By Bret Stephens / The New York Times
In April 1903, an antisemitic mob rampaged through the city of Kishinev, which was then part of the Russian Empire and is now known as Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. Nearly 50 Jews were murdered, women and girls were raped, and some 1,500 homes were destroyed. Among the survivors were my paternal great-grandparents Barnet and Bessie Ehrlich, who decided then and there to emigrate to America with their children.
This week there was another pogrom in Europe, this time in Amsterdam. “Barbarians on scooters are riding through our capital city hunting Israelis and Jews,” David van Weel, the Dutch minister of justice and security, wrote on X. He was referring to an orgy of violent attacks against Israeli soccer fans, who had come to the city to watch a match on Thursday between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam.
“They started hitting us. They broke my face, knocked out a tooth, cut my lip,” an Israeli fan, Yaakov Masri, told Israeli media after locking himself in his hotel room, with a table to block the door. He said that he and his son were set upon “by around 15 young Arab men, some of whom were armed with knives and clubs,” according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Some news accounts have pointed to provocative behavior by rowdy Israeli fans, including taking down a Palestinian flag and chanting anti-Arab slogans (in Hebrew), for contributing to the mayhem. They also noted heightened tensions connected to the war in the Gaza Strip.
Maybe. But that explanation ignores the many years of rising and virulent antisemitism in Europe that preceded the war, much of it within Muslim communities, along with evidence that the attacks were carefully and cunningly coordinated.
“Amsterdam authorities have contacted taxi platforms such as Uber and Bolt to discuss how drivers may have used the apps to screen Israeli phone numbers during the violence,” The Times of London reported.
To their credit, Dutch and other European leaders have been outspoken in condemning the pogrom, which came on the eve of the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Willem-Alexander, king of the Netherlands, compared Thursday night to the country’s failure to protect Jews in World War II, and Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, wrote that “Jews must be able to feel safe in Europe.”
That’s a fine thought, though whether it will make any difference to the deteriorating situation for Jews in Europe remains to be seen. “Most of those arrested were later released,” The New York Times reported, and El Al sent planes to bring Israelis home. If a reminder were ever needed of why Israel, for all of its travails, came into existence in the first place, this latest pogrom was it.
My advice to Europe’s besieged Jewish communities: Remember what Kishinev foreshadowed; and please get out while you still can.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times, c.2024.
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