Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema Now Claims There Was No ‘Pogrom’

After the organized attacks on individual Jews and Israelis in Amsterdam, in which Muslim mobs went racing through the city to find Jews to punch, and kick in the head, and leave bleeding and in some cases unconscious on the ground, Amsterdam’s Mayor Femke Halsema correctly described the horrific events as a “pogrom.” She has had a chance to think things over, however, and she now says she regrets using such a term. More on her new view can be found here: “‘Amsterdam riots were not pogrom,’ mayor says, defending Muslim population,” by Yuval Barnea, Jerusalem Post, November 18, 2024:

Amsterdam Mayor Femka [sic] Halsema said she regretted calling the riots in Amsterdam a “pogrom” because this was being used to discriminate against the Moroccan-Muslim population of the city, Dutch media reported on Monday.

So she regrets using the term “pogrom” not because it does not apply to the attacks on Jews in Amsterdam, but because it does. But nothing must be done to make those who committed this pogrom — Moroccan Muslims in Amsterdam — feel they are being “discriminated against.” So let’s just drop that term “pogrom” so that those Moroccans will not suffer — either psychically or in any other way. Where’s the sympathy for them?

The riots that erupted following an Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv game led to mass violence throughout the city. Large groups attacked people they suspected were Jewish or Israeli, often demanding to see their identification to confirm their ethnicity.

In an interview with Dutch state media NOS, Halsema said that she would not use the term “pogrom” to describe the events again and that it was wrong to do so initially.

At first, she said at the press conference immediately following the riots that “young men on scooters crisscrossed the city looking for Israeli football fans. It was a ‘hit-and-run.’ I fully understand that this brings back memories of pogroms.”

She backtracked on these comments, saying she did not want to make a direct comparison with pogroms and that she was merely trying to empathize with Jewish Amsterdammers.

However, Halsema said during a debate in the city council last Tuesday [Nov. 12], before the most recent interview, that she still fully supported the use of the term “pogrom.” She admitted that the city’s municipality, police, and Public Prosecution Service had not succeeded in keeping the city safe….

So within a week, she went from “fully supporting” use of the term “pogrom” to denouncing its use. What happened?

“The Israeli government spoke of a ‘Palestinian pogrom on the streets of Amsterdam,’ and in The Hague, the words were used to discriminate against Moroccan Amsterdammers – Muslims. That is not what I meant or what I wanted.”…

Israel’s matter-of-fact and accurate description of the attacks on Jews in Amsterdam as a “pogrom” becomes, in Halsema’s view, a sinister tool of Israeli propaganda, encouraging a negative attitude toward Moroccans in the Netherlands, and even discrimination against them. Or perhaps those Israeli propagandists were trying to place the blame for the Amsterdam attacks on all Muslims; Halsema must think that those Israelis are capable of anything. She offers no examples, of course, of any increase in “discrimination” toward Moroccans in Amsterdam. Might that be because there hasn’t been any such increase?

De Telegraaf later reported that police initially believed that the rioters were looking for a group confrontation, and only after the event had begun did they realize the purpose was to assault individual Israelis.

Those Muslims were determined to assault not just “individual Israelis,” but also anyone, of whatever nationality, who was Jewish.

Their barbarism was fueled not by anti-Israel animus, but by antisemitism.

This “Jodenhacht” or “Jew Hunt” certainly deserved to be called a “pogrom.” Mayor Halsema thought for the first week that that was the proper term. Then, quite suddenly, she decided the charge of “pogrom” would stigmatize her city’s Moroccan population. Was she wrong to initially “try to empathize with Jewish Amsterdammers” who were, along with Israelis and Jews from all over, the victims of severe attacks by Muslim Arabs from Morocco? Why this sudden decision to minimize the severity of the attacks by no longer describing them as “pogroms”? Why was her empathy now reserved for the Moroccans in Amsterdam, complaining about the use of the word “pogrom”? Could it be that the mayor, in the days since the first attacks occurred, has been considering the number of Muslim voters, and the far smaller number of Jewish voters, in the city where she wants to continue serving as mayor?