Responding to the Forces of Antisemitism Requires Strong Leadership

On November 9, 1938, Germany’s leaders advanced a series of pogroms against the Jewish population in Germany and its recently incorporated territories. On this night, known as the Night of Broken Glass (or Kristallnacht), shattered glass littered the streets as the Nazis’ violent riot reached its summit in vandalism and the destruction of Jewish-owned businesses, synagogues, and homes. This past week – on the eve of commemorations marking Kristallnacht, a day that shall live in infamy – Amsterdam witnessed a repeat performance by the shrill voices of hatred.The city echoed with calls for a “Jew Hunt” on popular messaging apps. This call preceded wave after wave of violence targeting Israeli soccer fans and Jews across Amsterdam.

On Thursday and into the early hours of Friday, “mobs unleashed a wave of violence” as they chased Israelis through the streets with rocks, knives, and fireworks. They kicked, stabbed, and beat Israeli fans who supported the Maccabi soccer team.

This move recalls attempts by the British – who arguably invented communism – to blame this invention on the Jews, as well as by American elites on university campuses who sought to blame the Jews for the October 7, 2023, massacreby Hamas in Israel. Harvard student groups, for example, responding to the absence of strong leadership at Harvard, signed on to a statement holding “‘the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence’ in the wake of a deadly invasion of Israel by the Islamist militant group Hamas.”

Despite the existence of Hamas’ expressed desire to eradicate the Jews and then the Christians as part of their genocidal jihadists’Holy War to Exterminate Israel, on October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas launched its unprovoked attack on infants, women, and children, crowds gathered in Sydney, Australia, New York, and Washington, D.C., to celebrate the slaughter of Jews.

Against this backdrop, we should never forget what the Hamas charter states: “Our battle with the Jews is long and dangerous, requiring all dedicated efforts. It is a phase which must be followed by succeeding phases, a battalion which must be supported by battalion after battalion . . . until the enemy is overcome, and the victory of Allah descends.”

The Amsterdam attack on the Jews appears to issue forth from both the Hamas charter and the leadership vacuum that has characterized much of Europe and the United States under the Biden-Harris Administration. The West’s leadership vacuum surfaces despite the clarity offered by the Hamas charter stating that:

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.

Consistent with the Hamas charter, Amsterdam has witnessed a terrorizing attack that would have made participants in the Kristallnacht — which took place in Austria, Germany, and the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia in 1938 — proud. The attack in Amsterdam featured battalions of Hamas supporters on scooters who crisscrossed the Dutch capital in “hit-and-run” attacks. So far, the police response in the Netherlands — a country where three-quarters of Jewish people were murdered during the Holocaust — has been tepid, with only 62 people arrested.

To be sure, the organized violence was condemned by leaders across Europe, the U.S., and Israel despite similar, if less violent, explosions of anti-Jewish violence in England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. This response raises two questions: Is condemnation enough, and is a stronger response needed? At the same time, evidence has emerged that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) participated in the Hamas-led slaughter of Jews on October 7, 2023.

Given the events in Amsterdam this past week, and the outpouring of support for Hamas surfacing on campuses and in the streets of the United States, Australia, and Europe, Americans must rise up and say, “Never again!” to those who support or sympathize with Hamas-led attacks in Israel or the Netherlands. “Never again!”

We must fight back to prevent another Hamas-sponsored invasion of Israel from Gaza. To prevent another attack, we must seek to ensure that Israel will never again experience a day of doom like the one experienced by the inhabitants of southern Israel, a day that saw women and infants tremble, a day of thick darkness and gloom as terrorist streamed across the border in pickup trucks, on motorcycles, on foot, and even on paragliders to murder, rape, and kidnap. Similarly, we must fight back against attempts by defenders of Hamas in our midst – whether on university campuses or in the streets of New York City, Sydney, and Amsterdam.

We must also fight against the forces of evil that have penetrated the United Nations and its subsidiary agencies. One of the most important ways of fighting back against the United Nations’ participation in attacks on Jews is by insisting that America be represented by strong leaders who will advocate for the defense of the Nation-State of Israel, including Israel’s right to exist.

Join the ACLJ in supporting Elise Stefanik, a conservative champion and congressional leader who has been nominated to become the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Rep. Stefanik has led the fight in Congress for Israel and has led the fight against comatose university leaders who have sought to coddle student and faculty support for Hamas. Join the ACLJ in supporting the Nation-State of Israel’s right to exist.