Dutch officials are facing sharp criticism for caving to political pressure to soften their initial condemnation of the brutal attacks by Muslim gangs against Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema now expresses regret for using word “pogrom,” while Dutch politicians downplay, whitewash or deny the anti-Semitic violence on Nov. 7-8 that wounded 25 and sent many to the hospital with serious injuries. The victims sustained broken jaws, stab wounds, and damage to internal organs.
Gangs of Arab and Muslim men orchestrated the mass assaults on Israelis using WhatsApp and Telegram to coordinate the attacks well ahead of the soccer match. Forming “flash mobs” across Amsterdam, the thugs carried out vicious attacks against hundreds of Israelis leaving the stadium, and live-streamed themselves in the act.
One man recorded himself in his car exulting, “Today, we’re setting out on a Jew hunt!”
Perpetrators in the online video clips could be seen beating and kicking Jews, chasing Israeli soccer fans with knives. Their Middle Eastern and African features along with their Arabic-accented Dutch left no doubt as to their identity.
Yet Mayor Halsema, a former leader of a left-wing political party, began equivocating as soon as reports came in describing the anti-Semitic violence that persisted throughout the night.
Avoiding the terms “Muslim” or even “Moroccan” to describe the attackers, Halsema said in a press conference that “men on scooters crisscrossed the city looking for Israeli football fans. It was a hit-and-run.”
The rioting, she said, “brings back memories of pogroms” and left her “deeply ashamed.”
Though the police were now combing through social media and security footage and making arrests, Halsema refused to confirm that the suspects were Muslims or Arabs. Her office described them as “scooter youths.”
The mayor soon resorted to outright denialism, retracting the word “pogrom,” saying that is not what she meant, and accusing Israel of using the word as “propaganda.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Sunday criticized the glaring about-face, calling it “utterly unacceptable.”
“The failure [of police inaction] that occurred on that night must not be compounded by a further grave failure: a cover-up,” he said.
Left Wing City Council Revises the Narrative
The mayor’s shameful backpedaling reflected a bid by pro-Muslim and pro-immigration forces in the Amsterdam city council to revise the narrative about the attacks, which initially drew harsh condemnations from across the political spectrum.
Within days of the mass assaults, left-wing and pro-immigration politicians began altering key details of the events. The revisionists presented a version of events in which Israeli “Maccabi” fans had instigated the violence with “loud provocative marching and chanting slogans, calling for an IDF victory and for routing the Arabs.”
This coarse behavior by Maccabi fans—captured online—is what “provoked the attacks,” a Dutch government spokesman said.
But this statement fails to address the fact that the anti-Semitic assaults had been planned prior to any Israeli “provocation,” as attested to by time-stamps on the instant messaging posts by Muslim participants in the “Jew-hunt.”
Dutch Prime Minister David Schoof refuted claims that the Israeli fans brought the violence on themselves.
“We are well aware of what happened earlier with Maccabi supporters but we think that’s in a different category. It is no excuse whatsoever for what happened later on that night in the attacks on Jews in Amsterdam,” Schoof said.
As is well-known, Dutch authorities did nothing to pre-empt the assaults, despite receiving intelligence from Israeli officials that Muslim violence was to be expected at multiple locations in the city. Victims unanimously describe the absence of security and police as the Arab-screaming mobs attacked them.
As criticism mounted over Dutch authorities’ failure to prevent the pogrom, and for reportedly failing to arrest anyone who took part in the mass assaults, police posted wanted pictures of numerous suspects (many taken from footage the thugs had posted of themselves in the act of assaulting Israelis), with warnings for them to turn themselves in or be arrested.
Whether any of the perpetrators will actually be prosecuted for assault remains to be seen.
Threatening to Bring Down the Government
Reflecting the political pressure being exerted on Mayor Halsema and other government officials to avoid criticizing Dutch Muslims, Undersecretary Nora Achahbar, who is of Moroccan descent, resigned from the government coalition after Geert Wilders denounced the Nov. 7 marauders as “mostly Moroccan” (euphemism for Muslim).
Achahbar complained of “hurtful, polarizing and possibly racist comments about the attacks on Israeli fans that crossed a line,” reported a Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. Three of her colleagues announced they would resign as well, prompting headlines about the coalition’s potentially imminent fall.
The undersecretary apparently hoped to bring down the government or at least precipitate a crisis with her resignation, to demonstrate the degree of political clout her left-wing party wields. But her colleagues who threatened to quit the government were persuaded in talks with coalition partners to remain at their posts, and Achahbar’s maneuver accomplished nothing.
The coalition, which is comprised largely of right-leaning parties, appeared “no shakier than it had been before,” news reports said.
Report Documents Instigators’ Close Ties With Hamas
Israeli intelligence officials have identified Dutch pro-Palestinian organizations with direct connections to Hamas as the primary instigators of the Amsterdam pogrom, according to a report released by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry, quoted in Israel Hayom.
The document provides detailed evidence of these connections, including specific individuals reportedly serving as intermediaries, the article said.
Evidence includes screenshots from that evening showing explicit calls for violence and coordinated sharing of locations and tactical information, as in the text messages below.
“Between 4 and 6 [p.m.] at Central Station [the Israelis] have to take the metro,” a man who rents out luxury cars texted to a group chat.
“300 Israelis who are Zios,” he wrote, using a recent pejorative for Jews. “Be there, fighters, come in whole groups, we’ll show them we are not afraid.”
One of the organizers of the attacks was identified in the report as Amsterdam resident Ayman Nejmeh, who described himself on social media as “a former UNRWA employee with a record of coordinating protests against Jewish targets.”
As of this writing, none of these individuals have been arrested by Dutch authorities, despite detailed evidence of their culpability, as claimed by Israeli officials.
Voice of Sanity
The only Dutch politician willing to publicly state the uncompromising truth about the perpetrators was Geert Wilders, the pro-Israel, right-wing politician who leads the Party for Freedom, the largest of the Dutch ruling coalition partners.
Over the last three decades, Wilders’s anti-immigration platform and characteristic bluntness have catapulted him and his party from the margins of political society to winning the largest share of the votes in the November 2023 elections.
Wilders immediately condemned what he called an “Islamic Jew-hunt,” calling online for the marauders to be imprisoned or deported.
“Pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam. We have become the Gaza of Europe. Muslims with Palestinian flags hunting down Jews. No more Jew-hunts in our country. NEVER AGAIN. I won’t accept this. The authorities will be held accountable for their failure to protect the Israeli citizens,” Wilders vowed.
“Track them down and put them in prison for as long as possible. As far as I am concerned because these are terrorist acts, treat them as terrorists and take away their citizenship,” Wilders urged.
He advocated stripping the attackers of their passports and deporting them back to Morocco, even if they were born in the Netherlands.
Wilders castigated the government’s passivity in not having arrested a single perpetrator as the pogrom unfolded, and for several days afterward. “The rule of law in the Netherlands is in the dustbin at the moment,” he fumed.
Wilder also demanded the resignation of Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema over her handling of the violent incidents. “Her incompetence is unprecedented,” he said.
Most Tolerant, Morally Permissive Society
Holland’s open, tolerant society is one of the most morally permissive in Europe, where open immigration has been a lynchpin of the left-wing political culture, and where most forms of liberal extremism are rampant.
“In Holland you can do practically everything: buy drugs, practice degenerate behavior, request euthanasia (mercy-killing). But there is one thing you can no longer do: criticize Islam. Those who do so are killed or flee the country; they are either silenced or self-censored to extend their life a little,” writes Italian author and Islam expert Giulio Meotti.
Dutch laws are among Europe’s most protective of suspects and defendants, notes The Times of London. Dutch anti-terror investigators keep hundreds of men under surveillance as hard-core terrorists because police consider them dangerous, but don’t have grounds to arrest them.
Experts say excessive Dutch tolerance and lax criminal penalties have bred a contempt for the law in some quarters. This was on vivid display the night after the Jew-hunt, when despite a municipal ban on demonstrations, dozens of anti-Israel protesters gathered raucously at Dam Square in Amsterdam, where many of the assaults on Jews had been carried out.
The illegal protest was one of several since Nov. 7, were rioters thumbed their noses at police, chanting pro-Palestinian slogans and defying orders to disperse. Two nights later, the lawbreakers focused on burning buses and cars, once again flaunting their lack of fear of consequences.
Some of the protesters were arrested but are expected to be charged with disturbing the public and released. So goes law and order in the Netherlands.
In the days after the Amsterdam attacks, one heard frequent statements from officials about how the “despicable attacks echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted” and similar platitudes. But the pogrom is more than an “echo” of the past. The “dark moment” is now.
Not only that, but the conditions that produced a pogrom in Amsterdam exist in every major Western European city, political analysts say.
Historians note that when authorities turn a blind eye toward physical violence, threats, and hate speech against the Jews, that permissiveness unleashes destructive forces that sooner or later target the broader society.
The Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and other Western European countries with growing Muslim populations are now learning that bitter lesson.
*****
Netanyahu: ‘Clear Line Between Amsterdam Pogrom and ICC Assault Against Israel’
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in a recent speech to the Kenesset drew a clear line between “two anti-Semitic attacks we have seen recently on Dutch soil: the reprehensible legal assault against the State of Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, and the violent assault against Israeli citizens” down the road in Amsterdam.
He noted how the legal veneer surrounding the ICC lends a false legitimacy to its anti-Semitic agenda against Israel and its leaders. It fuels the already skyrocketing level of anti-Israel passion in the Netherlands which hosts the ICC, and more broadly, in Europe.
The Biden Administration could have blocked the ICC’s illegal actions using the power of sanctions to help its ally Israel, but chose not to do so.
By contrast, South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune has threatened to impose sanctions on the ICC if the Court does not drop its application for an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Fox News reported.
Thune – who will become the next Senate Majority Leader once the GOP takes the upper chamber in January 2025 – warned that if current Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer does not take on the ICC, he, Sen. Thune, will do so.
“If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their outrageous and unlawful actions to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis,” Thune wrote in an online post.
“If Majority Leader Schumer does not act, the Senate Republican majority will stand with our key ally Israel and make this – and other supportive legislation – a top priority in the next Congress,” Sen. Thune vowed.
In May, the ICC issued applications for arrest warrants against Netanyahu, as well as then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks.
Thune’s threats against the ICC were made in coordination with a bill introduced by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., in June that called for sanctions against rogue prosecutors who have gone after “U.S., Israeli, or any other allied citizen wrongfully targeted by the ICC.”
“Service providers to the ICC – from banks to vending machine companies – may reassess whether continuing to work with the institution is prudent given the risk of inadvertently violating U.S. sanctions,” Human Rights Watch explained.
“The bill created apprehension and uncertainty for nongovernmental organizations, consultants, and lawyers who work with the ICC,” the organization added.
Richard Goldberg, who served on the White House National Security Council during the Trump administration, said he thinks lawmakers should consider going after the ICC as a whole rather than individual prosecutors.
“It’s one thing to threaten sanctions against individuals involved in illegitimate schemes to indict Americans or Israelis, it’s another thing to use sanctions as a tool to cut off the ICC’s access to funds,” he told Fox News.
“I think countries like Japan and Germany will put enormous pressure on the ICC to back down if they think their own banks may be subject to sanctions for wiring money to the ICC,” Goldberg said.
*****
The Amsterdam Pogrom and Dutch Betrayal of Jews During the Holocaust
On Nov. 7, 2024, a terrible echo of the “Jew hunts” that took place during the German occupation played out in Amsterdam as Israeli soccer fans were chased down alleys and beaten in the streets.
The parallels were so glaring, they prompted the Dutch king to say his country had failed Jewish people just as it did during the Second World War.
The renowned Dutch tolerance which for centuries had allowed Jews to flourish in that country proved to be a fragile façade under Nazi occupation, easily shattered and replaced by Dutch inhumanity.
Most Dutch citizens were not only indifferent to the plight of the Jews, but sizable numbers willingly assisted in the cruel roundups of Jewish men, women and children, facilitating their destruction.
Of all the Nazi-occupied countries in Western Europe, the Netherlands had the highest proportion of Jewish victims. Of the Netherland’s pre-war Jewish population of 135,000, seventy-five percent were murdered in the death factories of Auschwitz and Sobibor.
Of the 20,000 Dutch Jews who tried to survive in hiding, 8,000 were betrayed to the Nazis.
Dutch police arrested and rounded up the families, forcing them to board trains that transported them to the Dutch internment camps at Westerbork and Vught. There, Dutch guards carrying out Nazi orders prevented anyone from escaping. From these transit points, the Jews were shipped directly to the death camps.
Known as the “Gateway to Hell,” Westerbork was the last stop in the Netherlands before the death factories.
After being expelled from their homes, plundered of all their possessions, and forced onto death trains, the Jews’ were subjected to a final humiliation; forced to pay for their death ride to the killing centers.
The payment demanded for the train ride, collectively amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars (equivalent to millions today) was stolen from the Netherlands’ Jewish Bank, and the Dutch railway took its share. The company had built a new rail line during WWII and over time transported more than 100,000 victims to Nazi concentration camps.
The systematic looting of Jewish properties had begun well before deportation, greatly enabled by Dutch banks. On German orders, Dutch banks sent out forms to Jewish clients “legalizing” the transfer of their deposits to a Nazi bank created to extort Jewish money.
Much of this collaboration came to light in the late 1990s as the Netherlands, under pressure from the United States, began to face up to some of its appalling wartime practices.
Seventy-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, a prime minister of the Netherlands first acknowledged the heinous role of the Dutch police in rounding up and deporting over a hundred thousand Dutch Jews to the death camps.
“Since the last survivors are still among us, I apologize today in the name of the government for what the authorities did at that time,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in 2022. “Our government did not act as the guardian of justice and security.”
Without the cooperation of the Dutch civil service and its bureaucracy, historians say, the extermination of more than one hundred thousand Jews could not have been possible.
NS, the Dutch state-run railway, apologized years ago for what it called “a black page in the history of the company,” but failed to come up with any program for compensation.
Finally, in July 2019, after pressure from Holocaust activists and survivors, the railway accepted responsibility for shipping huge numbers of Jews to their deaths, and committed to paying over $74 million in compensation to surviving Holocaust victims and their families.
