By Fiamma Nirenstein, JNS
There is no justification for the systematic hunting of Jews in the city of museums and bicycles and tulips.
One thing should be clear by now to our allies in the fight against antisemitism: They failed.
Europe cannot keep its post-Holocaust promise of “never again.” That promise crashed and burned onto the world stage in Amsterdam last week as hundreds of Israeli tourists were filmed fleeing from a large crowd of antisemites who, divided into groups organized for the pogrom, shouted “Jew, Jew!”
These mobs forced Maccabi Tel Aviv fans to flee, to cover their children with their bodies while being beaten by the mobs and even to say while being forced to the ground with violence “I am not Jewish.”
The pogrom and its aftermath laid bare how only Israel—with its courageous and solitary fight against totalitarian, extremist Islam and its allies—remains deployed as the shield to the values that were promised to the whole world in 1945 after the defeat of evil. Back then, the people in Amsterdam, in Paris, in Britain, in the United States and around the world said “never again” would they support authoritarian regimes who discriminate against the sick, those who are different, dissidents, women, gays, Jews and members of all other religions.
But in Amsterdam just days before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, we saw a different reality. Islamic extremists who support the terrorist axis have taken over violent possession of the city, relying on the silence and connivance of the police and the indifference of ordinary citizens.
Then, just a few days later, we once again saw people in the street marching not in defense of the Jews and Israel but in favor of Hamas and Iran. These marchers were no longer second- or third-generation Muslims but blonde-haired boys wearing keffiyehs who spread lies about the Jews in praise of “Palestine.”
Europe has been devoured by a sense of guilt mixed with fear and cultural and moral confusion, which makes it prey to mistakes. The media, for instance, has tried to deny the antisemitism of the crowds who organized and prepared for their “Jew hunt,” instead framing the events as a clash between soccer fans or a response to aggressive actions by Israeli fans who boasted about their actions in Gaza.
There is no justification for the systematic hunting of Jews in the city of museums and bicycles and tulips. Although warned of what was being prepared, the city did nothing to stop it. Instead, officials said afterwards that they were ashamed of what had happened.
The warning is loud and clear, and Israel is alone to face its magnitude as early as Oct. 7.
The crowd of Muslim and Arabic speakers who attacked the Israelis, including kids, drew on their support for Hamas’s genocidal project of destroying Israel and all Jews.
I won’t go back to explaining how, during the many years between the end of the Second World War and today, antisemitism has slipped into all the crevices of anti-capitalist ideology, anti-imperialist and then woke agenda (all the oppressed against all the oppressors) to make its new anti-Zionist guise lethal.
Now, the new chapter is definitively open. Never again is now, and it is Israel who must take charge of the situation and act strategically to defend the Jews of the whole world.
