RSS
Is the Amsterdam Attack a New Normal for Israelis and Jews?
Pro-Palestinian protesters face Dutch police while taking part in a non-authorized protest in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Anthony Deutsch
Last week, Israeli fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club were violently attacked across the city of Amsterdam in a pre-planned assault. Jews were jumped, assaulted, spat on and even pushed into freezing canals. One video shows a man filming himself driving rapidly down a street on the night of the attacks, and exclaiming that he is on a “Jodenjacht,” a Dutch word meaning “Jew Hunt.”
In another video, a man is thrown to the ground and repeatedly kicked while urgently shouting “I’m not Jewish.” Some people were hit by cars. Many fans were injured and hospitalized, although none were killed. In a place where three quarters of the Jewish population was exterminated less than 100 years ago, these scenes are particularly harrowing.
Israel’s government sent emergency planes to evacuate approximately 2,000 Israeli citizens from the Netherlands, amid fears of further threats and attacks. In the aftermath, the Israeli government warned both Israelis and European Jews to stay away from soccer matches and public events indefinitely, and to avoid wearing clothing or accessories that reveal their Jewish identities at sporting events for fear of future attacks.
On the day following the attack, the King of the Netherlands issued a statement admitting that his country had “failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed [them] again.” The Amsterdam attack marks yet another significant turning point for world Jewry, with many Jews once again questioning their safety in Europe.
Despite near-immediate condemnation from Dutch and Israeli officials, the usual crowd of anti-Israel academics, journalists, and media personalities rushed to justify the attacks, asserting they were provoked by football chants.
One anti-Israel “pundit,” Mehdi Hasan, began justifying the brutal attacks before the dust had even settled, claiming that three Maccabi fans had “torn down Palestinian flags,” and that Israeli fans had sung anti-Arab chants at the football match.
To be sure, some Maccabi fans probably behaved poorly, and we as Jews should not condone such behavior, but there is no equivalence — words or chants don’t justify vicious physical assaults, and the attacks on Maccabi fans were highly organized and pre-planned before the Israeli team had even arrived in the Netherlands.
According to Dutch media, the attacks had been planned for days in WhatsApp group chats, with many such chats consisting of Arab taxi cab drivers in Amsterdam, who used their city-wide network to gain information on the whereabouts of Israelis. In some of the leaked messages, there were calls for a “Jew-hunt,” and references to Israelis as “cancer dogs,” as well as group-wide planning and agreement on exactly when the attacks would take place.
The most horrifying part of the Amsterdam attack is seeing first-hand how anti-Jewish pogroms have been justified — just as they were justified throughout history.
Jews as oppressors is not a new trope, but instead of condemning radical Islamic movements promoting these tropes, the left-wing has seemingly co-opted radical right wing antisemitism. The Jewish community experienced the same gaslighting and doublespeak in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, when much of the global left-wing — including journalists, academics, and celebrities — rushed to justify the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust.
Unless the civilized world unites in moral clarity against antisemitism, xenophobia, and all forms of hatred, Jewish people and other minorities will be unsafe in Europe and around the world.
Many Jewish people who were born after the Holocaust thought we were immune from antisemitic mob violence, and that the world had changed. But we are now seeing, firsthand, how antisemitic violence can be justified or ignored.
After a year that featured an exponential rise in antisemitism and anti-Jewish hate crimes across Europe, it is time for European governments to take a hard look in the mirror, consider their failures, and address the roots of these incidents including the spread of radical Islamic extremism.
Nathaniel Miller is a student at Tulane, where he is a copy editor for the Tulane Hullabaloo, and served as Tulane AIPAC’s president and a CAMERA fellow.
The post Is the Amsterdam Attack a New Normal for Israelis and Jews? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.