On November 7, 2024, what has been widely called a pogrom took place on the streets of Amsterdam following a soccer match between Israeli soccer club Maccabi Tel Aviv and Dutch club AFC Ajax. Videos show masked assailants hunting Israeli soccer fans through the streets and beating them while shouting antisemitic and anti-Israel slurs. Competing alleged narratives are still swirling about the incident, with many claiming the Israelis had started the violence by shouting anti-Arab slurs and ripping Palestinian flags from resident’s homes.
Regardless of the Israeli fans’ alleged behavior, the truth is that the attacks against them by a pro-Palestinian mob were premeditated, planned on social media platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp well before the soccer match took place Thursday night. The result was few hours-long coordinated attack in which the Israelis were ambushed outside the stadium and chased to their hotels with little intervention from local police. Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, tweeted that the attacks were “deeply reminiscent of a classic pogrom” and noted the irony that they took place “two days before the grim anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1938, when Nazi-sanctioned and led pogroms against Jews erupted across the German Reich.”
American of Israeli descent and Los Angeles-based venture philanthropist Adam Milstein came to a similar conclusion on X: “Unbelievable that less than 100 years since the Holocaust this is the reality in Europe.” When hundreds of anti-Israel protestors gathered as an act of “solidarity” with the antisemitic attacks in Amsterdam’s Dam Square just a few days later, he tweeted, “This is what happens when you allow millions of immigrants who support terrorism to flood your country.” Milstein has been sounding the alarm on exactly this problem for years now, and while the events in Amsterdam may have been “unbelievable,” given his commentary over the last several years they were most likely not a surprise to him.
Milstein alongside Gila, his wife, co-founded the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation, a nonprofit based in Los Angeles that is dedicated to strengthening American values, supporting the U.S.-Israel alliance and combating hatred and bigotry in all forms. Founded in 2000, the foundation works with dozens of organizations that are dedicated to educating the public about Israel and antisemitism, promoting fairness in reporting on Middle East issues and ensuring that liberal values are safeguarded from Islamic extremism. Thanks to his work with these organizations, Milstein is well-versed in the myriad challenges pro-Israel and pro-democracy advocates face in our increasingly fraught social and cultural climate.
In July 2023, Milstein wrote an article for The Jerusalem Postanalyzing the breakdown of order in Europe, notably France. “Antisemitic violence has proliferated in French society, often going unpunished by the judicial system,” he reports, citing statistics on hate crimes against Jews. Though he acknowledges that antisemitism in Europe doesn’t come exclusively from one political camp, he notes that it does come “mostly from the growing hostile Muslim population.” He decries the lax approach taken by French authorities in prosecuting the perpetrators of this violence: “The appeasement of vicious antisemitism in France, as Jews have been killed in high-profile terror attacks and hate crimes, has allowed the seeds of social unrest to fester.” Because of “political correctness,” authorities are unable, or unwilling, to prosecute perpetrators of antisemitic violence, especially when those perpetrators are Muslims or people of color.
The causes of the violent antisemitism we’re seeing now in Europe are not mysterious. Milstein’s evaluation of the demographic issues and paralysis of local authorities is echoed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch-American writer, politician and intellectual. She has been a fierce critic of Islamic extremism for decades and, having fled to the Netherlands from Somalia in 1992 and served in the Dutch parliament from 2002 to 2006, she is an expert on how radical Islam has festered both in the Netherlands and Europe at large. In an article for her platform Courage Media published following the Amsterdam attack, she writes, “I have spent more than 20 years warning Europeans and Americans of the likely consequences of large-scale migration from Muslim-majority countries, especially when combined with naive politics of multiculturalism, rather than integration and assimilation.”
Like Milstein, Ayaan Hirsi Ali sees political correctness as a huge roadblock to helping these immigrants integrate into democratic Dutch society. This is one reason why she was not surprised by the Amsterdam attacks either: “Twenty years ago, I watched as the Dutch authorities caved into almost every Islamist demand. Muslim students disrupted or walked out of classes on the history of the Holocaust, so the classes were eliminated from their curriculum. Jews and gays were attacked and beaten in the streets of Amsterdam, so—after a series of platitudes about ‘unacceptable behavior’—the victims were told not to appear so gay or Jewish in future.” As Milstein says, when democratic institutions are hobbled by this kind of appeasement, they “struggle to protect minority rights,” causing “extremist ideologies, including antisemitism, [to] flourish.”
Ali claims that although Amsterdam can “boast the highest share of minorities employed in government and security agencies,” the consequence is that “those agencies cannot guarantee the safety of Jews.” That’s why it’s so vital for government institutions to take responsibility and ensure the agencies that are meant to serve the people are not weighed down with ideological extremism. Milstein argues that it is essential for France, and all European countries facing this issue, to “acknowledge the historical, destructive power of antisemitism, and work to bolster its institutions and confront its internal strife.” That is the only way to prevent history from repeating itself and to ensure liberalism, pluralism and western democracy survive into the future.