Amsterdam mayor says “pogrom” is being used as propaganda

 

Amsterdam mayor says “pogrom” is being used as propaganda

November 18, 2024

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/11/amsterdam-mayor-says-pogrom-is-being-used-as-propaganda/

 

Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema has said she would not again use the word “pogrom” when talking about the violence surrounding the Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv football match earlier this month, saying the word was now being used as propaganda.

 

Halsema also told current affairs show Nieuwsuur on Sunday evening that she should have mentioned the trouble caused by Maccabi supporters before and after the Europa League game in the Dutch capital. It emerged later than 10 Maccabi fans were arrested on the evening of the match and several more are included on a police “wanted” list.

 

“What I wanted to emphasise was the sadness and fear experienced by Jewish Amsterdammers,” she said. “But I have to say that in the following days, I saw how the word pogrom became politicised, to the level of propaganda.

 

“The Israeli government spoke of a ‘Palestinian pogrom on the streets of Amsterdam’ and in The Hague the words were used to discriminate against Moroccan Amsterdammers, Muslims. That is not what I meant or what I wanted.”

 

During the press conference on Friday, November 8, the mayor said that she could well imagine the way the “hit and run” attacks “brought back memories of pogroms”, and she stuck to the same line during a debate in city hall on the following Tuesday.

 

The press conference on the Friday after the match was organised under great national and international pressure, she said.

 

A more nuanced picture of what happened in the run up and aftermath of the football match has taken shape since then, and more details have been emerging about the role of the Israeli authorities.

 

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was speedy to respond on the evening of the troubles, talking of an “extremely violent incident” against Israelis in Amsterdam and saying he would send two planes to bring its citizens home.

 

 

And ahead of last week’s parliamentary debate on the violence, Israel’s minister for the diaspora Amichai Chikli sent a 27-page special report to The Hague with its own analysis of the situation to politicians.

 

The report, which purported to outline links between Dutch organisations and Hamas, was used by the fundamentalist Christian SGP to draw up a motion stating that all Dutch organisations considered to be pro-Hamas by Israel should be put on a terrorism sanctions list.

 

The Telegraaf newspaper quoted Chikli as saying that “the Dutch authorities should take legal and economic measures against the criminals and as Geert Wilders suggests, deport those involved”.

 

Integration

Calls for stripping dual nationals who are guilty of anti-Semitism and political statements about the “failed integration” of second generation Moroccan immigrants were central to last week’s threatened government collapse.

 

Halsema also expressed her anger that the focus now in The Hague on “integration”.

 

“Why is this necessary and what is it based on?” she said. “People get the idea that they are once again in the aftermath of 9/11 and have to justify themselves. But we are talking here about individuals who have behaved extremely badly.”

 

Statements made in The Hague are only causing more divisions in the capital, she said. “I would say to The Hague, go and do your jobs and stop fighting, whatever your political background.”