The left’s apologism for the pogrom in Amsterdam marks a foul new low.
Gal Binyanmin Tshuva, 29, is a keen football follower from Israel. Not a hooligan, not a thug, just a fan. In Amsterdam on Thursday night he found himself surrounded by a frothing, Israelophobic mob. They asked where he was from. ‘Greece’, he said, in a desperate bid to evade their hate and blows. They demanded to see his passport. He said he didn’t have it on him. They pushed him to the ground, stomped on his face, gashed his head, broke two of his teeth and knocked him unconscious. He came to eventually, in an ambulance, his face streaked with blood.
Adi Reuben, 24, was set upon by 10 Jew-haters. They beat him so badly they broke his nose. ‘Jewish! IDF!’, they yelled as they pummelled the Jew’s face. Aaron, a Jewish football fan from Britain, saw one of his co-religionists from Israel being stomped on and subjected to anti-Semitic abuse. He intervened to help him. The mob cornered him, yelling: ‘Are you Yehudi? Are you Jewish?’ He said he was a Brit. ‘You helped the Jew’, they said and smashed his face in. They broke his glasses and left his face coated in cuts.
Barak took refuge in Amsterdam’s Holland Casino, along with hundreds of other Israelis, as outside a mob of 200 gathered and seethed, ‘looking for blood’. A young Israeli man staggered into the casino. ‘All his face was blood’, said Barak. They were the victims of a jodenjacht – a ‘Jew hunt’. That’s the phrase used by the assailants themselves, in Telegram chats ahead of the violence. Bring fireworks, they told each other. We’ll attack this ‘cancer’, these ‘dogs’, they said, referring to the Israelis. And they did. They whizzed through the city on mopeds, using fireworks to ‘pelt’ the ‘dogs’ from the Jewish State.
Things got so bad that Esther Voet, the editor-in-chief of a Dutch Jewish newspaper who lives in Amsterdam’s city centre, offered her home to the Israelis fleeing the jodenjacht. ‘I told them this is a Jewish home and you are safe here’, she said. Try to take this in: in Europe, in 2024, a safe house had to be offered to young, bloodied Jews fleeing the blows and kicks of a marauding mob that damned them as dogs, as a disease. Not for the first time in the history of the Netherlands, good people offered to open their doors to Jews running from a Jew hunt.
This is what the left in Britain and across Europe has been making excuses for. This. In the days since Amsterdam was rocked by a self-confessed Jew hunt, leftish talking heads have furiously sought to explain it, to ‘contextualise’ it, to say the Israeli fans brought it on themselves by being rowdy and racist. As if there could ever be context for the breaking of an innocent Jew’s teeth because he failed to prove he was not Israeli. As if there could ever be context for the smashing of a Jew’s face for the crime of ‘helping a Jew’. As if there could ever be context for ‘hunting’ the ‘dogs’ of the Jewish nation. As if there could ever be context for a pogrom.
Gal Binyanmin Tshuva, 29, is a keen football follower from Israel. Not a hooligan, not a thug, just a fan. In Amsterdam on Thursday night he found himself surrounded by a frothing, Israelophobic mob. They asked where he was from. ‘Greece’, he said, in a desperate bid to evade their hate and blows. They demanded to see his passport. He said he didn’t have it on him. They pushed him to the ground, stomped on his face, gashed his head, broke two of his teeth and knocked him unconscious. He came to eventually, in an ambulance, his face streaked with blood.
Adi Reuben, 24, was set upon by 10 Jew-haters. They beat him so badly they broke his nose. ‘Jewish! IDF!’, they yelled as they pummelled the Jew’s face. Aaron, a Jewish football fan from Britain, saw one of his co-religionists from Israel being stomped on and subjected to anti-Semitic abuse. He intervened to help him. The mob cornered him, yelling: ‘Are you Yehudi? Are you Jewish?’ He said he was a Brit. ‘You helped the Jew’, they said and smashed his face in. They broke his glasses and left his face coated in cuts.
Barak took refuge in Amsterdam’s Holland Casino, along with hundreds of other Israelis, as outside a mob of 200 gathered and seethed, ‘looking for blood’. A young Israeli man staggered into the casino. ‘All his face was blood’, said Barak. They were the victims of a jodenjacht – a ‘Jew hunt’. That’s the phrase used by the assailants themselves, in Telegram chats ahead of the violence. Bring fireworks, they told each other. We’ll attack this ‘cancer’, these ‘dogs’, they said, referring to the Israelis. And they did. They whizzed through the city on mopeds, using fireworks to ‘pelt’ the ‘dogs’ from the Jewish State.
Things got so bad that Esther Voet, the editor-in-chief of a Dutch Jewish newspaper who lives in Amsterdam’s city centre, offered her home to the Israelis fleeing the jodenjacht. ‘I told them this is a Jewish home and you are safe here’, she said. Try to take this in: in Europe, in 2024, a safe house had to be offered to young, bloodied Jews fleeing the blows and kicks of a marauding mob that damned them as dogs, as a disease. Not for the first time in the history of the Netherlands, good people offered to open their doors to Jews running from a Jew hunt.
This is what the left in Britain and across Europe has been making excuses for. This. In the days since Amsterdam was rocked by a self-confessed Jew hunt, leftish talking heads have furiously sought to explain it, to ‘contextualise’ it, to say the Israeli fans brought it on themselves by being rowdy and racist. As if there could ever be context for the breaking of an innocent Jew’s teeth because he failed to prove he was not Israeli. As if there could ever be context for the smashing of a Jew’s face for the crime of ‘helping a Jew’. As if there could ever be context for ‘hunting’ the ‘dogs’ of the Jewish nation. As if there could ever be context for a pogrom.
