The right to protest has been turned into right to intimidate - Euan McColm

Attacks on Jews visiting Amsterdam come as no surprise, ​writes Euan McColm – antisemitism is on the increase and the next pogrom may take place right here on UK soil

​The victim-blaming was, of course, immediate. No sooner had social media been flooded with disturbing videos of Jews being hunted down and attacked by gangs in Amsterdam than “explanations” were being provided. Those attacked - supporters of Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv, visiting the city for a Europa League match against Ajax - weren’t exactly innocent, you see: One of them had torn down a Palestinian flag and there was a story going round that others had kicked a taxi.

What happened on Thursday evening in the Dutch capital was a pogrom, an orchestrated campaign to target and drive out Jews. Gangs of masked men ambushed lone supporters, beating and kicking them while filming the attacks. It’s said that, in some instances, thugs demanded to see passports to establish the ethnicity of potential victims.

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Commentators and politicians pushing the line about the tearing down of a Palestinian flag have lost their minds. That’s in no way comparable to a night of targeted antisemitic attacks nor does it come close to being their justification.

But if one’s default position is that Jews are bad then it doesn’t take much to square support for their abuse.

Thursday’s attacks on Jews may have horrified but they did not surprise. We’ve been building up to this moment. And I’m afraid others will follow.

Since the massacre of October 7 last year – when more than 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas terrorists – major cities across the West have seen regular demonstrations by pro-Palestine campaigners. To those who attend these events, Israel’s response to the rape and murder of its citizens is a “genocide”.

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From Glasgow to London to Los Angeles there are calls for “global intifada”; The chant “we don’t want no two states, we want 1948” – a plea for the removal of Israel from the map – is commonplace.

Although these marches are heavily policed, officers routinely ignore blatantly antisemitic chants and banners.

In some instances, the right to protest has clearly been interpreted by anti-Israel protestors as the right to intimidate. Why else, if not to distress, would a group turn up to heckle and drown out Jewish speakers at a peaceful vigil in Glasgow to mark the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks? For what other reason than the hatred of Jews would anyone turn up at a conference organised by an Israeli newspaper in London and shout abuse in the faces of attendees?

Reports of antisemitic crimes in the UK have soared over the past 13 months yet there is precious little sign of police action.

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Of course, policing demonstrations is a difficult matter. Free speech is precious and officers must take great care not to impinge upon that right. And there is the matter too of ensuring the actions of officers do not create bigger problems: It’s clear from much of the footage we see of pro-Palestine marches that heavily outnumbered police prefer, sometimes, to ignore antisemitism than to risk intervening and inflaming already tense situations.

Whatever the reason, right now, it seems there’s a free pass for antisemites.

Coming on the eve of the commemoration of Kristallnacht – the 1938 pogrom in Germany – news of Thursday’s attacks resonated painfully around the world. The sense of shame in remarks from the Dutch monarch in the aftermath was palpable.

King Willem-Alexander said the Netherlands’ history had “taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse”.

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“Jews,” he added, “must feel safe in the Netherlands, everywhere and at all times. We put our arms around them and will not let them go.”

Prime Minister Dick Schoof returned early from a summit of EU leaders in Budapest where, he said, he’d been following developments “with horror” and promised the perpetrators would be brought to justice. By Saturday morning, more than 60 people had been arrested.

I doubt, however, that prosecution of those responsible for Thursday’s horrifying scenes will do much to discourage others from doing the same.

It is little surprise that antisemites on both the hard right and the authoritarian left feel emboldened. We have witnessed, after all, some very poor political leadership on this issue.

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Perhaps you recall the appalling spectacle in August of external affairs secretary Angus Robertson apologising for meeting an Israeli diplomat after a backlash from SNP members. Robertson had gladly attended the meeting with Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UK Daniela Grudsky and even posted a photograph of them together, smiling.

This was too much for many of Robertson’s fellow nationalists to bear and he faced demands to resign.

In the end, Robertson gave in to the mob and – in the process – humiliated a senior diplomatic representative of an international ally. It was a grim episode that demonstrates just how skittish politicians who style themselves of the left are on the matter of war in the Middle East.

More recently, the SNP expelled the MSP John Mason for expressing his view on Israel’s retaliation to the Hamas attack. “There is no genocide,” he wrote on X, “If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they would have killed many, many more.”

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Mason’s words may have been blunt but they were not inaccurate. This was of no consequence to the SNP which chucked Mason out, accusing him of claiming to be the “arbiter” of what is considered to be genocide, and describing that as an “unacceptable and offensive” position to take.

Antisemitism is on the rise, again, and it is routinely ignored by police who prefer to turn a blind eye than to provoke confrontations during demonstrations and by politicians who cower before the mob.

We should not be at all surprised if the bleak events of Thursday night are soon repeated elsewhere.

And we should be prepared for the possibility that the next such outrage will take place on British soil.

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