Media whitewashes the pogrom in Amsterdam
The violence perpetrated against Israelis in Amsterdam two weeks ago was no less than a full-throated pogrom reminiscent of Kristallnacht, with roaming Muslim gangs hunting down and beating Jews. Yet, in the face of this horror, Western media promoted a sanitized narrative in which Muslim involvement was hidden, antisemitic violence was minimized, and Israelis themselves were blamed for the rampage.
Outrageously, many media downplayed the antisemitism that inspired the Jew hunt in the first place. NPR, for example, posted the headline, “Violence broke out after a soccer match in Amsterdam,” omitting the fact that the violence was directed by Muslims towards Jews.
Some media outlets implied that Jews themselves brought on the violence since a day earlier, a group of Israeli soccer fans chanted anti-Arab slogans and tore down a Palestinian flag. In other words, chanting offensive slogans and removing a flag justifies riots and assaults.
Moreover, this pogrom was premeditated — planned well before any slogan chanting or flag removal — and coordinated on social media. You’ll be forgiven if you didn’t learn of these salient details since legacy media omitted them as inconvenient to their narrative that Jews are responsible for provoking violence against themselves.
The media also omitted the fact that the primary actors in the Amsterdam pogrom were Muslims. Many Western newsrooms adhere to a narrative informed by critical race theory, which considers all two billion Muslims to be an oppressed class. Hence, they cannot be blamed for violent responses to their environment. The same perverse theory holds the world’s 17 million Jews to be members of the oppressor class; thus, any violence done to them is deserved.
Indeed, those who object to Muslim violence against Jews often fall prey to the accusation of Islamophobia.
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With such cases of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish media bias — all too typical among mainstream news outlets — we gain insight by asking who the media is serving and who the media is fighting when they twist the truth.
The violence that occurred on Nov. 7 had all the hallmarks of an antisemitic pogrom. Jews were intentionally targeted by Muslim mobs armed with knives, clubs and fireworks. As one victim described: “They jumped on us. They stabbed people. They beat them. They did horrible things. We hid in the hotel until it was safe outside.” One person tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid being beaten by telling his attackers, “I’m not Jewish!” What happened during the pogrom was enough to persuade Israel’s government to dispatch planes to rescue the victims.
The media downplayed the antisemitic hatred that inspired the pogrom. Much of the media described the violence as simple soccer hooliganism. One Associated Press headline, for example, read, “Maccabi Tel Aviv fans clash with reported pro-Palestinian protesters at Ajax Europa League match.” The BBC published a similar headline: “New arrests made in Amsterdam over violence after football match,” though all those arrested were attackers of Jews.
When media outlets did mention the antisemitic nature of the attack, they did so only in the context of allegations that it was antisemitic. A headline in The New York Times, for instance, read, “Violent Attacks in Amsterdam Driven by Antisemitism, Israel Says,” as if Israel alone called the violence antisemitic. The pogrom was condemned as antisemitic by many world leaders, including the Dutch king, who said, “We failed the Jewish community during World War II, last night, we failed again.”
The media outrageously implied that Israeli fans bore some responsibility for the violence. Sky News led its report on the pogrom with Israeli fans pulling down Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Arab slogans. Similarly, The Independent reported, “The violence started when the Maccabi fans reportedly tore down a Palestinian flag, engaged in vandalism and assaulted taxi drivers.” Columnist Owen Jones at The Guardian claimed that Israelis provoked violence by singing “genocidal songs.” What much of the media didn’t report is that violence was going to happen no matter how Israeli fans behaved because it was planned well in advance.
The Amsterdam pogrom was premeditated. Plans for the pogrom were made in advance on social platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp. For example, The Telegraph reported seeing messages from a group chat posted the day before the pogrom. One message read: “Tomorrow after the game, at night, part 2 of the Jew hunt.”
The media refuse to identify those who planned and staged the pogrom as Muslims. Rather, they label as racists those who called out Muslim violence. For example, Reuters recently referred to Geert Wilders, who leads the largest party in the Dutch government, as an “anti-Muslim” politician. In fact, Wilders is one of the few politicians brave enough to talk about the dangers associated with Europe’s growing Muslim population. Two other prominent Dutch figures — politician Pim Fortuyn and film director Theo van Gogh — were murdered for doing so. As political commentator Leon de Winter wrote in The Wall Street Journal, the Amsterdam pogrom “proves that the Netherlands has imported the cultural-religious problems of North Africa and the Middle East.”
What motivates the pro-Muslim, anti-Israel narrative? Such media bias is consistent with the radical, neo-Marxist narrative by which Jews and Israel are oppressors and Muslims are oppressed. What’s behind this bias — what policies or endpoints are these media promoting? Are they propping up the Netherlands’s failed cultural diversity? Are they supporting Muslim indignation caused by Israel’s sovereignty over its ancient homeland? Or are they supporting the Islamization of Europe (or the entire Western world), which is preached by many European and North American imams? Conversely, are they supporting the defeat of Israel (and of Western civilization, which the Jewish state so clearly represents)? Perhaps all of the above?
In any case, the Amsterdam violence on that dark night in Western Europe of Nov. 7 was not a clash of soccer fans with wrongdoers on both sides. It was a premeditated pogrom — a campaign by Muslims to target and harm Jews simply because they were Jews.
James Sinkinson is president of FLAME. To reach him, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
