The appalling scenes of violence in Amsterdam following the game between home side Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv from Israel exposed the terrible price we are now paying for the two ideologies – mass immigration and multi-culturalism.
Our civilisation is now so fractured that an event as innocent as a football match can serve as a vehicle for anti-Semitic thuggery and intimidation on a very troubling scale.
The shocking disorder on the streets of the Dutch city was more than another outbreak of hooliganism.
As the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said, this was a ‘pogrom, led by an ugly mob bent on hunting down Jews’.
In the fraught political climate that has grown since Hamas’s savage assault against Israel on October 7 last year, anything that touches on the conflict in the Middle-East has the potential to bring out displays of bigotry and bullying in the name of the Palestinian cause.
The shocking disorder on the streets of the Dutch capital was more than another outbreak of hooliganism, but anti-Semitic thuggery and intimidation on a very troubling scale
Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters waving the Israeli flag in De Dam ahead of the football match on Thursday
Dutch police detain a man at De Dam in Amsterdam after he allegedly provoked Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters ahead of the match with Ajax
A Maccabi Tel Aviv fan on the floor after being attacked by thugs
Aaron from Hendon was surrounded by a violent gang of 10 after intervening
Fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv stage a pro-Israel demonstration at the Dam Square
Pro-Palestinian supporters wave Palestinian flags near the Ajax stadium
It is against this fractious backdrop that Thursday night’s horror unfolded. Some witnesses claim that the Israeli fans were ‘up for a fight’, and provoked the violence by tearing down a Palestinian flag in the centre of a city where 13 per cent of the population is Muslim, as well as indulging in anti-Palestinian chants.
Perhaps some Israeli visitors did help to stoke the unrest – if so, this is reprehensible. Yet such assertions are also in keeping with the pattern we see so often with anti-Semitic violence, in which the perpetrators paint themselves as victims pushed beyond the limits of endurance by their Zionist oppressors.
But there is no doubt about the reality of the attacks on the Maccabi fans. Many were chased, beaten and knifed. Some sought refuge in hotels, others leapt into the city’s famous canals for safety. At least five people were taken to hospital and 62 arrested.
So serious was the perceived danger that Israel dispatched two planes to the Netherlands to rescue the shaken fans.
The lessons of history do not seem to have been learned. Amsterdam is, after all, the city where Anne Frank hid from the Nazi occupiers before her death in Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
Following the defeat of the Third Reich, Europe’s politicians repeatedly said that nothing like the Holocaust should ever be allowed to happen again. Yet through their folly on migration, their reluctance to defend Europe’s heritage and their impulse to appease Islamist fanaticism, these political leaders are now creating a continent where Jews increasingly no longer feel safe.
It is bitterly ironic that Europe’s ruling elite justifies its obsession with cultural diversity and demographic upheaval by harping on about its commitment to tolerance, yet in reality this strategy is fuelling rampant intolerance.
In another terrible historic irony, the savagery in Amsterdam came two days before the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1938, the most brutal of all the Nazis’ pre-war anti-Jewish pogroms. Yet too many progressive politicians, pundits and policy-makers refuse to face up to this truth about intolerance.
Instead, they heap all the blame for divisions on the ‘far-Right’ or populist demagogues, while remaining attached to their disastrous open-door policies.
Fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv stage a pro-Israel demonstration at the Dam Square, lighting up flares and chanting slogans ahead of the UEFA Europa League match
In the lead-up to the Ajax vs Maccabi Tel Aviv match, several areas of Amsterdam were designated as security risk zones
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Amsterdam. The protest was banned at the Johan Cruyff Arena
Demonstrators running with Palestinian flags at Anton de Komplein in Amsterdam
In an inversion of morality, they ignore the rising tide of jihadist anti-Semitism in front of their own eyes, yet hysterically accuse Donald Trump of being a ‘fascist’ or a second Hitler because he wants to tighten border controls in the US.
Globalise the Intifada’ is one of the slogans of the Palestinian movement. Tragically, that demand is now being realised due to mass migration and institutional cowardice, as we can see in the endless Palestinian demonstrations in our cities, or in the disturbing surge of anti-Semitism since October last year.
According to one study, there were no fewer than 5,500 incidents of abusive behaviour towards Jews in Britain last year, the highest ever total.
Referring to the Middle East recently, President Macron of France said: ‘We must not import this conflict.’ But that is exactly what Europe’s rulers have done – and the consequences were all too clearly displayed in Amsterdam this week.
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