Gary Willig is a veteran member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.
After a tumultuous election campaign in the US that saw many casual accusations of Naziism and being Hitler thrown around, the real Nazis stepped up to show the world how it’s done, right before the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
On the evening of November 7, mobs of anti-Israel ‘activists’ gathered during a soccer match between Ajax and the Israeli Maccabi team in Amsterdam. Armed with knives and clubs, they set upon the Israeli fans in what can only be described as a true pogrom straight out of the worst days of Tsarist Russia. Hours after the Netherlands officially commemorated the Kristallnacht pogrom, the Nazis’ heirs staged a new Kristallnacht.
Victims were reportedly beaten unconscious, run over by cars, even thrown into a canal. Men and women walking with their children were not spared the wrath of a mob just as thirsty for Jewish blood as those that stalked the streets of Germany on the night of November 9, 1938. They broke into hotels where Jews were believed to be staying and threw incendiary devices through windows in the hope of causing as much damage and harm as possible.
The violence was so bad that Israel deployed recue planes to Amsterdam to get its citizens out. The Foreign Ministry advised Jews not to wear anything displaying their Jewish identity.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders called it a “Jew hunt” on the streets of Amsterdam, a terrifyingly accurate description of last night’s horrors.
How is this possible in enlightened Europe in 2024? How can an outright pogrom be committed in a Western capital? How could Nazis still cause such atrocities in Europe nearly 80 years after their defeat in World War Two?
Thirteen months of unchecked lies, incitement, and hate is how. The moment the October 7 massacre was committed, an open season on Jews was declared around the world. Just a month after the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, almost exactly one year ago, Dutch-Jewish watchdog Documentation on Israel (CIDI) reported an 800% increase in antisemitic incidents in Holland.
In October, 2023, antisemitic mobs in Sydney chanted “Where’s the Jews?” Last night, the Nazis found the Jews they were looking for in Amsterdam.
Holland’s failure to prevent a pogrom in Amsterdam is the product of over a year of lies and hate that led to police officers refusing to so much as stand guard outside Amsterdam’s Holocaust museum, as was revealed a month ago. One victim has reported that it took police three hours to arrive after Israelis who fled to the Marriot Hotel called them for help.
Three hours. In the heart of Amsterdam. Perhaps it’s not surprising for a police force whose officers publicly declare that they do not see Jews as worth protecting.
All the false accusations of genocide and other crimes in Gaza have led to this. Indeed, their only purpose beyond saving Hamas is to allow for more October 7s and to justify pogroms and attacks on Jews like this one.
Every anti-Israel encampment on college campuses, all the shouts of “genocide” at Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, every chant of “death to Israel” and “death to America” has been in preparation for moments like this. This is what the Columbia University protesters who called for Hamas to murder Jewish students and for “10,000 October 7s” want. This is the deepest, most-cherished dream of those who chant “From the River to the Sea.”
This is what Chuck Schumer was defending when he told Columbia administrators not to be concerned with the Nazis who took over their campus. If these Nazis commit a similar pogrom in the US, that Jewish blood will be on Schumer’s head.
The civilized world, from Europe to Australia to the US, must stand up to the re-emergence of the Nazi attempts to wipe out the Jewish people. Leaders must stop appeasing these monsters and start acting like Jews have a right to live.
The real Nazis have stepped up and shown themselves. Will anyone stand up to them?