted online as the attacks spilled across Amsterdam. Wilders suggested the assailants were migrants and called on “multicultural scum” to be deported.
“Ashamed that this can happen in The Netherlands,” he wrote. He called the attack a “pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam,” and lamented that the Netherlands had become the “Gaza of Europe.”
Two days later, Wilders said he was astounded to hear from the Amsterdam Police that “no one was arrested during the pogrom against Israeli Jews in the Dutch capital.”
“I am speechless. Amsterdam Police just confirmed that NO ONE has been arrested during the Islamic Jew-hunt in Amsterdam Thursday night,” Wilders posted online.
[This Monday, Amsterdam police announced five new arrests related to last week’s pogrom, involving men aged 18-37 from Amsterdam and nearby areas.]
Amsterdam Police Chief Peter Holla offered a weak explanation at a press conference for why police were unable to quell the violence or make any arrests during the pogrom, saying “It is very difficult for the police to act against these flash moments spread throughout the city.”
Historian and political analyst Dr. Inna Rogatchi ridiculed Holla’s excuse for why police failed to arrest the criminals, suggesting sarcastically he start by “viewing the footage of the assaults on Israelis that were shared online by the assailants themselves.”
“What we are facing today, what we are living with now, over a year after October 7th, is permitted hate. Baseless, blind, violent,” she wrote.
“Do we need to lecture anyone today that racist hatred should not be allowed or tolerated in any form?” Rogatchi continued. “It’s axiomatic and every single government official knows it, as surely as the Amsterdam police department knew about preparations for the pogrom on Nov 8, 2024 but turned a blind eye.”
Amsterdam Authorities Knew to Expect Trouble
Two Israelis, who left Amsterdam on the Friday morning after the pogrom and flew to London, made statements to an Israeli Channel 12 News reporter that supported the claim that Amsterdam police were expecting trouble but did nothing about it.
The Israelis said they were attacked on Wednesday evening — a full day before the soccer game — by Arab gangs in the city.
The two, who gave their names as Oren and Or, said they were targeted as Israelis and beaten. They also said that they reported the attack to local police, who took no action.
Another tech worker, a 30-year-old developer, told The Jerusalem Post that the local police should have been prepared because the violence had actually begun the night before. “My friends got beaten up outside a casino the previous night,” he said. “The thugs would gang up on victims, 15 or 20 to one,” he said.
Even worse, some of the victims of the pogrom have accused Dutch police of taking part themselves in the hours-long attack on Israeli soccer fans, Channel 12 News reported.
One such witness, Ariel, related a harrowing ordeal to the newscaster in which he got off the train with his friend at the end of the soccer match Thursday evening. They reached the main square on the way to their hotel, where they were shocked to see hundreds of Arabs waiting for them menacingly. The hooligans began chasing the two Israelis with shouts and curses.
At one of the corners, the two friends ran into Dutch policemen and pleaded for help. “The cop struck me on the leg with his baton instead,” Ariel recalled. “He lifted the baton to hit me again but I ran away.”
The two friends fled in terror until the marauders caught up with them. “My friends and I were kicked and punched as we tried to defend ourselves,” Ariel said. “Police were nowhere in sight. Only after everything blew up in the media did they suddenly appear. At that point we were trying to get to the airport to fly back to Israel and they agreed to escort us.
Climax of Years of Anti-Israel Incitement
Far from being a spontaneous outburst as leading media tried to frame it, “the ‘Jew-hunt’ and Jew-lynchings “were the culmination of years of anti-Israel incitement,” vastly ramped up by radical Muslims following the heinous Oct. 7 massacres,” writes the Jerusalem Post.
In the last year, there was an unprecedented 245 percent surge in anti-Semitism in the Netherlands, the paper noted. “What was once considered radical rhetoric has become normalized, through widespread incitement that permeates Dutch society.”
Since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, anti-Israel demonstrations in the Netherlands have escalated in hostility, morphing into calls for violence against Israelis and Jews. Israel is demonized while Hamas’s barbaric acts are legitimized, even glorified.
Dutch citizens have been indoctrinated with a worldview justifying gruesome violence, a culture where hatred of Israel is celebrated and encouraged.
Dutch authorities have failed to take any meaningful action as this situation has spiraled out of control, leading to today’s toxic landscape.
The late Holocaust historian, Robert Wistrich, warned the world community that Islamic radicalism spreads like a plague, threatening the foundations of civilization. Today it is the Jews who are targeted, tomorrow it is anyone who stands in their way.
“The reward for Europe’s cowardly appeasement of Islamism will be short-lived,” Wistrich predicted. “Because kowtowing to radicals has a high long-term cost. Muslims will eventually take revenge on a European society they detest.”
“After the persecution of the Jews,” wrote the historian, “will come all the others; Christians, secularists, atheists, agnostics and ultimately their accomplices, until the “peace” of Islam reigns over all of Europe.”
His chilling words echoed in the headlines this week as fresh rioting broke out Monday evening in Amsterdam’s Nieuw-West district, where rioters set a passenger train ablaze, reported Euronews.
The incident occurred as the Dutch capital remains under a state of emergency following last week’s violent attacks on Israeli soccer fans. Local media reported that alongside the train fire, hundreds of rioters pelted and damaged several vehicles with stones, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and shouting “Free Palestine!”
Video footage showed crowds of Muslim rioters wielding sticks and firecrackers while vandalizing property, totally ignoring the ban on demonstrations.
Today the Jews, tomorrow… anyone who stands in their way.
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Copycat Attack on Jewish Football Players in Berlin
Just one day after the internationally publicized Nov. 8 pogrom in Amsterdam, a similar assault took place in Berlin, this time not against the fans but against the players of the German youth Maccabi football team.
The incident dramatized how the Amsterdam pogrom can act like a lit match thrown onto a haystack, igniting attacks against Jews in neighboring European countries where they are a tiny minority, dependent on government protection.
They Jewish youths were allegedly assaulted repeatedly during the game by players of the opposite team. They were spat upon, cursed, pushed and mocked, all this without any interference from the referee.
After the match, the Jewish players were reportedly chased by a crowd wielding sticks and knives, according to the German news site, Tagesspiegel.
A report by the father of one of the Jewish players posted details of the attack online, and the fact that the referee would not intervene.
Alon Meyer, the president of Maccabi Germany, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that witnesses had confirmed that “threats, including chasing the players with knives, undoubtedly took place.”
Interior Senator Iris Spranger confirmed the allegations in a statement deploring “the attacks on Israeli members of Maccabi in Berlin.”
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Amsterdam’s Security Apparatus Staffed by Muslims
Some say that the failure of Amsterdam’s police authorities to make any attempt to halt the attacks on Israeli soccer fans should not be surprising, as the city’s security apparatus is now largely staffed by second-generation migrants from North Africa and the Middle East.
Wim Kortenoeven, a former Dutch MP in Geert Wilders’ party told Fox News that “The Dutch police forces have been Islamized to the extent that Muslims cops now feel confident in refusing to protect Jewish institutions for reasons of ‘conscience.”
“Barely a month ago, it came to light that some Dutch police had refused to guard Jewish sites, including the Dutch Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, over ‘moral dilemmas’ related to the war in Gaza,” reported the National Post. “These officers were allowed to decline those assignments.”
Experts note that the Muslim population in Amsterdam has seen an extraordinary surge and that today, only one in three children under 15 is a Dutch native, meaning that Muslims may soon comprise the majority in the Netherlands’ population.
“Islam is already the first religion in this city,” writes Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch-American writer and former MP in the House of Representatives in the Netherlands. “For years, Mohammed has been the first name among newborns in the four largest cities in the Netherlands; The Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht.”
Crossroads
With the city of Amsterdam still feeling the after-shocks of the pogrom, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke with Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof on Friday morning, asking him for increased security for the Jewish community in the Netherlands.
Schoof later posted online that he had been following the news about anti-Semitic attacks against Jews “with horror.” He added that in his call with Netanyahu, he had emphasized to the Israeli prime minister that the perpetrators will be tracked down and prosecuted.
“Four days after the attacks, the feelings of shock, shame, and anger remain. This was blatant anti-Semitic violence. We need firm action to address those responsible,” Schoof said at a press conference early this week, emphasizing that “intolerance must not be met with tolerance.”
The Netherlands now stands at a crossroads. Will its leaders choose to defend the core values of its vaunted political culture of tolerance and justice? Or will they allow Islamism and anti-Israel extremism to continue eroding these principles?
