If the West was really worried about Europe’s Nazi past, it would be better advised to stop stoking an all-too-real new antisemitism: incitement against Arab and Muslim minorities
There has never been a harder time to do political and media analysis than right now. Each day, the western establishment unmoors itself further from reality. Its priorities are so inverted, so obscene, that the most appropriate response is ridicule.
The latest example was the reaction late last week to violent clashes in Amsterdam before and after a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local team Ajax.
The ridiculous framing from western politicians, assisted by mainstream media outlets, was that the visiting Israelis were “hunted down” in what supposedly amounted to a “pogrom” by Dutch street gangs, comprising mainly youths of Arab and Muslim heritage.
According to this official narrative, the violence on Amsterdam’s streets was further proof of a rising tide of antisemitism sweeping Europe and imported from the Middle East. More, the attacks were presented as having disturbing echoes of Europe’s Nazi past.
Outgoing US President Joe Biden claimed the Israeli fans faced “despicable” attacks that “echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted”.
Israel, of course, helpfully stoked this idea by promising “emergency flights” to “rescue” its football fans – seeking to evoke memories of its airlifts in the 1980s of Ethiopian Jews to escape famine and reports of persecution, or possibly of the 1975 airlift of US embassy staff from Saigon.
Hellbound and Down 