“We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.”

This quote from Primo Levy has always stuck with me. I’ve never believed in “Never Again”. So now I’m saying, not again!

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has been described by some as another Holocaust and by others a pogrom. Many people were shocked by the savagery of that attack. For me it feels more like the status quo.

Am I being fatalistic? It really depends on where you are coming from. I am a child of two Holaust survivors. Many family members were murdered only because they were Jewish. They were law abiding citizens and, in some cases, pious individuals living in Poland and Romania. The Holocaust was unique in its barbarity but not the only attack on Jews. We’ve had thousand of years of this.

It is sadly coincidental that the Amsterdam riot, pogrom or whatever you want to call it, occurred just two days before the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht. That was a night of terror orchestrated by the Nazi Party where Jews across Germany were attacked, Jewish businesses looted, and synagogues firebombed. It is considered the start of the Holocaust.

So, what happened in Amsterdam on November 7? That evening a soccer match was played between Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv and the Dutch squad Ajax. Following the game, hundreds of Maccabi fans were ambushed and attacked. It is too early to say what caused the attack. There have been reports of anti-Arab chants by Maccabi fans. That Jews were asked to show their passports. Hit-and-run attacks on scooters. But this was not a protest. There were reports that the attack was planned based on posts on social media prior to the attack.

This attack was only a matter of time. Since October 7, 2023, hate for Jews has quickly become normalized. There have been people who cheered as they watched the attack on Israel unfold on TV. Regular protests against Israel sprang up on university campuses and public squares. But those protest included anti-Semitic tropes and calls for the death of Jews. Typically, officials looked the other way. The hate spread to attacks on Jewish business, Jewish organizations, Jewish schools, and synagogues. A Jewish school in Toronto was sprayed with gunfire on two separate occasions.

“We failed the Jews in World War Two, last night we failed them again.”

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands