Is the Amsterdam Attack a New Normal for Israelis and Jews?

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.