Can We All Agree That Pogroms Are Bad?

A mob hunting members of a disfavored, unpopular minority group in the streets, beating them and destroying their property. Victims cowering behind locked doors, afraid to leave the places they have holed up in. Vigilantes chanting for their targets’ blood, forcing some of the ones they catch to chant political slogans against their will before facing even more violence. Police either ignoring what is going on, or in some cases even joining with the mob.

This is what Israelis faced last week in Amsterdam, as Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in town to watch their team play, along with people who were identified by assailants as looking Jewish, were attacked in the streets over two days. Victims were stopped and asked if they were Jewish or told to produce their passports on site. Israelis were run over with cars, thrown into canals, and beaten with pipes and clubs. Visiting Israelis were staked out at their hotels, and reported via mass texts to be gathering in specific places. This wasn’t a brawl between groups of soccer hooligans—although part of this story is indeed about soccer hooligans—but an organized hunt.

What makes this story more complicated are the aforementioned soccer hooligans. Before Israelis were attacked, some of the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans went on their own rampage, tearing down Palestinian flags from buildings and burning them, chanting “death to Arabs,” and gleefully celebrating the destruction of Gaza. That the Israelis were the initial offenders has been cited as proof by some that this is not actually a story about antisemitism, anti-Zionism, or anything other than one group acting in self defense against the bad behavior of another group. In this telling, the incident is a fake controversy, and an example of Israelis behaving with impunity but then having to face the consequences since they were left without the comfort of being safely behind their own border.

Had this been a confrontation between a group of badly behaved racist Israeli fans and a group of Dutch fans, then this interpretation might be correct, and the episode would have been sadly unremarkable and unworthy of commentary. The problem is that this is not what actually happened. There were badly behaved racist Israeli fans, and the way to deal with them would have been arrests or fines by the Dutch police. But when groups of men with knives and bats instead went looking for anyone whom they could identify as Israeli or anyone who looked Jewish because they were angry about something done by a specific group of Israeli Jews, it immediately became something other than self defense or two groups of idiots brawling. When there is a group text thread on the first night declaring that the next night will bring a resumption of the “Jew hunt,” it isn’t an example of rowdy thugs getting what they deserved. Jews getting stalked and ambushed at their hotels and beaten up by roving mobs in a European country because they are Jewish or citizens of the Jewish state, while passersby walk along averting their eyes and the police are nowhere to be found, is a pogrom. The tortured justifications that add up to “the Israelis had it coming”—often with the mendacious preamble that of course decries any violence—are nothing but thinly disguised arguments that all Israelis are responsible for the sins of their country or their countrymen. If chanting ugly and vile slogans was truly worthy of being met with unfettered violence, then I must have somehow missed the wellspring of support for armed mobs to go after the denizens of last spring’s campus encampments, their array of Hamas and Hezbollah swag, and their embrace of rhyming genocidal couplets. Targeting defenseless minorities, whether it is over alleged bad behavior or over their nationality, as law enforcement looks the other way is out of bounds, full stop. Those who try to justify it or wave it away show their true colors.

“Jews getting stalked and ambushed at their hotels and beaten up by roving mobs in a European country because they are Jewish or citizens of the Jewish state, while passersby walk along averting their eyes and the police are nowhere to be found, is a pogrom.”

Now that we agree that pogroms are bad, let’s revisit the subject from a different angle. A mob hunting members of a disfavored, unpopular minority group in the streets, beating them and destroying their property. Victims cowering behind locked doors, afraid to leave the places they have holed up in. Vigilantes chanting for their targets’ blood, forcing some of the ones they catch to chant political slogans against their will before facing even more violence. Police either ignoring what is going on, or in some cases even joining with the mob. If this seems familiar in a way that extends beyond last week, it is because it does not only describe what Israelis faced in Amsterdam. It also describes what Palestinians face time and time again in the West Bank, but unlike Amsterdam, it is not a one-off but an ongoing nightmare, and one from which Palestinians have no escape and no recourse.

When Yigal and Hillel Yaniv were murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in the West Bank town of Huwara, hundreds of Israelis descended on Huwara demanding blood, smashing cars and burning homes and beating Palestinians. It took hours for the army to show up, and ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich declared that the entire town of Huwara should be erased from the face of the earth. A large group of stateless Palestinians was subjected to a mob rampage over the sins of a different Palestinian while the authorities did nothing to prevent it, and some members of the government cheered and encouraged it. It makes no difference that it was a response to a terrorist attack, just as it makes no difference that Israelis in Amsterdam were targeted in response to anti-Palestinian vandalism, just as it made no difference in centuries past when European Jews were targeted by Christian mobs who believed in fictitious blood libels. A pogrom is a pogrom.

“It makes no difference that it was a response to a terrorist attack, just as it makes no difference that Israelis in Amsterdam were targeted in response to anti-Palestinian vandalism, just as it made no difference in centuries past when European Jews were targeted by Christian mobs who believed in fictitious blood libels. A pogrom is a pogrom.”

Huwara is the most visible example, but it is not the only one. Spend two minutes searching, and you will find footage of Israelis assaulting Palestinians in the West Bank while the soldiers or police stand off to the side—or in the most egregious cases, participate—in quantities orders of magnitude greater than what you will find searching for footage of Israelis being beaten in Amsterdam. But the key difference is not the number of incidents, but how they are dealt with. In Amsterdam, the police made an initial round of arrests, are continuing to make more arrests, instigated an immediate investigation, and have already issued a preliminary report. Compare that to the aftermath of pogroms by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank, where investigations almost never happen, arrests are rarely made, and consequences are largely non-existent. The attack on Israelis was an international incident that resulted in Israel sending planes to rescue its citizens and brought condemnations from President Joe Biden and members of Congress. Attacks on Palestinians are routinely dismissed as non-existent, missing context that the facts and footage don’t capture, not really a problem, not representative of Israeli policy, a negligible level of violence, and on and on.

“Attacks on Palestinians are routinely dismissed as non-existent, missing context that the facts and footage don’t capture, not really a problem, not representative of Israeli policy, a negligible level of violence, and on and on.”

What happened to Israelis in Amsterdam was inexcusable. What happens to Palestinians in the West Bank is inexcusable. If you are disturbed by Amsterdam, be as disturbed by Huwara, by Turmus Ayya, by Qusra, by Jit. If you twisted yourself into knots dismissing what happened in Amsterdam, do some self-reflecting on why you feel that Israelis and Jews deserve less freedom and fewer protections than other people. Pogroms cannot be judged by the identity of the victims, but by the events themselves. If anything positive comes from Europe’s 21st-century pogrom, it should be that Israelis and Jews around the world pay more attention to the pogroms taking place under Israel’s auspices, and begin to treat them with the gravity they demand.