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    • Evacuation of the victims of the Amsterdam pogrom
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    Evacuation of the victims of the Amsterdam pogrom

    Sakege Posted on

    “I don’t know if I’ll see him again,” Meital says as we get into my car. The fact that he’s even considering not attending his son’s bar mitzvah in a few weeks. shows how scared He is the football fan of Petah Tikva.

    Meital is one of half a dozen Israelis I ferry from their hotels to the apartment of Esther Voet, editor-in-chief of the Dutch Jewish weekly NIW. They are abandoned without protection from the Amsterdam police, or someone else for that matter.

    That’s why Voet has asked its extensive Jewish network in the Dutch capital to send me by car throughout the center of the Dutch capital to pick them up.

    Throughout the night, more and more calls come in from young Israelis asking to be evacuated. Some are eager to get out of their hotel rooms and need convincing to come down with their luggage, get into the car and be driven to the safety of Voet’s apartment on one of Amsterdam’s most idyllic canals, ironically just a stone’s throw from the centre. from Amsterdam. The world famous Anne Frank House.

    Two young Israelis are waiting for me in a hotel on Rembrandt Square. One is crying. He hugs me when I tell him they will be safe soon. The other is labeled ‘high value target’ for the attackers since they stole his passport and posted it on social media, along with a photo of him in an IDF uniform. The hotel entrance cannot be reached by car, so we must walk 250 meters. The two young Israelis seem understandably nervous, but their mood improves considerably once we are on the road.

    Dutch mobile police officers stand guard after several fights broke out in the city center following the UEFA Europa League league stage football match, matchday 4, between Ajax Amsterdam and Maccabi Tel Aviv, in Amsterdam on November 8, 2024. (Credit: VLN Niews /ANP/AFP)

    ‘The safest country in the world’

    In the apartment, little by little it is filling up with people; the dominant language – through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke – is Hebrew, which, as a non-Jew, I neither speak nor understand.

    My next two ‘pickups’ are at a luxury hotel on the Amstel, the river that gives its name to the Dutch capital. They also ask me if I am Jewish. “Fine,” Shlomi says when she hears that I’m not, “fine.” I explain to him that most Dutch people are actually pro-Israel. Parties of that nature won one hundred of the 150 seats in the Hague parliament in elections in November last year.

    The behavior of pro-Palestinian protesters in Amsterdam was a major factor in the outcome of those elections. The majority of the Dutch population did not seem particularly delighted with Muslim immigrants calling for the murder of Jews on the streets of the capital and the then government’s refusal to address the problem. Which led to a right-wing rush in which anti-immigration parties reaped the benefits. The Freedom Party (PVV) of populist Geert Wilders became by far the largest for the first time in its history.

    When my last two “passengers” are dropped off at Esther Voet’s cozy apartment, the atmosphere becomes noticeably more relaxed. In the morning, the Israeli football fans we picked up will be transferred to the airport with the help of the embassy in The Hague. They will join almost 3,000 others, many of whom will remain stranded for several more days (now finally protected by police) in what is considered one of the safest countries in the world.

    Those days are gone for Israelis, as they are for the Dutch Jewish community, whose members wonder if they will be the next to feel the wrath of pro-Palestinian activists and young Muslims.

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    Bart Schut is deputy editor and reporter at NIW, the Dutch Jewish weekly.



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