Amsterdam Mayor Backtracks on Use of 'pogrom', Admits Parroting Netanyahu's Anti-Palestinian Narrative

Admission to following Israeli diktats comes straight from the horses' mouth

Photo by Ewien van Bergeijk - Kwant on Unsplash

It seems that falsely claiming that your own citizens were engaging in anti-Semitic pogroms against Jews in the capital city after they responded to days of attacks by violent, racist, genocidal football fans from Israel on genocide leave and violating the genocide convention with their songs glorifying infanticide, does not go down well with your own citizens. Or so Amsterdam Mayor, Femke Halsema has found out.

In the aftermath of Israeli violence on the streets of Amsterdam committed by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, the Dutch government teetered on collapse. Spewing racist garbage about Dutch Moroccans and Muslim citizens really did not sit well with the country whose police forces had allowed Israeli football fans to commit violence and criminal damage against the Amsterdammers and their property with impunity, only choosing to intervene when the Dutch responded, arresting them instead.

Junior Finance Minister, Nora Achahbar quit the cabinet to protest the sheer, ugly racism that exploded and the anti-Muslim hatred towards Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent from other members of the cabinet. Her resignation triggered a crisis cabinet meeting at which four ministers from her party also threatened to quit. The Dutch government is currently made up of a four-party coalition. Had these ministers resigned, the coalition would have lost its majority in Parliament.

Nearly two weeks after the events in Amsterdam, the Mayor appeared on the Dutch current affairs show, Nieuwsuur, with her tail between her legs and backtracking on her outrageous statements made in the aftermath of the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans’ visit.

It’s amazing how politicians start telling the truth once their expense accounts are jeopardised.

(Apologies, I’m unable to download the video with English subtitles, but you can watch it here.)

Extraordinarily, the Mayor admits she was parroting the Israeli narrative straight from the mouth of Benjamin Netanyahu. She admits that she did this when the authorities didn’t even have all the facts and were ‘still gathering’ them!

She also admits that she was not informed nor made aware of Maccabi Tel Aviv being a racist football club and criticised the local security services for failing to anticipate the violence.

She talks about the Israeli narrative of a ‘Palestinian pogrom,’ regrets using the word and admits it’s been used as ‘propaganda’.

There it is, straight from the horse’s mouth. The Dutch authorities were ‘completely overtaken by Israel’ and repeated Benjamin Netanyhu’s anti-Palestinian, false narrative without even having all the facts.

Of course, you will unlikely find the Mayor’s admissions and statements of regret in mainstream media. Why would you? Newspapers in the West are purveyors of propaganda, not tellers of truth, and their staff are growing increasingly horrified by it. They are writing letters to the BBC en masse exposing their employer’s genocide complicity, admitting to getting a ‘nudge’ when mentioning Gaza, and self-immolating in protest.

Of course, the damage by Mayor Halsema is already done. A lie often travels halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes, and we in the UK were hammered by the lie from our mainstream ‘news’ outlets.

But on the streets of Amsterdam, the Dutch are unlikely to forget this betrayal so soon.