1 week Ago By Vivian Bercovici
Among the more disturbing aspects of the attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam last week was the rush to blame it on the Jews. Many in the western media determined that the Jews provoked the violence with more than a dash of their own. It was payback.
The brutal “backlash” by local Muslims was understandable. This was not antisemitism, many say, but a justifiable response by enraged Islamists, having been provoked to attack by racist Israeli soccer thugs. Not quite.
Europeans are fanatical soccer fans and violence has long been associated with the sport. And the behaviour of some of the 3,000 Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv shouting racist anti-Arab chants is typical. There was a video of an Israeli man pulling a Palestinian flag hung from a private balcony in Amsterdam.
And the alleged burning of a Palestinian flag. Classic, gutter soccer hooliganism. Since October 7, large groups of pro-Hamas and antisemitic thugs have owned and occupied public spaces in Amsterdam, many cities in Europe and, of course, Canada.
In Holland and Canada, political leaders have treated such mobs as “peaceful protests,” where the pro-Hamas throngs, they say, are exercising their “constitutional freedoms.” Countless Israeli flags have been torn apart, burned and desecrated. This conduct is viciously antisemitic and incites hatred.
As do the persistent calls to annihilate Israel and kill the “cancer Jews” (a curse that is the ultimate verbal violence in Dutch culture). That, we are told, is constitutionally protected speech. Which is absolute bunk.
Hateful incitement targeting Jews has been allowed to flourish without restraint. In fact, these violent “protesters” have been emboldened, since they face no consequences. Jew hunting has been normalized.
Consider what might be the reaction if local Jews in either Amsterdam, Toronto or Montreal attacked random Muslims, and beat the crap out of them, threw them into canals and cornered them in dark alleys after being given their location by taxi and Uber drivers. Based on statements made by Israeli and Dutch authorities, we know that the attackers utilized Telegram, WhatsApp and perhaps other online messaging apps to co-ordinate their “Jew hunt,” as they called it . They zipped around town on electric bikes that allowed them to engage in “hit and run” attacks on unsuspecting tourists heading to their hotels.
Many taxi and ride-share drivers were involved, relaying the locations of Israelis to the online groups. One WhatsApp group had more than 700 members, all assisting to locate and attack Jews. Dutch and Israeli authorities are continuing to investigate and are likely to confirm that additional messaging platforms were used in this planned mass attack.
Just over 60 people were detained during the pogrom, but as of Sunday, only four remained in custody. The Netherlands has a notoriously lax criminal justice system, where serious crimes are treated with extreme leniency. It bears strong similarities to what now prevails in Canada, including the controversial “catch and release” system.
Maccabi Tel Aviv was in town to play against Ajax Amsterdam, an iconic team that has a long historical association with Dutch Jews. One of its star players, Eddy Hamel, was murdered in the Auschwitz gas chambers. Since then, the team has fielded several top-tier Jewish players.
A few years ago, Ajax’s physiotherapist, Salo Muller — whose extended family was among the 75 per cent of Dutch Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust — settled a lawsuit he brought against the state-owned Dutch railway company for its role in transporting Jewish citizens to their deaths. Since the Second World War, Ajax has come to be known as the “super Jew” club. Rival teams taunt its fans (who are overwhelmingly not Jewish) by calling them “cancer Jews,” and worse.
“Cancer Jews,” explained University of Auburn philosophy professor David deBruijn in a recent conversation, is a common Dutch curse that is “worse than the N word.” Born and raised in The Hague, deBruijn comes from a Dutch Jewish family that was decimated in the Second World War. He grew up attending public schools, and was regularly taunted by his Muslim peers of Turkish and Moroccan origin.
A typical jeer to which deBruijn became inured was: “My dad was in the commandos, my mom was in the SS. We like to burn Jews because Jews burn the best.” It’s also a standard chant hollered by opposing teams at Ajax games.
In response, the Ajax fans wave Israeli flags and belt out the old bar mitzvah standard, “Hava Nagila.” According to deBruijn and others with whom I have spoken in recent days, these flag-wavers are not at all knowledgeable about Jewish culture or Israel. They are soccer fans doing things that have been done, quite mindlessly, for decades.
Israeli officials confirmed that they had sent numerous warnings well in advance of the attacks to their Dutch counterparts based on cyber-intelligence and other evidence. It seems that this information was discounted, at best. Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel has since advised Parliament by letter that an investigation into “possible warning signs from Israel” is being investigated.
In recent months, there has also been dissatisfaction expressed by some Muslim police officers in Amsterdam, who have refused to work on shifts or assignments where they may be required to protect Jewish institutions — including the new Amsterdam Holocaust Museum. The solution was to make scheduling changes to accommodate the Muslim officers’ requests. Following the match on Thursday night, as the crowds dispersed, they were followed from the stadium onto public transit and targeted at the various exits where they emerged to return to their hotels.
Waiting for them were local Muslims, who quickly got down to beating and breaking bones. Sometimes they demanded that the individuals show their passports to prove that they were not Israeli. Police officers were out in full force but stood by and did not intervene until many hours later.
The attackers combed streets and alleys armed with knives and other small weapons searching for “Jews” and Israelis. There is no doubt that this pogrom was organized by local Muslims. Numerous online communications channels were used to locate and isolate vulnerable Israelis.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander, who is notoriously tight-lipped about political and controversial matters, immediately denounced the attack, unequivocally. In a telephone conversation on Friday with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, the king stated: “We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again.” The King expressed “deep horror and shock over the criminal acts committed,” according to a statement issued by Israel.
Just days after the Amsterdam pogrom, on Sunday, six people were arrested in Antwerp following calls on social media to attack Jews in that city. Israeli authorities are cautioning citizens from travelling to Europe for soccer matches in the near future due to the extreme security risk. The Amsterdam pogrom, which was carried out on Nov.
7, coincided — almost to the day — with Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938. It was unmitigated, antisemitic violence. Excusing it as some form of justified or understandable response to the burning of a flag or the vulgar behaviour of a few soccer goons is dishonest and dangerous.
And it will not stop with the Jews. It never does. National Post Vivian Bercovici is a former Canadian ambassador to Israel and the founder of the State of Tel Aviv.
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