Of Dutch Pogroms and American Politics

The Dutch didn’t have an opportunity to participate in Kristallnacht back on November 9-10, 1938–those two days of antisemitic wilding in Germany and Austria when the low-life Master Race murdered nearly 100 of the Chosen People on city streets like Berlin and Vienna, ransacked and torched 7,000 Jewish homes and businesses, destroyed 1,000 synagogues and arrested about 30,000 Jewish males, incarcerating many in concentration camps.

Kristallnacht kicked off the Holocaust. The largest ever pogrom in Jewish history was widely reported to an indifferent world. Hitler’s intentions for European Jewry were sealed, four years before gas chambers were sealed for the mass murdering of 6 million Jews.

Nearly nine decades later, the Dutch demonstrated that an organized pogrom against Jews was easy to organize. Three thousand Jewish and Israeli soccer fans traveled to Amsterdam to see the match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax, the local Dutch team.

When the match was over, masked gangs of Muslims waited in train stations and outside the hotels where Israelis were staying. With knives, clubs and even cars, they attacked and chased Jews through the streets of Amsterdam. Some Jews jumped into the Dutch canals to evade danger. Much of the mayhem was joyously filmed on camera phones, à la October 7.

Miraculously, no one was killed, although most were badly beaten, with ten taken to hospitals. Many huddled in hotel rooms, waiting for Israel to dispatch rescue teams. The Dutch government and police had been alerted by Mossad, in advance, that there was disturbing online chatter about an impending attack against Israelis in Amsterdam. But why spoil the fun of local Muslims? The Israelis in Amsterdam on that fateful evening were neither alerted nor protected by Dutch authorities.

At least the mortified King of the country, Willem-Alexander, condemned the attack: “We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again.”

Anne Frank knew that the Dutch were no better than the Nazis—which is why she and her family were hiding from them in that attic before collaborators had them deported to death camps. In 1940, Amsterdam had 80,000 Jews. All but 16,000 were murdered in the Holocaust. Today, the country has 40,000 Jews, half living in Amsterdam. After this week’s Islamist violence (over 1 million Muslims live in the Netherlands), expect most of those Jews to move to Israel.

It is no surprise that this pogrom was carried out entirely by Muslims. All of Europe has seen variations of the same riotous, murderous actions taken against Jews, by the same persecutors in the Middle East, North Africa and Persian Gulf who call for the death of Israel.

European governments naively invited into their countries millions of fanatical Islamists who have nothing but ingratitude and contempt for liberal values or democratic governance. With the assistance of local anti-Western Marxists, they have been slowly imposing their will on Europeans for decades.

They are playing the caliphate long game.

The fact that this recent incident was inspired by a soccer match is no surprise. To the rioting Muslims, two Jewish teams were on display, and their fans deserved a bloody beatdown.

Yes, Maccabi is Israel’s national team, but Ajax, for decades, was nicknamed “the Jews” among soccer-obsessed Europeans. Why? Well, the team was founded in the 1930s in the Jewish section of Amsterdam. Its first coach was Jewish. Very few Jews, however, have played on the team all these years.

No matter. Whenever Ajax traveled to play other teams in the Europa League, tens of thousands of drunken soccer fans in stadiums would join in on a collective hissing sound—to mimic the sound of gas. Sometimes Muslims would chant: “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas!”

European Jews have long known not to attend a soccer match when Ajax was the opposing team.

Someone should have warned the Israelis that Maccabi versus Ajax would produce a perfect storm of a pogrom.

Meanwhile, in America, where Jews tend to be oblivious to most things other than the finer points of how to renovate a kitchen, a presidential election took place. Exit polls predictably seemed to indicate that nearly 80% of American Jews voted for Democratic standard bearer, Kamala Harris. Naturally, the vast majority of American Jews wanted to reward the Biden-Harris administration for a record-shattering year of antisemitic violence and harassment.

Those same polls seem to indicate that for many of those Jews, abortion rights were their main political priority. Antisemitism and support for Israel in its existential war with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Houthis? Sorry, much further down on the list, if it made the list at all.

Most American Jews have no idea what has been happening to their compatriots for nearly 20 years now all throughout Europe. Most of them probably don’t know what the word Kristallnacht even means.

Abortion rights, really? Protecting women is important, if that happens to be your North Star. But if it is, what about the Israeli girls and women who were gang-raped and mutilated on October 7? Sorry, that issue was not on the ballot for Democratic Party voters. What was, instead, was a rejection of nonexistent Islamophobia, and pestering Israel on how to defend itself against Palestinian terrorists.

Calling all obtuse Jews: Your house is on fire! Maybe you should get a bucket brigade going, instead of chanting for Black Lives Matter, pitying Gazans who celebrated the murder of Israelis—some of them Americans—in Southern Israel, and sitting shiva for the demise of the Democratic Party.

Calling all obtuse Jews: Your house is on fire! Maybe you should get a bucket brigade going, instead of sitting shiva for the demise of the Democratic Party.

Polling data has not been uniform, however. For instance, 80 percent of American Jews nationally voted for Harris, but in major cities—where pro-Hamas students and progressives spent the past year participating in antisemitic orgies on bridges, and at train stations, rotundas and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies— support for Harris dropped to 66 percent. Some reports indicated that as many as half the Jewish population in Pennsylvania may have voted for Donald Trump.

The same Jewish departure from the Democratic Party may have happened in New York, as well. That at least would make poetic sense. After all, New York was once New Amsterdam—settled by the Dutch, before their country was colonized by maniacal Muslims.  New Amsterdam was infamously governed by a classic antisemite, Peter Stuyvesant.

The Jews of New York City, and beyond, should show solidarity with Israelis hunted down in old Amsterdam on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself,” and his forthcoming book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Is Israel Fighting a Just War in Gaza?”