Without Action the Amsterdam Apologies to Jews Are Just Another Betrayal

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“The Amsterdam government was, when it mattered most, not courageous, not decisive, and not compassionate. It horribly abandoned its Jewish residents.”

On Yom HaShoah, Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema made history with this moving apology for the city’s role in the persecution and deportation of Jews during the Holocaust. She pledged €25 million toward initiatives aimed at safeguarding Jewish life—an act widely praised in the Netherlands and abroad. Yet, tragically, the apology now rings hollow.

Today, Dutch authorities are repeating the same deadly pattern: displaying passivity, moral cowardice, and bureaucratic evasion as antisemitism and anti-Israel extremism escalate. This was on painful display during the official opening of the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam. As dignitaries gathered to remember the murdered Jews of Europe, outside, anti-Israel demonstrators shouted slogans that blurred all distinction between legitimate protest and the desecration of Jewish memory. Some compared Israel to Nazi Germany—turning the commemoration of the Holocaust into another stage for hatred. Once again, authorities hesitated to act firmly, prioritizing the right to protest over the dignity and safety of a gathering meant to honor the victims of the Shoah.

Words are offered, but protection is withheld. Definitions are endlessly debated, but violence goes unanswered. Jews are once again left vulnerable, isolated, and demonized—this time in the heart of a democratic Europe that claims to have learned from its past.

 Anti-Israel rhetoric as a cover to spread hatred against Jews

The latest annual report of the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) published this April leaves no room for ambiguity. It warns that radical anti-Israel activism is increasingly mutating into direct antisemitic violence and intimidation. Extremist groups, fueled by events in Gaza, now use anti-Israel rhetoric as a cover to spread hatred against Jews, threatening both the Jewish community and the democratic foundations of the Netherlands itself.

However Dutch authorities, confronted with these warnings, have chosen to retreat into word games—hiding behind nuanced debates about what constitutes antisemitism according to various definitions. Rather than acting decisively, they juggle semantics while Jewish citizens face real threats on the ground.

A horrifying example unfolded in November 2024: after a soccer match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv, mobs in Amsterdam openly chanted “Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas.” Online, neo-Nazi content celebrating Hitler flooded social media.

Initially, Mayor Halsema showed rare courage by calling the violence what it was: a pogrom. Yet political pressure quickly followed, and within days she withdrew this accurate characterization. Instead, she suggested that the word “pogrom” was being exploited as propaganda—implying that the real problem was not the hatred unleashed in her streets, but the terminology used to describe it.

The AIVD was clear: the November violence was extremist, antisemitic, and a direct attack on Dutch democracy.

But senior city officials, desperate to deflect responsibility, distorted the narrative further. A high-ranking Amsterdam civil servant—a former GreenLeft parliamentarian—even alleged on Dutch national television that Maccabi supporters had conducted an “Arab hunt,” an outrageous accusation disproven by multiple eyewitnesses but repeated widely enough to smear the Jewish victims as aggressors.

In 1942, Amsterdam officials lacked the courage to stand with their Jewish citizens. In 2024, faced with a different kind of threat, their successors falter once again. This continues until today.

Dutch Universities are Unsafe for Jews 

The betrayal is even more glaring at Dutch universities, where antisemitism flourishes under the guise of political activism.

Our recent study, Unsafe Spaces: The Rise of Antisemitism in the Dutch Academic World, revealed alarming findings: over 60% of Jewish students and staff at Dutch universities report feeling unsafe. Verbal abuse, harassment, and social exclusion have become normalized for Jewish individuals, particularly those openly associated with Israel or Zionism. University leadership consistently fails to act, hiding behind slogans of “academic freedom” while hatred flourishes unchecked.

The recent disruption of Middle East expert Rawan Osman’s lecture at Maastricht University offers a chilling example. Activists from Free Palestine Maastricht—who had publicly glorified the Amsterdam pogrom—stormed the event.

Despite direct threats and intimidation, neither university administrators nor city officials intervened meaningfully. Maastricht’s mayor misleadingly characterized the disruption as a “legitimate demonstration,” ignoring her constitutional duty to maintain public order and protect individual rights.

Dutch universities, once beacons of enlightenment, have become selective in their values: free speech for those who demonize Jews; silence and exclusion for those who defend them.

A New Betrayal

Most insidious of all is the way authorities have learned to weaponize the very definitions that were intended to protect Jews. Every hateful outburst, every act of intimidation, every campaign of exclusion is now filtered through the lens of whether it fits one bureaucratic definition of antisemitism or another. Instead of confronting hatred, authorities debate its technical qualifications. Instead of acting, they analyze.

By reducing antisemitism to a question of definition—rather than a lived reality of hatred, fear, and violence—authorities give themselves permission to stand aside. If the hatred does not meet the precise terms of a particular definition, they reason, then no real harm has been done. The result is that hatred is not only tolerated, but subtly legitimized.

The endless juggling of definitions has become a new betrayal: a bureaucratic alibi for abandoning Jewish citizens once again. Hate, intimidation, exclusion, and demonization are wrong—whether or not they fit a predefined category. Jewish communities do not need semantic arguments. They need protection, courage, and solidarity.

Mayor Halsema was right to recognize the historic failure of Amsterdam’s wartime authorities. But recognition is not redemption. An apology without action is not justice—it is only the beginning of another betrayal.

Words cannot shield a community under siege. Definitions cannot protect those who are once again marked, isolated, and demonized. Conferences and taskforces will not halt hatred when hatred marches openly, chanting genocidal slogans, intimidating students, and storming public events with impunity.

Where do Dutch authorities stand?

There is a moment—rare, fleeting—when history offers the chance to choose differently. To be better. To stand with those who are targeted, rather than stepping aside, murmuring about complexity while the hate escalates. The Netherlands stands at precisely such a crossroads now. The question facing Dutch institutions is no longer academic. It is existential. Will they summon the courage that was lacking before? Will they defend the values they claim to cherish, when the cost is no longer theoretical? Or will they, once again, let the slow tide of isolation, demonization, and fear rise unchecked around their Jewish citizens—offering only the cold comfort of apologies after the damage is done?

The time for hollow words has passed. What remains is the simple, enduring question by which future generations will judge us: When it mattered, did you stand with the Jews—or did you turn away?