The Puinhoop in the Netherlands

 This article first appeared in New English Review.

Last week, pro-Palestinian thugs in Amsterdam viciously attacked Israeli soccer fans and other Jews on the streets of that city following a soccer match between a Dutch team and a team from Israel. Five people had to be hospitalized, dozens were arrested, and Israelis had to be escorted to the airport by police. While it is undeniable that some of the Israeli fans behaved badly before and during the match (as soccer fans around the world are prone to do), nothing justified what happened after the match when roaming gangs of thugs, many on motorbikes, hunted down and attacked Israeli fans and other Jews on the streets.

The incident has shocked the nation and is forcing the Dutch government to consider stronger measures against anti-Jewish violence. With a more conservative government now in place, hopefully, the country (and the rest of the world) will finally say enough is enough. Yet, as I write, on Wednesday evening, hundreds of pro-Palestinians gathered on Amsterdam’s Dam Square to protest in spite of a ban imposed on protests by the city’s mayor. Predictably, it turned violent and police removed 265 people from the square. Their custodial situation is as yet not clear.

One of the measures being considered by the Dutch government is stripping away Dutch passports from perpetrators with dual nationality. That would be a positive first step. Mass deportations of these criminals, who are overwhelmingly of immigrant backgrounds, would be the best step of all.

But back to the question of what to do now. I am hesitant to lecture the Europeans what to do about their problem when we have a similar problem here in the US. Nevertheless, let me share my ideas.

Obviously, more severe prosecution is in order. Offenses like these need to be met with stiff prison sentences that would serve as a deterrent, at least for some.

Once a foreign suspect goes through the judicial process and is released from custody, they should be promptly deported. If certain countries, most notably Morocco, refuse to accept them back, countries like the Netherlands should cut off any foreign aid or trade with that country. Morocco is actually a prime example with the Netherlands-based Moroccan Maffia, a particularly vicious organization that largely controls the illicit drug trade in the Netherlands. Morocco generally refuses to accept convicted Moroccan criminals back. There should be consequences for that.

The deportation question obviously will involve opposition from liberal political parties, social associations, and likely the courts. That is also true in the US, and we are about to see this played out with the return to power of Donald Trump and his promise to deport illegal aliens. Unquestionably, that will begin with the identified criminal elements and suspected terrorists.

Returning to the Netherlands, they and their European neighbors first need to stop the bleeding. That means putting a halt to mass Muslim migration into Europe. To be fair, this migration began decades ago and largely involved needed workers for European countries with a low birth rate. Now that has turned into a flood of millions of people, largely stemming from the Syrian civil war in 2015.  In addition, Western Europe now has a young generation of people, largely from Islamic backgrounds, born in Europe, and who speak the language. Yet, they are clearly not fully assimilated. Worse yet, they have not adopted Western norms and values, preferring those from countries from which their families immigrated. Still, I don’t favor deporting some law-abiding restaurant owner who has been in the country for an extended time and done nothing wrong. I am talking about people like the Moroccan Maffia, those who attacked Jews in Amserdam last week, radical Islamists, and those who refuse to respect the values and laws of their adopted country.

Many European countries have a different citizenship system than the US. That means in some countries, full citizenship is not automatically granted to someone born in that country to immigrant parents. In the Netherlands, there are many with dual nationality, thus, the discussion now in Dutch political circles about stripping those people of their Dutch nationality if they engage in criminal behavior.

At the end of the day, it comes down to this: Are we going to protect our Jewish communities from lawless young thugs who want to attack Jews because they are angry about Israel, and aside from Israel, have been taught to hate Jews in general as part of their belief system? Are we going to protect ourselves-all of us- from this Islamist way of thinking that has invaded the West? Or do we throw up our hands and say, “It’s too late.  We now have millions of them, Europe is already lost”?

I hate to disappoint the Pollyannas out there who say the answer is sensitivity training, interfaith cooperation with Islamic leaders, and trying to encourage assimilation. It’s too late for that. This week, the Dutch government leaders have met with both Jewish and Muslim community leaders trying to find an answer. I have no objection with reaching out to true Muslim moderates and imams who are against this anti-Jewish, anti-Western hate and violence. The problem is that there are many imams and many mosques who are a part of the problem. If certain imams in certain mosques are giving sermons, damning Israel, Jews, the West, and anything that is not Islamic while calling for violence, there is no point in asking them for cooperation. These mosques must be closed and offending imams (who largely come from other countries) should be sent home. In some cases in Europe, this has happened as in France and Italy among others. But it is a long and difficult process. Laws need to be changed in many of our countries. In many cases, existing laws simply need to be enforced.

Let me be clear: I am not calling for countries like the Netherlands and ours to deport every last Muslim, only the bad apples. At the same time, we have to recognize that the Netherlands and other Western European countries have allowed so many millions of Muslims into their countries, many not fully vetted, who now threaten to demographically change the face of Europe forever. I am not talking about whether Europeans are all brown 50 years from now. I am worried that Europe will actually become Eurabia with a whole new culture and set of values hostile to our own.

I speak Dutch fairly well (The reason why I learned it is a long story), and there is a word that describes the situation the Dutch find themselves in. It is a “puinhoop” literally a pile of rubbish, but often used to describe something as a “mess”. Another term, “bende”, usually meaning “gang”, can also be used for  a “mess”.  Take your pick. The Netherlands, like many of its European neighbors, has a mess on its hands. Fixing the problem, if it can be fixed, will also be a mess. Far be it for me to tell the Europeans how to fix their mess when we have our own mess here in the US, like Europe, largely of our own creation. Historically, immigration has been great for the US, but it has gone off the rails.

The Dutch people have a long history of welcoming true refugees and for their tolerance. Centuries ago, they welcomed Jewish refugees from Iberia fleeing persecution. In the 1930s, they welcomed Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, mostly notably Anne Frank and her family, German Jews from Frankfurt. Of course, that all ended with the German occupation in World War 2. Today, Dutch tolerance and hospitality has been abused, not by all, but by far too many. The Dutch people themselves are not anti-Semites, but anti-Semitism has been imported into their country and to the detriment of the Dutch people as a whole. As a side note, the country is faced with a severe housing shortage. Yet, Dutch citizens have to wait years for housing because the so-called asylum-seekers go to the top of the list.

To me, the dilemma in the Netherlands is somewhat similar to the one they faced during the German occupation. Are they going to surrender their Jewish citizens to the new invaders?  Either direction will be a puinhoop, but I hope the answer is a resounding, “No”.