My latest: Amsterdam was planned

It was planned.

The attacks on Jews in Amsterdam on Thursday — the beatings, the stabbings, the shooting of fireworks, the running them down with cars — didn’t just happen at the last moment, as Israeli soccer fans were leaving the Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv Europa FC match. It was planned, effectively and methodically. Just like the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023 were, in Israel.

Half a dozen Jews were hospitalized. Many now are safely back in Israel, having been airlifted there by their government. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, the thugs — more than five dozen of them — have been arrested. It was a pogrom, just as Israel said: a violent riot, aimed at killing or expelling an ethnic or religious group.

In this case, Israeli soccer fans.

That no one was killed was a miracle. The footage online — and there is a lot of it, if you have the stomach for it — is graphic and real. Unlike Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom against Jews that started to unfold 86 years ago this week in Europe, the events in Amsterdam were in colour, and in real time. But the effect was the same.

The evidence of the planning is impossible to ignore. Four days before the attacks, on Monday, Spain’s AS newspaper revealed that a pro-Hamas group was planning a protest outside the soccer stadium, one that would target the Israeli team and its fans. Israeli intelligence warned the Dutch, but little or nothing was done.

Some of the online exchanges before the attacks:

• “Hang Palestinian flag in the city. They will come like rats …”
• “Tomorrow after the match at night … Jewish Hunt”
• “Who can arrange fireworks? Lots of fireworks needed.”
• “The hunt (has) started.”

Meanwhile, Yeshiva World News reported that “a significant number of the attackers were (ride-share) drivers who used their positions to locate and target Jews.” Attacks were then coordinated over WhatsApp, another favoured platform of Islamic extremists. SJP Amsterdam — a global pro-Hamas organization with branches on almost every university campus in Canada — was seen planning the attacks in advance, coordinating with their more then 4,000 followers.

CyberWell, an Internet watchdog that tracks antisemitism on social media platforms, had warned the platforms — X, Telegram, Instagram and the like — that gaps in their moderation efforts “contributed to the horrific coordinated attack against Israeli tourists in Amsterdam” on Thursday.

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