Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema told an interviewer on Dutch NOS television Sunday that the ‘Jew hunt’ perpetrated against Israeli soccer fans in her city on November 7 by mobs of antisemitic thugs was not, in fact, a pogrom, as she had previously described it.
“Boys on scooters crisscrossed the city looking for Israeli football fans. It was hit-and-run. I understand very well that this brings back memories of pogroms,” Halsema told reporters at a presser the day after the attacks.
However, she swiftly changed her stance as pressure mounted from left-wing elements.
“What I especially wanted to express is the sorrow and fear of Jewish residents. But I have to say that in the days that followed, I have seen how the word ‘pogrom’ became very political, propaganda in fact. The Israeli government speaks of ‘a Palestinian pogrom on the streets of Amsterdam’, Dutch politicians use the word ‘pogrom’ mainly to discriminate against Moroccan residents, Muslims. That is not what I meant and that is not what I wanted,” the mayor said during Sunday’s interview.
“The pressure was so great that we spoke before we had data about the conduct of the Israelis,” she said.
The attacks, referred to by some of the perpetrators themselves as a “Jew hunt”, were filmed and uploaded to social media by the attackers themselves.
Some of the attackers ordered their victims to their knees and forced them to say “Free Palestine” before beating them. Some Israelis later related having jumped into freezing canals to escape their attackers.
The State of Israel and its national carrier, EL AL Airlines, sent at least eight planes to Amsterdam to rescue the besieged Israelis. At least 25 were injured in the attacks.
At the time, Halsema banned demonstrations in Amsterdam for three days in response to the violence – but the ban was ignored, and protesters clashed with police regardless.
In the days that followed, some Dutch politicians began promoting an alternate version of the events, claiming the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans had instigated the violence with provocative chants.
But it was clear from the start that the attacks had been pre-planned and were coordinated via instant messaging by people and groups linked to Hamas, according to Israel’s Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar responded to Halsema’s denial on Monday, calling her words “utterly unacceptable.”
In a statement posted on the X social media platform, Sa’ar said “the failure that occurred on that night must not be compounded by a further grave failure: a cover up.
“Hundreds of Israeli fans who came to watch a football match were pursued and attacked, targeted by a mob asking for their passports to check if they were citizens of the Jewish state.
“There is no other word for this than a pogrom,” Sa’ar wrote.
“The application of the term “pogrom” was not an Israeli invention. It was used by Dutch politicians who recognized the severity and antisemitic nature of the incident, including MPs Geer Wilders, Caroline van der Plas and Israel Faction leader Chris Stoffer.
“We will never again accept the persecution of Jews on the soil of Europe or anywhere else!,” Sa’ar added.
