Amsterdam Cries

It is hard to imagine popular artists doing songs about the Holocaust. I know of one and it is the haunting ‘Amsterdam Huilt’ or ‘Amsterdam Cries’ by the artist Rika Jansen who released it in 1964. What makes this song so emotionally unnerving - it mentions the murderous disaster only once - is that it describes a world that is no longer there. In the song, the singer - who grew in Amsterdam’s Jewish neighbourhood - sees her father flipping through their photo album and then describes the street markets, the food stalls, the theaters, the preparations for Shabbat on Fridays, the lighting of the Hanukkah candles and yes, the always lively Jewish jokes and humour. And in doing so she paints a warm, beautiful and thriving community, one that was wiped out and is no longer there. Gone, forever. The tune is reminiscent of how a chazan (lead singer in the synagogue) would sing, do listen to the original with the accompanying photos, it’s in Dutch but you will get it. It gets to me and it breaks the heart every single time.

So it is not difficult to imagine the emotional onslaught when news of the brutal pogrom on Israeli football supporters in Amsterdam started to hit the global headlines a few days ago. A wound that many thought had been healed was ripped open in the most horrific way imaginable. Chasing Jews down the street, running for their lives in 2024. The video with a group of Arab speaking youths in a fast moving car along the city’s canals shouting “we are going on a Jew hunt” takes us right back to the time when the last group of Jew haters went out hunting. Successfully by the way, with 102,000 murdered Dutch Jews out of a population of 140,000, mostly from Amsterdam. Mokum - the Jewish nickname for the city - never recovered the community Rika Jansen so vividly sings about, although the post-War years saw a return of a much smaller Jewish and later Israeli population in Amsterdam. With it came a string of monuments, museums and memorials, notably Anne Frank’s, all under the banner of “Never Again”.

I have described in detail the Jewish roots of Ajax Amsterdam, one of Europe’s leading football clubs. So, as opposed to how these things usually go, the Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters who came over for a few days of fun and watch the game did not have an adversarial relationship with the Ajax supporters. Far from it, they relate and in some instances on Thursday they partied together. Yet, local authorities called out some 800 police officers as it expected riots, in particular as a number of pro-Hamas protests close to the football stadium were announced. After a day of partying and drinking all fans moved to the Ajax Arena to watch the game, Ajax beating Maccabi by 5-0, after which the crowds dispersed into the city, some for beers, others back to their hotels.

And then it happened. Small gangs of predominantly Muslim youths set upon the Israeli fans who were no longer one group, but just smaller groups of individuals on the streets. I will spare you some of the violence, there is too much of it, all of which you can easily find online. A few incidents stand out in particular and they are illustrative of the dynamics behind the violence. In a few, gangs isolated an individual and asked for passports and identification, where are you from? One was able to demonstrate his Ukrainian roots and let go, another was Israeli and was subsequently abused. Apparently instances of this happened again this Saturday night, after all the Israelis were gone. One incident (as reported by a member of Amsterdam’s Liberal Jewish community) mentioned that one particular gang had entered a hotel and asked the frontdesk for room numbers where Israelis were staying. The frontdesk apparently complied and an attack in hotel rooms ensued.

Quite a few casualties resulted and it is a real miracle that no fatalities occurred. Last Friday Israel deployed planes to retrieve Maccabi supporters and sent its Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar, to The Netherlands, the Dutch PM, Dick Schoof, hastily returned from a European summit. A full-blown political crisis exploded, one that will be continued in the coming week when both Amsterdam city council and Dutch parliament will convene for emergency debates.

The key thing is to impress upon everyone that this was not a regular football hooligan riot. That is what many media are trying to do right now, shifting the blame to the Israeli football supporters, arguing their behaviour invited the violence. But the facts prove the contrary. The Dutch Justice Minister and Israeli intelligence services confirmed that the attacks were planned days ahead and were coordinated. In fact Dutch security services had been tipped off by their Israeli counterparts who had apparently picked up chatter on WhatsApp and Telegram, information that as it now turns out was not acted upon by Dutch authorities. The Dutch Justice Minister confirmed as much on Friday: an investigation is forthcoming, which of course is the usual way to deflect any responsibility.

On the local level, Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, who has an incredible track record of ignoring potential violence from anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish groups, failed to properly prepare for this night of violence. And not the for the first time. The opening of the Holocaust Museum earlier this year was disrupted as were the October 7 commemorations. Calls for her resignation have intensified once again. Over the past few days I have heard from many in Jewish community in Amsterdam and their fear is real and it has reached levels not seen in eighty years.

If you hear during pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas rallies the cry ‘Globalize the Intifada’, then this is what it means. Europe’s large and sometimes unintegrated Muslim immigrant communities are increasingly susceptible to the rhetoric and are more than willing to act on it as we witnessed in Amsterdam. It is no longer about a slice of land in the Middle East. Moroccan youngsters who often enjoy a fairly affluent lifestyle in Amsterdam, motorbikes and designer clothes, may feel disgruntled and frustrated at times, but to engage in a targeted and violent Jew hunt is a different level of displaying cultural alienation or frustration. It’s a religious war, the war that Hamas and its backers have been inciting. They probably cannot imagine that their calls would have resonated so successfully in Western capitals. Violence, protests and an incompetent political class facilitating it all. Quite soon I will have to revert to my photo album of an Amsterdam, indeed a country and a continent that will no longer exist.