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Police Neglect is a Pogrom’s Essential Ingredient
Israeli football supporters and Dutch youth clash near Amsterdam Central station, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 8, 2024, in this still image obtained from a social media video. Photo: X/iAnnet/via REUTERS
JNS.org – In Amsterdam, in the heart of Europe, on Nov. 7, Israeli football fans were hunted, beaten and terrorized by gangs. Was this a pogrom? According to conventional wisdom, it takes two to make a riot and three to make a pogrom. A pogrom requires three parties: instigators, victims and the public instrument of law and order that either neglects or condones the violence.
The instigators, in this case, were the Arab-Dutch gangs who went on a “Jew hunt.” The victims were clearly the Jewish supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv. And the third ingredient?
The Dutch police made 62 arrests before and after the riot but none during the assaults.
The Anti-Defamation League has said, “Given the extent of the rampage and violence, the number of detentions to date is alarming[ly] low.”
A month before this incident, there were alarming media reports that local police officers were refusing to safeguard Jewish and Israeli sites across the country.
We have been here before.
There is a long colonial tradition of the authorities ignoring mob attacks on Jews in Arab countries. The British army stood outside the gates of Baghdad but failed to quell the Farhud massacre of Iraqi Jews on June 1-2, 1941. It was only when the rioters began threatening Muslim quarters that the troops were ordered to intervene. By then, 179 Jews had already been murdered; women had been raped, babies mutilated, and extensive looting and destruction of property had taken place.
In the Libyan riots of 1945, during which more than 130 Jews died, the Jews held the British authorities partially responsible for the riots: they did not intervene directly in the pogrom until the third day of violence. In 1948, troops, including soldiers of the Jewish Brigade, were ordered to their barracks by the British administration in Libya while a second pogrom raged, and 14 Jews were killed. More deaths were prevented only because some Jews had been trained in self-defense.
The French colonialists, too, had an ignominious habit of failing to protect the Jews. When a riot broke out in Constantine, Algeria, in 1934, killing 25 Jews, unarmed police could not prevent the initial incident from spreading. The civil and military authorities in the city hall underestimated the dangers. The mayor, his deputy and the prefect were all on vacation, and none were recalled to deal with the situation. The secretary-general of the Algerian government even forbade the troops under the leadership of the military commander for Constantine to use bullets. The army took three hours to arrive.
In the Amsterdam case, victim-blaming has already begun. The Maccabi fans had “provoked” the riots when they burnt a Palestinian flag and “destroyed” a taxi. Nevertheless, there is strong evidence that the Amsterdam riot was preplanned and premeditated. This, too, is an essential ingredient of the classic pogrom. In 1941, Jewish homes were daubed with a red hamsa on the eve of the Farhud riot. In the run-up to the 1948 pogrom in the Moroccan city of Oujda, inscriptions with skulls and crossbones appeared, declaring “Death to the Jews!” and that the community leader “Obadia will be hanged, and the rest will follow!”
In Mandatory Palestine, on April 4, 1920, at the peak of the Nebi Musa festival, anonymous Arabic-language notices began circulating in Jerusalem that said, “The government is with us, [the British Gen. Edmund] Allenby is with us, kill the Jews; there is no punishment for killing Jews.” Over four days, thousands of Arabs ran through the Jerusalem streets, throwing stones at Jews, destroying Torah scrolls, setting a yeshiva and several houses on fire, breaking into buildings and looting, with little intervention from the British authorities until the very end.
In Aden, the British-trained forces of law and order took an active part in the killing during the 1947 riots in which nearly 90 Jews were murdered. In 1929, knowing that a pogrom was about to happen, the Arab-dominated police force in Hebron made sure that Jews were not able to defend themselves, and 67 Jews were killed.
In the case of the violent riots targeting the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in Amsterdam, were the police incompetent or did they fail to act by design?
The attitude of those police officers who refused to do their duty because defending Jewish sites and people would present them and their consciences with a moral dilemma is as close as it gets to condoning the violence.
On the night of Nov. 7, the Dutch police neglected to control events. More frightening, the risk of contagion across Europe is high. Jews have not felt more threatened since World War II, and less confident, in the event of trouble, that the forces of law and order will be ready to protect them.
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US Imposes New Sanctions on Houthis After Redesignating Iran-Backed Rebels in Yemen as Terror Group
A Houthi fighter mans a machine gun mounted on a truck during a parade for people who attended Houthi military training as part of a mobilization campaign, in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
The United States has imposed sanctions on seven senior members of the Houthis, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday, one day after the Trump administration officially redesignated the Iran-backed rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).
The newly sanctioned individuals smuggled military-grade items and weapon systems into Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and negotiated buying weapons from Russia, according to the Treasury Department. Abdulwali Abdoh Hasan Al-Jabri and his company, Al-Jabri General Trading and Investment Co, were also designated for recruiting Yemenis to fight in Ukraine on behalf of Russia and raised money to support Houthi military operations.
“The US government is committed to holding the Houthis accountable for acquiring weapons and weapons components from suppliers in Russia, China, and Iran to threaten Red Sea security,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The latest sanctions came after the US State Department on Tuesday officially redesignated the Yemeni rebels as an FTO, following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump shortly after he took office.
Trump’s executive order in late January followed repeated attacks by the Houthis, also known as Ansarallah, against Israel since October 2023, including the launch of over 200 missiles and 170 attack drones.
“The Houthis’ activities threaten the security of American civilians and personnel in the Middle East, the safety of our closest regional partners, and the stability of global maritime trade,” the executive order reads.
The United States formally designates Ansarallah, commonly referred to as the Houthis, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization pic.twitter.com/jsmNw6k1ew
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 4, 2025
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Washington’s redesignation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization in a post on X, urging for the eradication of terrorism.
“The Houthis, an Iranian proxy, unprovokedly launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks at Israeli citizens and communities, disrupted international shipping routes and upended global stability,” Sa’ar wrote.
I commend the decision by @POTUS and @SecRubio to designate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The Houthis, an Iranian proxy, unprovokedly launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks at Israeli citizens and communities, disrupted international shipping routes… pic.twitter.com/Oxrs8FwqoT— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) March 4, 2025
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced the department’s official designation, which restores sanctions that legally prevent American individuals and organizations from providing “material support” to the Yemeni terrorist group.
Trump’s order also calls for the destruction of the Houthis’ military capabilities and for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to inspect all partners and programs in Yemen to ensure funds do not reach the terrorist group.
Additionally, the US announced a reward offer of up to $15 million and possible re-location for information leading to the disruption of the Yemeni group’s financial mechanisms.
“Since 2023, the Houthis have launched hundreds of attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, as well as US service members defending freedom of navigation and our regional partners,” Rubio said in a statement. “Most recently, the Houthis spared Chinese-flagged ships while targeting American and allied vessels.”
The FTO designation makes non-citizen members and representatives of the Houthis eligible for deportation and requires any US financial institution with ties to the group to report to the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the US Treasury Department.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, the Houthis — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — have targeted over 100 merchant vessels in the Red Sea. They asserted that these attacks and disruption of global trade were a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza following Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In January, the group signaled it would limit its attacks in the Red Sea corridor to only Israeli-affiliated ships after a ceasefire began in the Gaza Strip but warned that broader assaults could resume if necessary. Reports have indicated that the Houthis used Iranian-supplied ballistic and cruise missiles to carry out these attacks.
In 2021, the Biden administration reversed Trump’s previous decision to designate the Houthis as an FTO, citing a desire to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Yemen.
In his statement, Rubio stated that this concern over humanitarian aid is no longer an issue, saying that the US would no longer “tolerate any country engaging with terrorist organizations like the Houthis in the name of practicing legitimate international business.”
Several countries — including Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel — currently designate the Houthis as terrorists.
Last month, the United Nations announced it suspended its humanitarian operations in areas controlled by Houthi rebels, after they detained dozens of UN staffers, who remain unreleased.
The Houthis have been waging an insurgency in Yemen for two decades in a bid to overthrow the Yemeni government. They have controlled a significant portion of the country’s land in the north and along the Red Sea since 2014, when they captured it in the midst of a civil war.
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Barnard College President Blasts Anti-Zionist Columbia Group as Trump Sets Campus Antisemitism in Crosshairs
Pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia University on April 19, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender via Reuters Connect
Barnard College president Laura Rosenbury has issued a scorching rebuke of the anti-Zionist campus group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), accusing it of causing $30,000 in damages during a recent protest and betraying “the goals and sanctity of higher education.”
Rosenbury — whose June 2023 ascension to Barnard’s presidency took place just months before anti-Israel activists upended higher education by staging mass, unauthorized demonstrations and other disruptive activities to express support for Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel — issued the censorious statements in an op-ed published on Monday by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
“They [CUAD] operate in the shadows, hiding behind masks and Instagram posts with Molotov cocktails aimed at Barnard buildings, antisemitic tropes about wealth, influence, and ‘Zionist billionaires,’ and calls for violence and disruption at any cost,” Rosenbury wrote, citing CUAD’s involvement in a January incident in which several of its members disrupted Columbia professor Avi Shilon’s course on modern Israeli history to spew pro-Hamas propaganda. “They claim Columbia University’s name, but the truth is, because their members wear masks, no one really knows whose interests they serve. Columbia has disavowed the group.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD stormed and occupied the Milbank Hall administrative building at Barnard College last week to protest the expulsion of two students who participated in disrupting Shilon’s course. During the demonstration, a staff member was assaulted so severely as to require hospitalization, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
In Monday’s op-ed, Rosenbury enumerated a slew of other offenses the group allegedly committed.
“They broke into our Access Barnard offices, where first-generation, low-income, and international students come for academic and social support, food pantry access, and supplemental funding,” she continued. “They berated the dean of the college — who spent hours working in good faith to de-escalate —for simply seeking access to a bathroom. They caused $30,000 in damages to a building that houses not just the offices of the president and the dean of the college, but also multiple classrooms and the offices that seek to further diversity, equity, and inclusion at Barnard.”
She continued, “Even though all of the disruptors wore masks, we now know the identity of many of them and are continuing to identify the rest.”
The college president went on to assert her imperviousness to “enormous pressure groups,” defending her previous decision to expel the students and vowing to impose the same measure on anyone else who would “refuse to share our value of respect, inclusion, and academic excellence.”
Concluding one of the harshest commentaries on anti-Zionist demonstrations from an elite college official since Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, Rosenbury said, “Barnard had the courage to take a stand. To protect and defend higher education, others must do the same.”
Rosenbury’s op-ed came just one day before US President Donald Trump vowed to suspend federal funding to any educational institution that refuses to quell riotous demonstrations, a punitive measure which continues his administration’s pledge to crack down on campus antisemitism and the pro-Hamas activists fostering it. The administration also announced pending action against Columbia University, of which Barnard College is an affiliate while maintaining its status as a separate financial and legal entity.
“All federal funding will stop for any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded in 2022. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.”
He continued, “No masks! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Hours earlier, a Task Force to Combat Antisemitism that the Trump administration created in January said that several federal agencies —including the departments of education and human and health service and the General Services Administration — will review over $5 billion worth of federal contracts, grants, and other financial support to Columbia University to “ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Columbia University remains one of the most hostile campuses for Jews employed by or enrolled in an institution of higher education. Since Oct. 7, 2023, it has produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
“Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses — repeatedly overrun by antisemitic students and agitators,” US Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a press release announcing the pending action. “Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination. Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US Holds Secret Talks With Hamas on Gaza Hostages, Source Says
Demonstrators hold signs and pictures of hostages, as relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas protest demanding the release of all hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Itai Ron
The Trump administration has been conducting secret talks with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on the possibility of releasing US hostages being held in Gaza, two sources briefed on the conversations told Reuters.
US special envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler has been holding the direct talks with Hamas in recent weeks in Doha, the sources said, confirming a report by Axios.
Until recently the US had avoided direct discussions with the Islamist group. The US State Department designated Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
Such talks run counter to long-standing US policy against direct contacts with groups that Washington lists as terrorist organizations.
The previous US role in helping to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the Gaza war has been dealing with Israel and Qatari and Egyptian mediators but without any known direct communications between Washington and Hamas.
The Israeli embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Boehler’s office declined to comment.
It was unclear when or how the Israeli government was informed of the talks.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did representatives for Hamas.
The sources said the talks have focused on gaining the release of American hostages still held in Gaza, but one said they also have included discussions about a broader deal to release all remaining hostages and how to reach a long-term truce.
One of the sources said the effort includes an attempt to gain the release of Edan Alexander, of Tenafly, New Jersey, believed to be the last living American hostage held by Hamas.
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff plans to return to the region in coming days to work out a way to either extend the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal or advance to the second phase, a State Department spokesperson said on Monday.
The post US Holds Secret Talks With Hamas on Gaza Hostages, Source Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.