NOVEMBER 14 • 2024 | 41
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msterdam police are 
investigating a series of 
antisemitic assaults on 
Thursday, Nov. 7, against Israeli 
soccer fans, which resulted in five 
moderate injuries and about 20 to 
30 minor ones, in the Dutch capital. 
The violence occurred after a soccer 
match between Maccabi Tel Aviv 
and Ajax, a Dutch team.
The five injured people were 
treated in the hospital and 
discharged.
Witnesses described about 100 
men, whom they described as Arabs, 
assaulting Israelis in a coordinated 
manner on Nov. 8 morning. The 
country’s largest-scale antisemitic 
incident in decades has shocked 
many Dutchmen and especially Jews 
and Holocaust survivors who said 
that it is a reminder of what led up 
to the Holocaust.
The Nazis occupied the 
Netherlands in May 1940. Less than 
a quarter of Dutch Jews survived 
the Holocaust, and the country 
has many Holocaust memorials, 
including a museum in the former 
home of Anne Frank, which is one 
of the nation’s most visited sites.
Friday’s incidents prompted Israel 
to send airplanes to evacuate its 
citizens from Amsterdam, and the 
Israeli government told Israelis in 
the city to remain in their hotels 
and to remove signs that could 
identify them as either Jews or 
Israelis. The attacks also generated 
an international uproar, including by 
King Willem-Alexander, the Dutch 
ceremonial head of state.
“We must not look away from 
antisemitic behavior on our streets,” 
the king stated. “History has 
taught us how intimidation goes 
from bad to worse, with horrific 
consequences. Jewish people 
must feel safe in the Netherlands, 
everywhere and at all times. We 

embrace them all and hold them 
close.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog 
stated that Willem-Alexander told 
him that “we failed the Jewish 
community of the Netherlands 
during World War II, and last night 
we failed again.”
“We see with horror this morning, 
the shocking images and videos that 
since Oct. 7, we had hoped never 
to see again: an antisemitic pogrom 
currently taking place against 
Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and Israeli 
citizens in the heart of Amsterdam, 
Netherlands,” the Israeli president 
added in his own statement.
El Al flew about 2,000 passengers 
to Ben Gurion Airport over the 
weekend on eight emergency flights 
from Amsterdam, following the 
Thursday night assualts.
Most of the emergency flights 
left on Friday and two flew on 
Saturday with special permission 
from the chief rabbis of Israel, who 
determined that the circumstances 
justified this violation of observing 
the Shabbat.
The emergency flights replaced 
an Israeli military evacuation plan, 
which the government scrapped at 

the last moment after it emerged 
that the situation on the ground 
had stabilized, the Prime Minister’s 
Office said on Saturday.
The assaults were the largest-
scale antisemitic assault in the 
Netherlands since the Holocaust, 
and many Israeli leaders and Dutch 
Jews called them a pogrom. Video 
filmed by perpetrators showed 
scenes of public humiliation, 
including of an Israel who was 
forced to his knees and made to say 
“Free Palestine” before being beaten 
up. At least one Israeli jumped into a 
canal to escape his attackers. 
Amsterdam police chief Peter 
Holla said that 800 officers had been 
deployed nationwide to prevent 
attacks on Israelis or Jews ahead 
of the events in recent days. He 
noted that before the incidents on 
Thursday night, there had been 
“small upheavals” involving Maccabi 
supporters, who he said had 
removed a Palestinian flag from a 
building facade and had “destroyed 
a taxi.”
A journalist asked Amsterdam 
Mayor Femke Halsema at Friday’s 
joint press conference about the 
alleged provocations. “There can be 

no excuse for what happened,” the 
mayor said.
Prime Minister Dick Schoof 
said Saturday that a “thorough 
investigation” will be carried out 
about how the event was allowed 
to happen and to “bring the 
perpetrators to justice.” He called 
the incidents “utterly outrageous 
and abhorrent antisemitic attacks on 
Israeli citizens in Amsterdam.”

A ‘JEW HUNT’ 
Christians for Israel, an 
international organization based 
in the Netherlands, lowered the 
large Israeli flag, which flies atop its 
Nijkerk headquarters, to half-staff in 
solidarity with those attacked.
“Last night’s attack chillingly 

echoes the events of Kristallnacht,” 
wrote Frank van Oordt, the group’s 
director. “That such a violent 
hunt for Jews could occur again 
in 2024 in our capital city is both 
incomprehensible and unacceptable.”
Amsterdam police originally 
reported making 62 arrests. 
But Geert Wilders, head of the 
Netherlands largest party and senor 
coalition partner, said on Saturday 
that the police “just confirmed that 
no one has been arrested during 
the Islamic Jew-hunt in Amsterdam 
Thursday night. All arrests have 
been made before and during the 
soccer match and not during the 
pogrom.”
Mayor Halsema said that “we have 
seen an outburst of antisemitism 
tonight, and it is very unlike 
Amsterdam.”
“Telegram groups [are] where a 
Jew-hunt is being discussed,” she 
said. “It’s so shocking. I am furious, 
and I’m expressing, in the city’s 
name, the harshest condemnations 
over what happened.”
“I’m ashamed of the behavior of 
rioters and criminals,” she added. 

JONATHAN SHAUL/FLASH90/JNS

A Pogrom in Amsterdam

CANAAN LIDOR JNS

WORLD

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans 
arrive at Ben Gurion 
International Airport after an 
El Al emergency flight from 
Amsterdam on Nov. 8, 2024.

