While the organized pogrom in Antwerp appears to have been stopped, there were sporadic incidents today, such as this beating of a visibly Hasidic man in a parking garage.
Interestingly, not only are none of these people Israeli, but in the case of the Antwerp victim, it was a member of Satmar, a sect that is virulently anti-Zionist and doesn’t believe in playing or watching sports. You couldn’t make it more obvious that this never had anything to do with soccer, or Israel, or “Zionism,” or the rights of “Palestinians.”
The people who used the term “Jew Hunt” to organize their pre-planned attacks, who are on video saying “let’s go on a Jew Hunt,” and who have spent the last four days hunting Jews, are in fact doing exactly what they say, and anyone still defending it is supporting it.
Are you sure no one who attended a mosque in Sweden ever chanted something impolite at a soccer game? Since that would justify such behavior according to half the posts in this thread.
Strawman. AFAICT nobody at all in this thread is saying that gross racist football hooliganism “justifies” hate crimes.
But a lot of us—and that includes a lot of us Jews—are getting a bit tired of the rhetorical double standard whereby hateful attacks and violence perpetrated by Jews and/or Israel supporters are ignored or handwaved away as just a few random “bad apples”, while hateful attacks and violence perpetrated against Jews and/or Israel supporters are unremittingly denounced as symptoms of baked-in, culture-wide antisemitic evil.
Context is a two-way street, and if we’re really going to “learn from the past” then we have to be honest about both denouncing and understanding all forms of bigotry.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about ways our messaging failed this last election, and I think one of our mistakes was in the way we reacted to the phrase “All Lives Matter”. Obviously, with the people who originated the phrase and at least some of the people repeating it, there was an ulterior motive. But what they wanted us to do was launch into a lecture about systemic racism and structures of power, and thereby alienate a significant chunk of the people listening.
What we should have done is completely take the wind out of their sails by saying “you’re right, all lives do matter. And here are my proposals for police reform to ensure that all lives are protected…”
In that spirit - Kimstu is right. It is bad when members of all religious groups are attacked, not just when Jews are attacked.
Amsterdam continues its phase of the Jew Hunt into a fourth night. The police seem unable - or unwilling - to stop the most brazen acts of violence, such as setting trains on fire.
This should go without saying. I guess it’s just more shocking when it’s something you thought had been consigned to history.
Re the timeline, did anyone find evidence the violence was planned before the Israeli fans arrived in Amsterdam? Many sources are reporting the Maccabi fans were already causing trouble the day before, which leaves plenty of time for Telegram messages and for men to travel from outside Amsterdam (it’s a very small country).
Here’s a better source. This seems more like general unrest than anything targeted, though?
I really don’t understand the relevance of this question. So what if some Israelis are football hooligans? How does that justify an organized Jew Hunt? Many of history’s pogroms started because of an inciting incident.
The Crown Heights Pogrom was set off after an Orthodox Jewish man ran a red light and hit two children. Running a red light is bad. But it doesn’t justify attacking every Jew in the city.
The point is that on the night of Nov 7, an organized group engaged in a premeditated Jew Hunt. The fact that some Jews are football hooligans and some football hooligans do bad things is completely irrelevant.
A truly premeditated attack seems worse to me than one that was a response to threatening behaviour and deliberate provocations (and from football fans, who are known for hooliganism). Which is not to say that such violence is ever justified.
That’s regarding the idea that on the night of Nov 7, some of the Israel soccer fans did things that provoked an immediate response from people present when they did the things that they did.
If the night before some Israelis did a bad thing, and that led to the organization of the Jew Hunt, that’s a very different scenario than if some Israelis fans attacked someone and that someone fought back.
If today I get some friends together and we start hunting down people who “look Muslim” near Columbia in retaliation for college protests, that’s a very different scenario than if a group of Columbia college students is protesting and physically attacks someone who fights back. Right?
If some people don’t like what they saw the soccer fans do on the news the day before so they band together for a Jew Hunt the next night, that IS a premeditated attack.
The justification that would make this not premeditated would be if soccer hooligans attack other people who defend themselves, which is what some have tried to paint this Pogrom as.
Could you identify the statements in what you choose to call “half the posts” in this thread that assert that “impolite chanting” at a football game “would justify” hate crimes?
Because I don’t think you’re going to find them. Pointing out that the hatred and violence in Amsterdam was perpetrated both against Maccabi/Israel supporters and also by Maccabi/Israel supporters is not in any way trying to “justify” any of the hatred and violence on either side.
This doesn’t make sense. Trying to pretend that outrage about Israel’s slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians is on a par with dismissive racist “all lives matter” rhetoric is ridiculous.
No, outrage about Israel’s slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank does not in any way justify antisemitic hatred and violence. But it also isn’t automatically identical with antisemitic hatred and violence. Getting mad at Israel war hawks for publicly gloating over dead children in Gaza is not the same thing as getting mad at Israel war hawks for being Jewish.
Painting antisemitic attacks that targeted Jews regardless of whether they did anything or not because some other Jews said something offensive is pretty much identical to All Lives Matters types pointing out that well actually George Floyd was a criminal.
Again - so what if some of the Israelis used offensive slogans? Many of the ProPalestine protestors use offensive slogans. If Muslims in towns with large ProPalestine protests start getting their skulls broken, are you gonna be here posting that getting mad at Palestine hawks for gloating over the fate of the hostages or calling for the genocidal elimination of Israel is not the same as getting mad at Palestine hawks for being Muslim?
Keep in mind, the people getting their ass beat in this scenario aren’t protestors crossing the line and caught in the act. They’re random Muslims (or Muslim looking people) who the vigilantes come across a day later.
All the sources say that the person throwing the incendiary device was yelling “Cancer Jew” while he did it. Maybe he was too dumb to actually succeed in setting Jews on fire as opposed to doing “general unrest” but the motive and intent seem crystal clear.
True, but it paints a very different picture of society if there is premeditation without anything that can be utilized to whip people up in a frenzy. Both are despicable and speak to a readiness for anti-Semitic violence in at least some part of the population, but the strain in which there is no need for any cause at all and you can just call up people to organize violence against Jews is surely much more virulent than the one where some perhaps out-of-context recording is used to rally the mob. Seems to me it’s important to know where society is at in that respect to try and find the right countermeasures.
We apparently have different opinions on whether 13-year-old German citizens living in Berlin are “Israel” or are responsible for the “slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians.” The same people who fall back on shouting bumper stickers about how “anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism” sure love to confuse all the Jews in the world with their worst imagined examples.
Am I taking crazy pills? Every race riot in history had a pretext. The Tulsa massacre started because of rumors that a black man raped a white woman in an elevator. Kristallnacht was announced as vengeance for the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris. The idea of distinguishing Jew Hunts that have an “inciting incident” from those that don’t means relegating every pogrom in history to not being as “virulent” as the fictitious ideal.
As always, no one would ever stand for this discussion if any other group were affected. It’s exactly on par with the “but but George Floyd was using a counterfeit bill!” thing and coming from the same motivations.