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Footage shows an Israeli soccer fan being struck by a car, cartwheeling across the windshield. More footage shows the scene in downtown Amsterdam, where Israelis are pleading with their assailants, ‘not Jewish, not Jewish.’ And they are beaten mercilessly. In video of other attacks last night, a victim is struck and lies injured on the ground, seemingly unconscious. A father can be seen fleeing with his son. A man jumps into one of Amsterdam’s canals to escape his assailants. In the recording, where he is forced to say ‘Free Palestine,’ his assailants laugh and jeer that he is a ‘ca#cer Jew’ - a classic slur in Dutch….”
Aaron and Jacob are two young British Jews, fathers of young families from London, who visited Amsterdam for the game and were caught up in the pogrom. Aaron describes:
We left the game early to meet a friend, and as we walked towards the bar area, chaos broke out - mopeds appeared from alleyways, and a crowd surrounded an Israeli man. The man was on the ground, his head pinned between a curb and a metal gate, being viciously kicked.
Aaron and Jacob tried to push the mob away, only to be threatened with violence themselves. “Are you Yehudi? Are you Jewish?” the attackers asked, even demanding to see their passports to ascertain if they were Israeli. A gang member punched Aaron in the face, then was quickly joined by 20 other Muslim men.
“I told him to leave him alone and the next thing I know, he punched me in the face. It was so unexpected. My glasses were broken, my nose split. Blood everywhere,” Aaron described. A gang member realized that Aaron was Jewish and told the mob to leave him alone. “Yes, but he helped a Jew,” one of his attackers complained. “They knew what they were doing. It wasn’t a random ‘Let’s get an Israeli,” Aaron describes; “It was organized. It was ‘We want Jews. We want Jewish blood.’” Despite the violence, Aaron and Jacob recall, there were no police officers in the area to intervene.”
Attackers coordinated their pogrom using social media. “There is talk of people going on a Jew hunt,” explained Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema.
The many social media posts showing Jews and Israelis being beaten up in the streets and canals of Amsterdam were gleeful. “This coward jumped into the canal, afraid of getting beaten,” one typical post showed, along with “crying with laughter” emojis.
Another public post shows an unconscious man lying in the fetal position on a road in Amsterdam, being kicked by his attackers. Yet another post “shows a young Israeli football fan cornered in a narrow alley where he ends up crouching on the floor. He begs for mercy but his assailants knock him out with a punch to the head.” In these and other cases, the perpetrators appeared proud of what they were doing.
In the shadow of Kristallnacht an organized pogrom was unleashed on the streets of Amsterdam. We should not be surprised.
aish.com