The premeditated Amsterdam pogrom of 2024

As the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I don’t use Holocaust terminology lightly. I don’t say concentration camp if it’s not a concentration camp. I don’t say ghetto if it’s not a ghetto. I don’t say pogrom if it’s not a pogrom. What happened in Amsterdam last week was a pogrom.

What we know now is that the mob attacks on Jews in Amsterdam were premeditated, planned, and sent around on multiple social media groups days before the pogrom.

We also know that taxi drivers were part of it, part of this coordinated effort to corral Israelis and to not let them escape. Israelis reported getting in taxi cabs thinking they were escaping but being brought to side streets to the waiting mob. All along the train route from the stadium, mobs waited on either side of the tracks for the fans to alight. They had knives, sticks, batons, and fireworks which they set off at the Jews.

Jews had to jump into canals, hide in stores, and in random people’s apartments, to escape the bloodthirsty assailants who asked for people’s ID to know where they were from even posting some Israeli IDs on Telegram.

We also know that the Israeli government sent warnings as early as that morning to the Amsterdam authorities regarding these planned attacks but they were not heeded.

We also know that the police, other than in very few instances, stood by and even refused to protect the Israelis that came to them for help- this is an addition to security forces refusing to guard Jewish spaces in Amsterdam in the preceding months.

Entire X thread can be found here https://x.com/BenGreenJeru/status/1855291253073555740

Returning Israelis reported that in the days leading up to the game they were harassed in public places and casinos for being Israeli/Jews.

A number of Jewish Israelis were saved by a Druze Israeli citizen who spoke Arabic to the perpetrators, throwing them off the trail. He went back and forth saving groups of Jews from the frothing mob. His name is Melhem Asad and he is a hero.

There are people trying to justify these attacks by posting two videos from Amsterdam earlier in the day, one is Israelis taking down a Palestinian flag, and the other is fans on an escalator chanting a very very stupid soccer chant in support of the IDF against Arabs.

As to the first, there are social media posts where groups are telling one another to put Palestinian flags everywhere near where the Israelis are staying in the hopes that they can catch one of them ripping it down.

As to the second, I’m not a soccer fan but I am well aware that soccer fans for whatever reason are known as the most testosterone leaden aggressive sort of fans and while I most certainly do not condone their chants (and find it to be extremely unselfaware and stupid at the best of times let alone now) it’s a whole lot of bull to try and justify a pre-planned premeditated coordinated pogrom because of chants… if I recall correctly, chanting in the streets isn’t considered terror … right?

I do find it ironic of course to expect Israelis not to react to the flag that has become a symbol of terror (or to the burning of the Israeli flag) and yet to be appalled when they chant to let the IDF against those very people.

Burning the Israeli flag in Norway April 2024. Source https://x.com/YosephHaddad/status/1775073476216307869

At the end of the day, what we know is that Europe has failed to protect its Jews once again. The hate is dressed up differently, but it is the same.

Of all of the perpetrators who kicked, punched, stabbed, humiliated, chased, pummeled, terrorized Jews, none are in custody. They are all free on the streets.

The Israeli government sent 10 planes to retrieve its citizens in a rescue effort. From Europe, in 2024.

Amsterdam, indeed, Europe and the rest of the Western World, the premeditated Amsterdam pogrom of 2024 may be your last warning before the end cannot be rewritten.