Inna Rogatchi
Inna RogatchiCourtesy

As seen and predicted, the after-shock from the Amsterdam pogrom a few days ago, prompted some copycating. According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, and some related reports, just one day after the internationally publicized pogrom in Amsterdam, on Friday 8th, 2024, a similar assault with the very same motto, did occur in Berlin, this time not against the fans, but against the players of the German youth Maccabi football team. Somehow, this important news was missed by the mainstream Israeli media.

On November 8th Friday evening, the players of the German Maccabi youth team were repeatedly assaulted during the game by the players of the team who played against them, were spit on, insulted, pushed, all this without any interference from the referee. After the match, they were attacked by the hooligans who were at the stadium and around it and assaulted - in ways similar to what had happened just the previous evening in Amsterdam. To the best of our knowledge, the German authorities are now investigating the assault, and at least one of the attacking players has been excluded from his football team.

The striking similarity and practically the same timing are indications that the physical violent attacks against Jews in the Western Europe scheduled on the Kristallnacht anniversary, were premeditated. In the possession of security services, both Israelis and their European and other counterparts, there is credible information about several more serious potentially dangerous places in Europe and beyond with a high risk of similar attacks.

To all security professionals the situation is known as a present and clear danger. The questions remain about some of them - such as the infamous Amsterdam police force, and most of all about the politicians, parliaments and governments who allowed the Amsterdam pogrom to happen, watched the Berlin incident (there was no police at the game, reportedly), and who, literally following the honest admission of the King of the Netherland Maximillian in his conversation with the President of Israel Isaac Herzog after the Amsterdam pogrom, in general ‘did fail the Jews’ of Europe, the UK, US, Australia and Canada ‘again’.

‘Again’ is a key-word here. But also ‘knowing failure’ is essential.

Safety Instructions for Jews in the centre of Europe: November 2024: 'Lock yourselves in your rooms. Don't go anywhere. Externalisation of Jewish and Israeli symbols is forbidden'.

Such instructions were sent to all Israelis who happened to be in Amsterdam on November 7th and 8th, 2024 by the Israeli National Security Council as guide-lines for survival, before rescuing two thousand people from Europe, this without a war situation, literally in the midst of a pogrom.

Today. In Europe. Again.

The massive assault was also committed against anyone who looked Jewish to the well-prepared, well-organised, well-placed, well-instructed mixed huge mob of attackers, mostly second or third generation people of various Arab origins, Dutch citizens.

"I am not Jewish!!!..." - screams a man on the ground, beaten severely. It sounds so strikingly familiar, from our grandparents and parents’ never disappearing recollections, as well as from history books and so many movies. What movie about the Holocaust is it? Ah, it is not a movie?

Police. What Police?

The quantity of the attacking mobs of young organised bandits was huge, about 10:1 against people whom they attacked in a vile racist assault, while being completely, totally, absolutely free-handed. We have hundreds of videos, and hundreds of witness first-hand reports from the place.

“No police”, “Police cars are moving without any action taken”, “ Police cars are standing idle”, “We asked a policeman to escort us to our hotel , but he refused saying that they do not provide escort services. We were attacked on our way to the hotel, being two against some twenty thugs. My friend was unconscious. When we made it to a hospital, there was no slightest sympathy and no interest towards us whatsoever.”

In which place and under what circumstances anything remotely close to this could be possible? Oh, it happened in Amsterdam? And then, the next day something similar in Berlin? Is it Kristallnacht dark humour, sort of? What, no humour?

According to numerous witness accounts, the police did not appear nor did they start to do a thing before 30 minutes in some places and one hour and thirty minutes in many others. There are witness statements telling that police did not appear in certain places where it was needed badly for many hours. For the record: in the case of an attack on a property in Amsterdam, the police are at the scene in 5 minutes, according to their own manual and mode of action. What was wrong with this mode that night? Ah, the Jews were attacked with knives, clubs, and cars. It is only the Jews, nothing serious.

Importantly, according to the statements of the Amsterdam city administration and that great police-force itself, of those 800 policeman assigned to November 7th-8th evening and night shift, somehow only 200 were actually in their positions. Somehow.

We also know , from their own official statements from the beginning of October, just a month ago, that in that funny police force, it is permissible for the officers to choose their tasks. What a progressive security system. So selective, so helpful. So civilised. And so brave.

All the scenes from the Amsterdam pogrom are difficult to watch, but it is impossible not to. On November 8th, 2024 in the city of Amsterdam, no war was declared, apart from the one against Jews, people were running to take refuge anywhere they could, in the stores, in buildings. They are seen barricading themselves in those places.

In some places, like in certain casinos, for example, in a continuation of a good old [Dutch] tradition, they were immediately denounced via telephone calls to the organisers and perpetrators of the pogrom. This was not a rehearsal of a mass scene in yet another Holocaust-related movie. It was for real. Now. In an oh-so-overwhelmingly hyper-tolerant city many of us did like to visit. Now Amsterdam will be also remembered as a city of an open people-hunt. Unopposed.

It will be also remembered as the city where people, being hunted and assaulted, being brutally beaten and viciously attacked, were jumping into the canals escaping the determined mob. With no police around. And we saw the episodes in which people were pushed into the canals, and those in which people were actively prevented from getting out of the water. It all is on the videos. The Minister of the Interior of the Netherlands is welcome to have a look.

Preparations & Free-Hand

With all the technology we have these days, there is no need to wait for years to collect some of the evidence for some distant and slowly prepared trials. Only, I doubt that there will be any trial at all. We saw the numbers of the attackers. They were placed, by very thorough planning, at every turn of every alley stretching from the stadium where the Ajax-Maccabi game took place. They were placed also in many places all over railway stations, metro stations, near the hotels in which Israeli touring fans were staying - they knew precisely which ones, notably. Then they opened the hunt against people in the centre. Plus the taxi drivers and Uber driving thugs, many of whom in Amsterdam became willing, enthusiastic accomplices of the pogrom.

One does not need to be a security expert to realise what kind of preparation such a pogrom, conducted in this way, requires, and what kind of information it is required as well. Plus the copycat action in Berlin carried out the next evening.

And against all this, the Amsterdam police had the nerve to claim that they were taken by surprise? Which is a sheer lie, as they were warned by the Israeli security agencies, but as a matter of fact, this kind of police in this kind of city with its drugs and everything else, does have a perfectly capable intelligence unit of its own, in addition to all the other Dutch security services.

That so-called police, practising selective surprise-at-large, arrested as many as 62 thugs from among the thousands of them, keeping in custody just ten in a matter of hours, and only four in the end. How lovely. It is not even a bad joke. It is not even a tasteless joke. It is a cause for indignation and it is a disgrace. Both require immediate and strong actions by all those in the Netherlands and its capital, paid by state funds, taxpayers money, to govern that city of Amsterdam.

The city whose utterly leftist mayor had the nerve – as they usually do - to impose the immediate three-days ban of any demonstration after the pogrom, thus preventing any public expression of support to the victims of the historic pogrom and the Jewish community of Amsterdam and the Netherlands. Call things by their own names, because such a nasty, calculated move is simply and blatantly mean. But unlike the anti-police of Amsterdam, we are not experts on self-surprising. Some voices in the Netherlands now demand the immediate resignation of that mayor. This is the very least and the very beginning of an adequate reaction to the premeditated pogrom just hours after an anniversary of Kristallnacht was commemorated in Amsterdam, really ugly irony.

Who needs your false commemorations? Those assaulted people? Those who jumped in the Amsterdam canals to escape the attack or were pushed there? Those traumatized? Those injured? Those wounded? Those wounded seriously?

The Netherland's PM 'watched the attack in horror', according to his immediate tweet. It is not the vocabulary of a PM. Horror he can save for his friends when he relates his reaction. Actions are expected from the authorities. And Mr Schoof, who is a life-long high-level security official, does know the situation in his country, its implications and consequences, in far more chilling detail than many others. Let’s hope that he will lead the effort to clean the dirty anti-human mess that has been allowed to happen in his country, really quickly and really efficiently. There is no other way, and he, personally, well knows that.

The actions of the Amsterdam police, infamous because its members publicly declared having 'a moral dilemma' over restraining anti-Semitic mobs sweeping the city all the previous year, exposing absolutely innocent people to clear danger and open violence for over a year. As we saw once again, such an attitude emboldens the mobsters and only leads to more violence - always.

There should be no mistake: the Amsterdam police knew about all that as well as any sane person does. No excuse for them whatsoever. All necessary actions have to be applied there in full measure. This is the matter of public security, and the Amsterdam police could have their ‘moral dilemmas’ to ponder about not being on board. All of those who did show their true colours during the pogrom. With a special inquiry regarding those 600 officers who were supposed to be on duty on the night between November 7th and 8th.

Weak & Numb Games: A Chamberlain Mode 2.0

But there is more. More than Amsterdam or the Netherlands. It is what is going on in Europe and how it may develop, G-d forbid.

As outrageous as it is, the meaning of what was allowed to happen in Amsterdam on the night of November 8th, 2024, is that once allowed, and carried on, it may become a trigger to what will be commemorated in 2104, in another 80 years, as "Never Again 2.0". Or not.

We saw it in Berlin the evening after the pogrom . We also were felt huge relief after a volleyball game in Bologna with participation of the Israeli team went on peacefully. But the Israeli fans were warned from attending by the Israeli National Security Council. We know and are now worrying about every single sports event in which an Israeli team is participating. Is it normal? Civilised? Acceptable?

What we are facing today, what we are living with now, over a year after October 7th, is permitted hate. Baseless, blind, violent. The key-word here is ‘permitted’. Do we need to lecture anyone today that racist hatred should not be allowed in any form and way, shall not be tolerated, shall not be permitted publicly and privately? No, we don’t. It is an axiom. And every single government official knows it - as everyone in the Amsterdam police knew about preparations of the pogrom on October 8th, 2024.

The reality is that European governments and pan-European bodies , as well as the US, UK, Canada and Australian ones, are deeply engaged in a weak and numb game. This game is deadly and dangerous, and it has to be seen that way, but the majority of those people who have been elected to govern, and thus to provide safety and security to the citizens of their corresponding countries, prefer to practise 'Chamberlain mode’. We all know how it ended, don’t we? So, why on earth are we risking our lives again - and why on earth are we not demanding from our corresponding governments to act as they should? Has hatred been accepted as the highest value, and the domineering instrument of human life in time for all the commemorations-in-making - again - related to the Shoah and the ending of the Second World War next year?

Does hypocrisy rule the world? Not just being present as it has always been, in varying proportion, but as the leading feature of life? In this case, we are living in a low period of humanity. And our descendants would be as ashamed of us as cowardly Chamberlain’s supporters - who were many, to remind ourselves soberly - were in a panic after his disgraceful demise. Fortunately and miraculously, their country, the whole of Europe, and the world were saved by just one man, a giant among men, and all those who bravely stood with him for the sake of human’s strength and decency. The question is: where is our Sir Winston?

As a partial answer to that, just one fact from our post-Amsterdam pogrom reality: a moral low-life who happens to be a deputy speaker of the French parliament, their National Assembly, had the guts - and utter stupidity, but also tons of arrogance - to claim in her pubic tweets that the pogrom in Amsterdam was justified because the Israeli tourists represent a genocidal state. How about that?

Thank Heaven, the current French government does have a highly capable minister of interior who immediately started a legal proceeding and prosecutor's office investigation of incitement against the creature who is openly instigating pogroms while occupying that high public position in France.

And this is only beginning of the unfolding of this spiral of hate - as we can see from numerous media in various countries, with all these low insinuations of Israeli fans provoking peaceful thugs in Amsterdam, and with some being in totally switched off mode, not reporting a word about a terrible pogrom as the mainstream Finnish media acted and allowed themselves to get to this low.

Wake-Up Call from Amsterdam

When the October 7th massacre happened and drew comparison with the Holocaust atrocities, there were many people who disagreed with such a comparison, on the grounds of the now-existing Jewish state, thank Heaven, and its strong and good army, for which we all are praying, even the atheists. These facts are true. But the essence of the comparison of the October 7th with the Holocaust atrocities was and is in the core motivation of the both planned mega-assaults, which is the attitude towards the Jews. Children, babies, women, girls, boys, elderly, anyone. Anyone.

And the way in which it was conducted. To all those who did see the scenes from the Amsterdam pogrom - what did it look like? What did it remind us of so impossibly, shockingly painfully? Yes, the scenes of the October 7th massacre in Israel. In many instances , it was exactly like that. Because the hate, especially trained, prepared, organised, premeditated hate is carried on in the same way. Same, not similar.

The hate-wave which swept the world for over a year after October 7th, has literally the same core drive which moves it, as well as massive organising and funding, and it is the focused inflamed sick hatred of Jews. Any of us. Anywhere. It is obvious, fully documented, and what is preposterous is the fact that it still is allowed to happen in many forms an in an all encompassing wave of annihilation, starting with psychological terror, developing into boycotts of writers and anyone else, vandalising memorials and museums, cancelling lectures, seminars, conferences, preventing any events having connections with anything Jewish, and now coming to the Amsterdam pogrom, which might be a trigger for the further similar attacks, as the Berlin incident showed.

When and what could be enough for our governments to wake up and to stop this ongoing assault on Jews practically anywhere in the world?

After the year since the barbaric attack on innocent people on October 7th in Israel, every Jew anywhere in Europe and in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, can already write a first-hand memoir ‘ How I lived in the resurrection of violent anti-Semitism 80 years after the Holocaust’. Each of us has her or his personal story to tell about it already. Shall we start to collect the evidence for the Holocaust-After the Holocaust? Where to send it? To Hague Court, perhaps?

The point of comparison of the October 7th massacre with the Holocaust is actually in that it happened after the Shoah. That was the meaning of that comparison immediately after the massacre in Israel a year ago, in October 2023. Now, a bit over a year after that, in November 2024, the point got stronger and yet more justified. The fact is that not only terrible, unimaginable massacre happened in Israel in October 2023, but the world, the societies, the governments, the international organisations and institutions after that mega-crime, allowed a wave of anti-Semitic hatred to sweep the world. This is the point today.

Allowed hatred is a serious weapon. Unopposed pogroms lead to only one thing: more of them. We are not in Chamberlain's time any longer. Anyone knows and understands possible consequences of the permitted assault in Amsterdam and the observed one in Berlin.

It is also a wake-up call to the governments in the US, UK, Canada and Australia at the time when a convicted and escaped terrorist is employed and energetically protected by one of the Canadian universities as a professor lecturing on social justice. A macabre low-world, indeed. An underworld, actually, which literally rules as a legal entity. In one university. As a pogrom which was allowed to happen. In one city. So far.

The immediate and decisive, de-ci-si-ve it is, actions of all European and all the other governments in their corresponding countries, of the EU and international institutions and leadership whatever is their personal sympathies and inclinations, is required for protection of citizens, taxpayers , tourists paying services to the Netherlands, or any other country, for the protection of life and normality in the most literal way. It truly is unbelievable that the citizens and taxpayers have been put in the position where they have to articulate these constitutional norms of law in order to implement the basically required norms of civility.

Those who were elected to govern, wake up. You've just gotten a direct wake-up call from Amsterdam, with a couple of following calls from Berlin and Paris.

Dr. Inna Rogatchi is a writer, film director, political analyst and public figure. She was a long-term special senior advisor on international affairs to the members of the European Parliament, and she lectures widely on the topics of international politics, security and public diplomacy. As a historian, she specialises on the Holocaust and post-Holocaust, Jewish heritage, and the post-October 7th processes and challenges. A great-niece of Gustav Mahler, she is the author and supervisor of many important international cultural and educational public projects, including the ones on the legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, Raoul Wallenberg, Elie Wiesel, Leonard Cohen, Rabbi Lord Sacks, and many other towering figures of the modern Jewish history. Inna is member of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Community of Helsinki and several other international boards. She is the President of The Rogatchi Foundation.