‘Cancer Jews’: how we can be used as a common slur

On November 10, 2024, a tram was vandalized in Amsterdam-West. Rioters – maybe some of them had partaken in the attacks on Maccabi fans on November 7 – decided to break its windows and pelt it with fireworks, which led to the tram catching fire. Luckily, nobody was injured – the tram was empty in the videoclip – but you can clearly hear someone screaming “kankerjoden” (“cancer Jews”) at the top of his lungs.

The group of people who attacked the tram was small, but for some reason they seemed to be upset with it – as well-known Dutch Jewish writer Leon de Winter quipped: “perhaps it had something to do with its blue-and-white colors.” Nevertheless, it was shown on Israeli television and you could tell that it was difficult for the anchors and panelists to make sense of it. The important detail here is that there were no Jews on the tram. The term “cancer Jews,” in this case, seems to have been used by the person in the clip to verbally attack someone or something he simply hates. After reading Dr. Omar Mohammed’s blog about the pervasiveness of using the word Jew in Arabic as a slur, I wanted to add to this by giving the example of the Netherlands, where the word Jew is used in similar ways as well.

Personal experiences with this epithet

I have had some luck in life so far, as no one has ever used the horrible epithet “cancer Jew” to verbally attack me – I am sure that it would have been different, if I would have worn a kippah in public. In a way, though, it is a shame because I would have been able to make a bad joke – I am Jewish and have had cancer – and tell the person using it that, for once in their miserable lives, they were spot-on. The epithet is used to attack Jews and the evidence of November 7 shows that it was also used by anti-Israel extremists. Snapshots of Telegram groupchats show that the slur was used to describe Israeli Maccabi fans, disproving the claim that their anger was directed at fans simply because they were Israeli. Terms like “Israelis”, “Zionists” or “Jews” are used interchangeably. The slur was used against my mother, though, in the early 1990s. I was a small child and we were at Rotterdam Central Station. Back then, my mother still used to wear a visible Star of David. As three young Muslim girls were passing by, one of them looked at my mother and shouted “cancer Jew” – it was the last time my mother would visibly wear her pendant. My mother chose to cover it, because we always made use of public transportation and she was responsible for me. If something like this could happen, the next instance could be worse. Bear in mind, that this was the early 1990s. It was the time of the Oslo Accords and the hope that it would lay the groundwork for a lasting peace in the near future. And my mother was not walking around wrapped in an Israeli flag. No, my mother was treated this way because she was visibly Jewish.

An epithet for authority figures

It was something that was unknown to me for a long time, but it became clear on a number of occasions during my college years. One time, I was out with a couple of fellow students and as we were waiting for the subway we noticed some security officers pinning a man against the wall. We did not know what he had done, but he furiously shouted “cancer Jews” at the officers. The funny thing was that none of my fellow students seemed upset about this. On the contrary, one female student taunted the officers before we entered the subway, because she felt that they were using excessive force. They were all surprised when I got visibly angry about the man who was pinned. While on the subway, I became irate and said that there was no need for him to use that kind of language. Firstly, by using the word “cancer” and secondly for using the word “Jew” as a slur. They looked at me in amazement.

The second example involved a college friend of mine. He was a nice guy but one time when we went out for drinks with a group of people, he told me that his younger brother had a knack for getting himself into trouble. What was the example he gave me? Well, he told me that his brother was drunk once and when encountering a police officer in The Hague he called the man a “cancer Jew.” By the way, my friend and his brother were white and not Muslims.

Ajax fans

Ajax fans are known among football fans as “the Jews.” The popular story among fans of rival teams is that one day the hardcore fans decided to call themselves Jews and since then rival teams have started using the term for them. These same fans regularly decry being fined or even arrested by the police when using the term in songs or otherwise, because they argue that Ajax fans use the term themselves. They believe it is a double standard. Ajax fans, on the other hand, state that they have started calling themselves Jews, because they use it as a badge of honor. The reason for this, is that rival fans started calling them Jews first. After years of research, Dutch historians have debunked the myth perpetuated by rival fans: the Ajax version is correct.

It would seem that more than one hundred years ago rival fans, when visiting Amsterdam for matches against Ajax, would need to travel through the city’s Jewish neighborhood to get to the stadium. Because of this, they started joking that they were visiting the “club of the Jews” and thus started calling Ajax fans Jews as well – and, no, being called a Jew was not supposed to be a compliment.

Football is a great sport and football fans can create a wonderful atmosphere. Each club’s fanatics are known for creating that atmosphere by singing songs and cheering with gusto. But it usually means verbally ridiculing the fans of the visiting team as well. This could be harmless and considered teasing, but when playing against Ajax, rival fans have displayed blatant anti-Semitism for decades. Again, in the case of the Dutch, this was not introduced by the Muslim or Arab community. Whites started this all on their own.

The defense of rival fans has always been that they do not hate Jews, they are simply directing their anger at “Ajax Jews.” How can that be anti-Semitic? Well, here are a couple of examples of what fans do and shout when playing against Ajax:

1. For a long time, fans would hiss when Ajax players entered the pitch – the hissing noise is a reference to the gas chambers
2. “Hamas, Hamas, the Jews to the gas!” – a reference to Hamas terror attacks that killed Jews and the Shoah perpetrated by the Nazis
3. Referring to Ajax and Ajax fans as “the noses” – a reference to the stereotype of the Jew with a large, hooked nose

Now, how can you keep claiming that it is not anti-Semitic, when using references to actual slaughters of Jews and peddling Jewish stereotypes – by the way, I have met plenty of non-Jewish Dutchmen with large noses. At best, you keep gaslighting yourself. At worst, you realize that it is anti-Semitic, but you choose to shrug because you use the term to verbally attack non-Jews. One of the worst examples, though, took place nine years ago when Ajax visited FC Utrecht – many Utrecht fans seem to hate Ajax with a vengeance. At some point during the match the fanatics launched into the following ditty:

My father was a commando

My mother was with the SS

And together they would burn Jews

Because Jews burn the best

Now, how is this not anti-Semitic?

To be fair, the majority of Dutchmen seem to abhor this kind of behavior and authorities in cooperation with football clubs have cracked down on these expressions, with substantial success. But it will never truly disappear. Football fans still use this type of language, but they have become more careful for fear of being fined or worse. Many Dutch Jews have blamed Ajax as well. They believe that if Ajax fans stop referring to themselves as Jews, then rival fans will stop using us as a slur. But that approach fails to understand that rival fans started using us to refer to Ajax in the first place. Why would they stop now?

“Jew”: a persistently derogatory term, meant to insult someone

As I said earlier, I have had very few bad experiences with these types of epithets myself and I know that most Dutchmen, whether Christian, Muslim, atheist or otherwise, do not use this type of language. But, even though I am not a researcher studying this subject in-depth, I can honestly say that in the Netherlands one can still see the use of the word “Jew” as a derogatory term. It dovetails with Dr. Omar Mohammed’s comments about the Arab world in his blog and shows that in a country like the Netherlands it continues to this very day. You could argue that it is much less pervasive in the West than in the Arab world at the moment, but the negative use of the term “Jew” continues here, too. Discrimination happens in every country, unfortunately. But the word “Jew” is one of the few terms, perhaps the only one, that is not simply used to attack Jews, but is also used by non-Jews to attack each other. In the Netherlands, it continues to be used as a slur to attack football fans, police officers, and the authorities in general. Therefore, I agree that a good starting point to counter anti-Semitism, would be for non-Jews to stop using the word as a slur to attack us and each other.