The horror of Amsterdam

(RNS) — It happened in Amsterdam.

It was right after a soccer match between the Dutch club Ajax and the visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv. Radical Muslims — youth gangs from the Dutch Moroccan and Dutch Turkish communities — went on a rampage, assaulting and injuring Jewish and Israeli fans of the Israeli club, chasing them and beating them in the city’s streets and alleys.

Videos show a victim struck by a car, lying injured on the ground, apparently unconscious. A father fled with his son. A man jumped into one of Amsterdam’s storied canals in order to save himself. He was forced to say, “Free Palestine,” while his tormentors call him a “cancer Jew.” Gangs of 10 to 15 assailants ambushed Israelis in alleys.

Whatever else you have read or heard about what happened in Amsterdam, know this: These attacks on Jews were planned in advance.

To quote the Free Press: “Fleeing Israelis told Channel 12’s Elad Simchayoff that ‘Amsterdam police instructed (Israelis) not to go by taxis. Police officers told fans that taxi drivers in the city are helping organize the riots and assisting the gangs.’”

On social media, there was talk of people going on a “Jew hunt.” Taxi and Uber drivers laid traps for Israelis fleeing the chaos and took them to places where violent mobs waited to attack them.

This is now a pattern at European sports events, going back to the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. This year alone, fans waved Palestinian flags at Maccabi soccer’s away games in Romania and Portugal. In September, Italian soccer fans turned their backs as the Israeli national anthem was played before a match in Budapest.

What got to me — and many of us — about the attack in Amsterdam is that it coincided with the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Yes, that it happened in Amsterdam, a city with a deep and rich Jewish history, and most poignantly, the city where the family of Anne Frank went into hiding.

Yes, that it is emblematic of the problem of radical Muslims in the Netherlands, and in other places in Europe. This attack on Jews not only occurred on the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht; it also happened almost exactly 20 years to the day that radical Muslims murdered Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who had made a film critical of Islam.

As Jonathan Safran Foer wrote in “Everything Is Illuminated”: “Jews have six senses. Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing, and memory. The Jew is pricked by a pin and remembers other pins. We trace the pinprick back to other pinpricks.”

Amsterdam was a pinprick — of pogroms.

True, Amsterdam was not Kishinev. That 1903 pogrom was the classic pogrom: It claimed the lives of 49 Jews, injured 92, and Jewish women were raped. It inspired Jewish self-defense. Interesting to note: The pogrom in Kishinev also inspired the creation of the NAACP, which sought to compare the pogrom with the lynchings of Blacks.

True, no one died in Amsterdam, as they had in Kishinev. But, that is beside the point. Amsterdam, like Kishinev, was a planned, organized act of violence against Jews. That, in and of itself, is enough to define it as a pogrom. More than that: In Kishinev, the local authorities stood by and let it happen. In Amsterdam, the local authorities also stood by. In the words of one victim: “We were all alone. I saw people on the floor, the police didn’t do anything to help us, police cars just drove by and saw it happening and did nothing.” 

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands put it this way in a phone call to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog: “We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again.” He was right.

But, another pinprick: The Amsterdam pogrom was the return of the fearful Jew.

During the attacks, Israelis were forced to deny their Israeli identity. One man was kicked to the ground, yelling: “I am not Jewish!”

The vulnerability, the fear, the sense that the state had turned its back on Jewish victimization: all classic Jewish tropes.

But, that sense of inner Jewish fear — that this should return?

That individual Jews — in Europe — needed to deny their Jewish identity in order to escape harm? Not only in Europe; nearly one-third of Jewish students around the world have considered themselves forced to hide visible Jewish symbols, like Stars of David.

This happened in Amsterdam, the city where the family of Anne Frank needed to hide in a secret annex.

Anne Frank’s secret annex still exists — within some Jewish hearts. That is the horror.

So, in one sense, the attack in Amsterdam turned the clock back on European Jewish history. It was a return of the repressed — the weak Jew, the Jew who had to deny their Jewishness, the Jew who lived on sufferance.

To be clear: Amsterdam showed why Zionism was necessary.

It was an echo of Theodor Herzl:

We have honestly endeavored everywhere to merge ourselves into the social life of surrounding communities and to preserve the faith of our fathers. We are not permitted to do so. In vain are we loyal patriots, our loyalty in some places running to extremes; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow-citizens… Everything tends, in fact, to one and the same conclusion, which is clearly enunciated in that classic Berlin phrase: “Juden Raus” (Out with the Jews!).

And, as well: Amsterdam showed why Zionism is still necessary.

Israel sent rescue planes to Amsterdam to evacuate Israelis. El Al, Israel’s national airline, broke precedent and sent those planes — on Shabbat — with the express permission of Israel’s chief rabbis.

Why? Because saving lives is even more important than Shabbat observance.

Amsterdam was modern Jewish history, in its own bubble of time.

As Safran Foer would put it, we still feel the pinpricks.