{"id":117267,"date":"2024-11-25T17:05:27","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T15:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=117267"},"modified":"2024-11-25T11:15:37","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T09:15:37","slug":"25-05-99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=117267","title":{"rendered":"Amsterdamned: The Shame of Femke Halsema"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Amsterdamned: The Shame of Femke Halsema<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Ben Cohen \/ JNS.org<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema attends a press conference following the violence targeting fans of an Israeli soccer team, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 8, 2024. Photo: Reuters\/Piroschka Van De Wouw<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In the arsenal of the antisemite, denial is a key weapon. Six million Jews were exterminated during the Holocaust? Didn\u2019t happen. The Soviet Union persecuted its Jewish population in the name of anti-Zionism? Zionist propaganda. Rape and mutilation were rampant during the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023? What a smear upon the noble resistance of Hamas. And so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

No surprise, then, that the left-wing mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, is now publicly regretting her use of the word \u201cpogrom\u201d in her summation of the shocking antisemitic violence unleashed by Arab and Muslim gangs in the Dutch city in the wake of the soccer match between local giants Ajax and visitors Maccabi Tel Aviv two weeks ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

One day after the violence, Halsema noted that \u201cboys on scooters crisscrossed the city in search of Israeli football fans, it was a hit and run. I understand very well that this brings back the memory of pogroms.\u201d She could have also mentioned (but didn\u2019t) that the Dutch authorities ignored warnings from Israel that the violence was being stoked in advance in private threads on social-media platforms, resulting in a massive policing failure; that Ajax supporters were not involved in the attacks, undermining claims that what happened was merely another episode in the long history of inter-fan violence at soccer matches; and that the \u201cboys\u201d engaged in the assaults were overwhelmingly youths of Moroccan or other Middle Eastern or North African backgrounds, who gleefully told their victims that their actions were motivated by the desire to \u201cfree Palestine.\u201d But at least Halsema grasped the nature of the violence. Or so we thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few days later, she rolled back her initial comments. \u201cI must say that in the following days, I saw how the word \u2018pogrom\u2019 became very political and actually became propaganda,\u201d she stated in an interview with Dutch media. \u201cThe Israeli government, talking about a Palestinian pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam. In The Hague, the word pogrom is mainly used to discriminate against Moroccan Amsterdammers, Muslims. I didn\u2019t mean it that way. And I didn\u2019t want it that way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On the left, the enemy is \u201cJewish privilege,\u201d and on the right, it is \u201cJewish supremacism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Halsema\u2019s discomfort does not, of course, mean that what happened in Amsterdam was not a pogrom. Nor does she speak for the entirety of the Dutch political class. Both the center-right VVD Party and the further-right PVV Party, for example, continue to describe the violence as a pogrom and have suggested strong measures for countering further outrages targeting local Jews and visiting Israelis. Both parties have urged a clampdown on mosque funding from countries promoting Islamism, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and have called on the Netherlands to follow Germany\u2019s example in denying or removing citizenship from those convicted of antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the mayor\u2019s 180-degree turn speaks volumes about how the left in Europe enables antisemitism by denying that it is a serious problem. To begin with, there is a refusal to situate each incident in its historical context, which makes it all the easier to portray violent explosions as an anomaly. Listening to Halsema, you would never know that the Amsterdam pogrom was preceded in March by a violent demonstration at the opening of the National Holocaust Museum, where pro-Hamas protestors masked with keffiyehs and brandishing Palestinian flags\u2014this century\u2019s equivalent of a brown shirt and a Nazi armband\u2014lobbed fireworks and eggs in protest at the presence of Israeli President Isaac Herzog. What you will realize, however, is that Halsema is terrified of being labeled \u201cIslamophobic.\u201d That explains her pleas for understanding for a bunch of Moroccan thugs who express contempt not just for Israel but for the country that has provided them a sanctuary with housing, education and many other benefits.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not only are Jews expected to take all this abuse lying down; they are then told by non-Jewish leftist politicians\u2014often aided by Jewish \u201canti-Zionist\u201d lackeys\u2014that they have no right to situate the violence directed against them within the continuum of Jewish persecution over the centuries. What happened in Amsterdam, we are badgered into believing, was different because it wasn\u2019t motivated by hatred of Jews but a righteous rejection of Israeli policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the behavior of some of the Maccabi fans is brought into the equation. Video showing fans descending into a subway as they chanted \u201cF**k the Arabs\u201d spread like wildfire on social-media platforms, along with reports that Palestinian flags adorning some private homes had been torn down. I am not going to endorse these actions, even if, as a Jew, I can understand and empathize with the feelings that motivated them, but I also consider them essentially irrelevant to this case. The advance planning of the pogrom, coupled with the wretched record of pro-Hamas demonstrations around the Netherlands in the previous year, proves that the Maccabi fans would have been hounded and attacked even if their behavior had been impeccable. Moreover, legally and morally, violent assaults are in a different league than acts of petty vandalism or the singing of distasteful songs. There can be no comparison, and nor should there be.<\/span><\/p>\n

What the Amsterdam pogrom underlines is that the extremes of the left and the unreconstructed elements of the nationalist right are now at one in their attitudes towards Jews. On the left, the enemy is \u201cJewish privilege,\u201d and on the right, it is \u201cJewish supremacism.\u201d Both terms carry the same meaning, but are expressed in language designed to appeal the prejudices of their respective supporters. For the left, claims of antisemitism are dismissed as expressions of Jews exercising their \u201cprivilege,\u201d dishonestly seeking victim status at the same time as the \u201ccolonial\u201d state they identify with is persecuting the \u201cindigenous\u201d inhabitants. For the right, claims of antisemitism are a tactic to shield the contention that Jews are superior to everyone else. Translated, both communicate the same message: The violence you experience is violence you bring upon yourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

To her eternal shame, Halsema is now trafficking in this noxious idea while presiding over a city in which no Jew can now feel safe, less than a century after their ancestors were rounded up and deported by the German occupiers. She should resign.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Amsterdamned: The Shame of Femke Halsema Ben Cohen \/ JNS.org Mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema attends a press conference following the violence targeting fans of an Israeli soccer team, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 8, 2024. Photo: Reuters\/Piroschka Van De Wouw In the arsenal of the antisemite, denial is a key weapon. Six million Jews were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117267"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117281,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117267\/revisions\/117281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}