After the Amsterdam pogrom, we Dutch must toughen up

Following the abhorrent pogrom by rioters in Amsterdam, I have been asked from all over the world: “What the hell is happening in your country – and in your capital, Amsterdam?”

Unfortunately, the answer is quite simple. On the very anniversary of the Kristallnacht, this pogrom is the latest and most appalling in a long series of anti-Israel and antisemitic incidents in the Netherlands, particularly in Amsterdam.

For many years, religious Jews in my country have been wary of wearing their kippot in public, with antisemitic incidents on the rise. But since the Hamas massacre of October 7 and the subsequent Gaza war, a toxic mixture of pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel and outright antisemitic public manifestations has been showing up on the streets, squares and railway stations of our major cities.

In March, the solemn ceremony at the opening of our Holocaust Museum was defiled by pro-Hamas demonstrations. On October 7 this year, a memorial demonstration was disrupted. Throughout the last year, Dutch universities have seen more than their fair share of the worldwide anti-Israel and antisemitic face-masked movement.

What will now be known as the November 7 pogrom took place in a city with a black World War II history. During the Nazi occupation, 75 percent of the nearly 80,000 Jews in Amsterdam were murdered in the concentration camps. It was the collaborating Amsterdam police that took Anne Frank from her hiding place.

Compared with other occupied countries, the record of the Netherlands was awful. In this historical context, many of the 40,000-50,000 Jews in my country today are reliving the darkest years in Dutch Jewish history and feel that their safety and security is severely compromised.

The Dutch authorities do condemn antisemitism in the strongest possible terms. But so far they been have unwilling to counter the aggressive amalgam of pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas and anti-Jewish activists. They take the apparent moral high ground by hiding behind the constitutional right to demonstrate, stretching to the limit their toleration of anti-Jewish signs and symbols.

They are hesitant to upset the nearly one million Muslims in the Netherlands who in large part are fiercely anti-Israel, pro-Palestine and, to a smaller extent, consider Hamas and Hezbollah to be just honourable freedom fighters.

Saying this is taboo. The fact that the crime scene of last night was dominated by Moroccan and Turkish men is widely known, but the police and the public prosecutor do not publish the ethnic background of suspects.

One would expect that the present centre-right government of the Netherlands, in which Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party plays a pivotal role, would get its act together and take the necessary measures to stop these unacceptable developments, with the Amsterdam pogrom a sad culmination. But when it comes to fitting the action to the word, the Dutch government is apparently not willing to do so.

For more than a year, I have urged the powers that be to follow the example of our German neighbours. Germany has banned the infamous slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine should be free”. In the Netherlands, although Parliament has passed a motion to that end, the government and the public prosecutor have not acted upon it.

Germany has blacklisted the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network as a terrorist organisation. Again, the Dutch Parliament told the government to do the same, but nothing has happened. And Germany is working hard on a bill that criminalises the glorification of terrorism. In the Netherlands in a parliamentary initiative law was proposed in 2016 but only now, eight years later, does it look as though this initiative will be put on the agenda.

All this having been said, in the Netherlands, the preservation of public order is first and foremost in the hands of the local authorities. The Amsterdam mayor has said she feels utterly ashamed about what has happened.

But Amsterdam is the frontrunner in the Netherlands in being excessively tolerant to pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas misdeeds. The November 7 pogrom should be the final wake-up call.

Uri Rosenthal is a former foreign minister of the Netherlands