Anti-Israel protesters clash with police outside Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, breaking through barricades and setting off smoke bombs during a demonstration against a performance by the IDF’s chief cantor. Photo: Screenshot

Dutch police arrested 22 people on Sunday after anti-Israel protests outside an Amsterdam concert hall erupted into violent clashes during a performance by the Israel Defense Forces’ official cantor.

Around 200 demonstrators gathered outside Amsterdam’s famed Concertgebouw to protest a performance by Shai Abramson, the IDF’s chief cantor, who has previously performed at several Israeli military ceremonies.

Even though Abramson was originally scheduled to lead the Concertgebouw’s annual public Hanukkah concert, the venue canceled his appearance last month following backlash over his ties to the Israeli military. 

After the announcement sparked international outrage, the Concertgebouw offered Abramson the chance to perform at two private concerts later that evening while skipping the main Sunday afternoon concert.

Widely circulated on social media, footage showed anti-Israel protesters chanting antisemitic slogans, breaking through barricades, and carrying signs with inverted red triangles — a symbol used in Hamas propaganda to mark targets.

“October 7, 2023: The day indigenous people rose up against their occupier,” one of the signs read, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Paar demonstranten gooiden een hek om. Paar agenten van de arrestatie-eenheid hebben ze met hulp van de ME uit de groep gehaald. Dat ging er hardhandig aan toe pic.twitter.com/dxtxPg1jsQ

— Jesper Roele (@JesperRoele) December 14, 2025

As riot police worked to contain the crowd and maintain public order, protesters set off smoke bombs, leaving one officer with minor injuries, Dutch News reported.  

Local law enforcement arrested 22 people for offenses including violating assembly rules, possessing fireworks, and resisting arrest.

Het was een orgie van Jodenhaat, vandaag op het Museumplein en vlak voor de ingang van het #Concertgebouw, waar Holocaustoverlevenden werden uitgescholden voor nazi’s. Met instemming van een tokkie in toga.
Dit is racisme, dit zijn de nieuwe nazi’s, dit is het pure Kwaad. pic.twitter.com/Ho8DC9dQ4y

— Bart Schut (@bpschut) December 14, 2025

On Monday, the anti-Israel group Pal Action NL claimed responsibility for vandalism at the concert hall, sharing photos on its Instagram account showing red paint splattered across the walls.

“Last night, after Het Concertgebouw allowed IOF war criminal and official cantor of the Zionist settler colony, Shai Abramson, to perform, some activists decided to pay a little visit,” the group wrote in its post.

“Het Concertgebouw now has Palestinian blood on their hands, and it will take a LONG time to wash away …” the statement read. “A warning to all other venues and institutions in the country considering platforming Zionists, don’t. Or we will be visiting.”

From left to right: Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Scott Doran, Hudson Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship Walter Russell Mead, and Hudson trustees chair Sarah Stern. Photo: Screenshot.

Geopolitical competition, the rise of artificial intelligence, and declining faith in the capitalist economic model and liberal democracy are contributing to the resurgence of antisemitism taking place across the Western world, some of the leading foreign policy experts in the US said on Friday during a conference held by the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.

Titled, “Antisemitism as a National Security Threat,” the eight-hour event examined antisemitism as a challenge to the execution of a sound American foreign policy and a tactical advantage to “revisionist powers” such as China and Russia which aim to overturn the international order and supplant the US as the world’s leading superpower. Moreover, they stressed that the vanguard of the “new” antisemitism – Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Nick Fuentes – are not new characters on the world stage but rather the latest iteration of a social type which has always emerged in periods of disruptive change to convert public uncertainty about the future into domestic upheaval.

One area that antisemites have identified as a stronghold is the rising field of artificial intelligence, Jude Rosenblatt, founder of an AI consulting firm, told attendees while appearing via webcam.

“The AI, unfortunately is quite antisemitic itself. We’ve done a lot of research about this. I can explain it in greater detail if you want, but it turns out that AI is very antisemitic and then when it undergoes safety training, it actually becomes more antisemitic. And it is very concerning that underneath the hood, AI is deeply antisemitic,” Rosenblatt explained. “But if it remains deeply antisemitic underneath the hood, then it’s going to, as it becomes more deeply incorporated into everything, people are going to increasingly lose agency to something which is antisemitic and is going to undermine all of our interests.”

The Algemeiner has reported extensively in recent weeks on how neo-Nazis, jihadi terrorists, and others have weaponized AI both to target the Jewish people and, more broadly, expand their propaganda, recruitment, and operations.

The conference also touched on the rise of the so-called “new right.” From the advent of the Cold War until the election of Donald Trump, the American right or “conservative movement” was associated with a “strong” and “active” American foreign policy consensus rooted in a pragmatic assessment of the national interest even as it often embraced a missionary project of spreading liberal democracy and capitalism around the world.

Recently, however, right-wing social media pundits such as Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes have argued for America’s retreating from the world stage by citing, implicitly and explicitly, antisemitic conspiracies which claim that Jews incite wars and social upheaval for profit and the pursuit of power. In doing so, they have uttered torrid encomiums to the leaders and governments of China, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran.

The lies and historical revisionism the new right promotes is poisoning public debate and creating a climate in which American leaders are incentivized to make poor strategic decisions for the sake of achieving short term political goals, according to experts.

“It started off with anti-Ukraine in the populist world,” Hudson Institute senior fellow and director of the Keystone Defense Initiative, Rebecca Heinrichs, said, speaking during a panel titled “The Grand Chessboard.”

“It’s antisemitism for the purpose of undermining Americans’ confidence in ourselves and in our post World War II role in the world. That is very dangerous because we can’t come to consensus on anything else we need from a grand strategy perspective if American scapegoat our problems to the Jews and if they believe that Israel is no longer an ally but it never was, and in fact that we were on the wrong side of World War II, which is now the narrative being pushed,” she continued.

The conference ended with a keynote address delivered by renowned scholar and foreign policy analyst Walter Russell Mead. An alumnus of Yale University, Mead’s most recent work includes his critically acclaimed examination of the US-Israel relationship titled, The Arc of the Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People.

Mead discussed antisemitism across the ages as one consequence of utopian social engineering and its perennial quest to construct societies unalloyed by outsiders and nonbelievers.

“When you want to have a comprehensive political order that embodies all good things and lays out rules for how everyone should behave and think and so on, you sooner or later run up against those stubborn Jews who will not bend to the need of Baal, who will not sacrifice to the emperor or whatever the element of the coercive element of your utopia is,” Mead said. “Today in the Islamist Middle East, we see the same thing, a utopia. If everyone would just accept Islam and live in the light of these eternal truths, everything would be fine. There would be justice, there would be prosperity, there would be freedom. But there are Jews.”

He continued, “The European union’s vision of a world of peace in international order keeps getting disturbed by that traumatizing presence of a Jewish state that follows the logic of its own survival rather than the idealistic hopes and dreams that we see in Brussels.”

Mead concluded by arguing that the American tradition offers not only a guide for building a society which, while being imperfect, is inclusive to all but also an antidote to antisemitism.

“Other people reject the American idea of a free society in favor of some kind of a blood and soil nationalism. Again, you’re just not going to get there because it’s kind of obvious that we’re sort of diverse. We’ve got a bunch of people from whose blood and whose soil is it going to be there?” he said.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

Tucker Carlson speaks at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, Oct. 21, 2025. Photo: Gage Skidmore/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

The brother of prominent right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson suggested on social media that Sunday’s terrorist attack that killed 15 people at a Jewish celebration in Australia was a false flag operation, mocking one of the more than 40 others who were injured during the mass shooting.

Two gunmen opened fire on the crowd gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney to celebrate the first night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, murdering a child, a rabbi, and a Holocaust survivor among a dozen other civilians.

Buckley Carlson took to social media to comment on the antisemitic massacre, insinuating that victim’s injuries were faked and key details were fabricated. He reposed a comment which claimed that “Zionist networks and intelligence staged shooting incidents,” described the attack in Syndey as “theater,” and argued and that the terrorism will become pretext for new speech restrictions regarding antisemitism. The reposted comment also suggested that human rights attorney Arsen Ostrovsky, who was shot in the head during the attack, fabricated his injuries for attention.

“When your ego betrays the Op,” Carlson posted. “‘Get out of the frame, Arsen!’” 

“You really are a sick person,” Ostrovsky wrote back. 

Carlson retorted, raising additional doubts regarding the legitimacy of the terrorist attack. 

Let’s just condemn the lying, James. pic.twitter.com/pvFaozuSbe

— Buckley Carlson (@buckleycarlson) December 14, 2025

Within hours of the shooting, a wave of misinformation spread across fringe forums as well as major platforms such as X and Facebook. Online antisemitism monitors documented a surge in baseless accusations aimed at obscuring the reality of the attack, including claims that the event was staged or orchestrated by intelligence services. Misinformation experts have warned that false flag allegations, claims that real-world violent events are staged by governments or intelligence agencies, often proliferate after high-profile tragedies.

Carlson’s brother, Tucker, has sparked controversy over the past two years for spreading a relentless barrage of anti-Israel and antisemitic conspiracies on his popular podcast. Carlson, a former Fox News host who now hosts a podcast, has questioned Hamas’s status as a terrorist group and hosted guests who have minimized historical atrocities, including the Holocaust, without pushing back against their claims. He has falsely and repeatedly accused Israel of committing a “genocide” in Gaza, argued that the Jewish state oppresses Christians, and insinuated that Jews were responsible for killing Jesus.

Carlson has further suggested that Zionism is oppositional to “Western values” and that Israel’s policies are tantamount to “collective punishment.” The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), the official news agency of the state of Iran, has published articles highlighting Carlson’s comments.

Notably, during an appearance at a recent forum in Qatar, Carlson publicly announced that he would be purchasing a home in Doha. The announcement drew backlash, with critics pointing out that Hamas leaders live in Qatar and that the country regularly uses slave labor.

Carlson’s prominence within the US conservative movement has provoked significant alarm, with many right-leaning Jews concerned that his influence could lead to greater levels of antisemitism within the Republican Party. US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has called on his party to repudiate Carlson.