This is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, with residents from 180 countries. The Dutch aren’t the majority, nor are those of European descent. In the early 2010s, the Dutch made up 50% of the population but had dropped to 44% by the start of this decade. The largest group after the Dutch is close to 80,000 Moroccan immigrants, followed by Suriname with about 63,000 and Turkey with around 45,000.
Amsterdam was supposed to be like Berlin, London and Paris — a haven for opponents of nation-states and advocates of open borders and multiculturalism. A model of a free, open city, but we didn’t need the Maccabi Tel Aviv riots to know these were illusions.
Footage of Israelis attacked by Arab rioters
Exactly two decades ago, in November 2004, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam by Mohammed Bouyeri, a young man of Moroccan descent. This was the first Islamist murder in the Netherlands. Van Gogh had published critical articles on Islam and immigration and directed Submission, a film against the oppression of women in Islam, written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was then a Muslim parliament member of Somali descent.
So, nothing began last weekend. The signs were there all along. In May, pro-Hamas demonstrators rioted at the University of Amsterdam. They shattered and vandalized, causing about €4 million in damage. Authorities said they had no idea who was responsible for the rampant vandalism even though video footage of the event was widely available.
No one was arrested. Most of those detained from the Maccabi Tel Aviv riots have already been released. After all, no one wants to pick a fight with a growing community of jihadists. And generally, speaking out against immigrants is off-limits.
The attack comes from two directions: the progressives label you a racist and the jihadists might do to you what they did to Van Gogh. Even Geert Wilders, head of the Party for Freedom, the largest in the Netherlands and labeled as "far-right," requires a constant security detail.
Europe is in trouble. In 2017, Douglas Murray published “The Strange Death of Europe”, where he took on the liberal fantasy that has led and continues to lead to an influx of immigrants across the continent. But let’s be precise: the problem isn’t with all immigrants. Hindus, for example, have been a success story in both the U.S. and the UK.
It’s no coincidence that the UK’s prime minister comes from an immigrant family. Kemi Badenoch, recently elected as head of the UK Conservative Party, is from a Nigerian immigrant family. The problem lies with those immigrants who come without intending to integrate. They fled oppressive countries only to turn the countries they’ve moved to even darker.
The protesters and rioters belong to this second group. They come to impose Sharia law. They hide nothing. It’s worth being specific: out of tens of thousands of Muslims in Amsterdam, only a relatively small part participated in the pogrom.
But that’s exactly the point. You don’t need more than a few thousand, especially when they have support. It’s no secret that Qatar, which funds Hamas, also funds countless mosques and radical imams across Europe. The incitement is systematic and constant. Europe has been unable to stop it.
All warnings are met with the unyielding barrier of the red-green coalition — radical progressives and Islamists. This coalition is demonstrating in the streets of major cities in the West. It’s the racist, antisemitic cancer entrenched in every Western nation.
Just a day before the night of the riots in Amsterdam, protesters surrounded a synagogue in Montreal. Without police intervention, it could have ended in a lynching. Such incidents have become routine in a feeble, appeasing West. These aren’t protests for Palestinian rights; they’re campaigns of hatred, racism and antisemitism.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Leading Western media outlets, not just Al Jazeera, fuel the hatred by continuously broadcasting propaganda about Israel’s supposed crimes. Just last week, CNN aired a report on the impact of Israeli bombings on 19 hospitals in Lebanon. There wasn’t a single word about a year of rocket launches at Israel, or that it wasn’t hospitals but nearby Hezbollah sites that were struck.
Nor was there any mention of the devastation that always follows wherever a Sunni or Shia jihad rises. Any reasonable viewer, not only a Muslim, exposed to this constant incitement would feel compelled to take to the streets with a firebomb to target Jewish institutions or Israelis. This fuel is spread by the pseudo-liberals, aligning seamlessly with the rhetoric preached in Muslim Brotherhood mosques.
There’s no reason for optimism. Even the backlash against immigration, which is strengthening right-wing and far-right parties, won’t change anything. It’s too late. And nothing will satisfy the rampaging jihadists. They’re obeying their imams, aiming to impose Sharia law. They’re a small minority but a dominant one.
Muslims are their victims as well. And when a Jew or Israeli in today’s Amsterdam must hide their identity or needs a police escort to visit the Anne Frank Museum, it’s clear Europe has neither learned nor forgotten anything. The Nazi cancer already destroyed Europe once. The jihadist mutation could do it again.
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