RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Thursday night, in a dark echo of Europe’s darkest days, Amsterdam bore witness to a pogrom.

Following a Europa League football match between Ajax Amsterdam and Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv, ‘pro-Palestine’ thugs went on an organised and seemingly pre-meditated hours-long hunt for Maccabi supporters – because, well, they were Israeli Jews. And that is enough it seems, in this era of keffiyeh-sporting, BDS-fuelled anti-Semitism, to justify hunting people down and violently attacking them.

According to Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema, men riding scooters searched the streets for Israelis and carried out ‘hit and run’ assaults. Other reports tell of masked men ambushing and attacking fans as they walked back to their hotels. Some Israelis were knocked down and beaten up. Others were forced to jump into canals to escape.

One video recording shows a man lying on the ground as a gang of men repeatedly kick his motionless body. Another shows a vehicle being driven at what presumably is a Maccabi supporter. Another shows Jewish football fans being attacked in a crowded street, while a man shouts, ‘That’s for Gaza motherfucker… now you know how it feels’.

According to the Amsterdam police, five supporters were taken to hospital, while 20 to 30 others were treated at the scene. It is likely that many more would have been seriously hurt and worse if it wasn’t for those Amsterdam locals who allowed Maccabi supporters to hide and shelter in restaurants and cafés.

Deborah Lipstadt, currently the US special envoy to combat anti-Semitism, is in no doubt as to the significance of what happened last night. It was a concerted and violent attack on Jews because they were Jews. It was all too reminiscent of ‘a classic pogrom’, she said, before drawing attention to the attacks’ proximity to the anniversary of Kristallnacht, ‘when Nazi-sanctioned and Nazi-led pogroms against Jews erupted across the German Reich’. Striking a similar note, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands told Israel’s President Isaac Herzog: ‘We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during the Second World War, and last night we failed again.’

It was all so grimly predictable. Ever since Hamas’s 7 October attacks and the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, anti-Semitism has surged across Europe. Synagogues have been fire-bombed. Jews have been menaced and attacked. And the streets of Western cities have been filled on a near-weekly basis with anti-Israel marches, thronging with anti-Semitism. It was these conditions that made an attack on Israeli Jewish football fans all too possible.

Grimly predictable, too, has been the sly excuse-making for what happened last night. The BBC has reported that Maccabi fans have a reputation for offensive chanting. There have also been reports that they burned a Palestine flag before the game, and didn’t adhere to the minutes’ silence for those who lost their lives in the Valencian floods – a pearl-clutching response that would be easier to take seriously if anti-Israel protesters hadn’t been engaging in far worse for the best part of a year. Nevertheless, the point of this blame-shifting is clear enough. It was the Maccabi fans’ own fault. That seems to be the message. These Israeli football fans brought the violence down on themselves. These Jews deserved it.

Those surreptitiously justifying last night’s pogrom are almost as bad as its perpetrators. Enough with the excuses and deflections. We need to face up to the rampant anti-Semitism now thriving in Europe. Before it’s too late.

Tim Black is a spiked columnist.