Evacuating pogrom victims from Amsterdam

“I don’t know if I’ll see him again,” Meital says as we get into my car. The fact that she’s even considering not making it to her son’s bar mitzvah in a few weeks shows how scared the Petah Tikva football fan does.

Meital is one of six Israelis whom I take from their hotels to the apartment of Esther Voet, editor-in-chief of the Dutch Jewish Weekblad NIW. They are stranded without protection from the Amsterdam police, or anyone.

That is why Voet has called on its extensive Jewish network in the Dutch capital to send me by car throughout the city center of the Dutch capital to pick them up.

Throughout the night, more and more calls come in from young Israelis asking to be evacuated. Some are eager to leave their hotel room and have to be convinced to come down with their luggage, get into the car and be driven to Voet’s safe apartment on one of Amsterdam’s most idyllic canals, ironically enough just a stone’s throw from the world famous Anne Frank House.

Two young Israeli men are waiting for me at a hotel on Rembrandtplein. One cries. He hugs me when I tell him they will be safe soon. The other is called a ‘high-value goal’ for the attackers since his passport was stolen and posted on social media along with a photo of him in IDF uniform. The hotel entrance cannot be reached by car, so we have to walk 250 meters. The two young Israelis seem understandably nervous, but their mood lightens considerably once we get underway.

Dutch mobile police officers stand guard after several clashes broke out in the city center following the UEFA Europa League, League phase – Matchday 4, football match between Ajax Amsterdam and Maccabi Tel Aviv, in Amsterdam on November 8, 2024. (credit: VLN News / ANP / AFP)

‘The safest country in the world’

It is slowly getting busy at the apartment; the dominant language – through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke – is Hebrew, which as a non-Jew I neither speak nor understand.

My next two ‘pick-ups’ are at a luxury hotel on the Amstel, the river from which the Dutch capital takes its name. They also ask me if I am Jewish. “Good,” says Shlomi when he hears that it isn’t, “good.” I explain that most Dutch people are actually pro-Israel. Such parties won one hundred seats out of 150 in the Hague parliament in last year’s elections in November.

The behavior of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Amsterdam was an important factor in the outcome of those elections. The majority of the Dutch population did not seem particularly fond of the Muslim immigrants who called for the murder of Jews in the streets of the capital and the refusal of the then government to address the problem. Which led to a right-wing landslide from which anti-immigration parties reaped the benefits. The Freedom Party (PVV) of populist Geert Wilders became by far the largest for the first time in its history.

When my last two ‘passengers’ are dropped off at Esther Voet’s cozy apartment, the atmosphere is noticeably more relaxed. In the morning, the Israeli football fans we picked up are taken to the airport with the help of the embassy in The Hague. They will join almost 3,000 others, many of whom will remain stranded for several more days – now finally protected by police – in what is considered one of the safest countries in the world.

Those days are over for Israelis, as well as for the Dutch Jewish community, whose members wonder if they will be the next to feel the wrath of pro-Palestinian activists and Muslim youth.

Stay up to date with the latest news!

Subscribe to the Jerusalem Post newsletter

Bart Schut is deputy editor-in-chief and reporter of the NIW, the Jewish Weekly in the Netherlands.