The clock is ticking for the Jews of Amsterdam

Some 15 years ago in Amsterdam, observant Jews started to complain to the local government and police about verbal and physical harassment in predominantly migrant neighbourhoods.

The only Amsterdam politician who was truly shocked by this development was an ethnic Moroccan called Ahmed Marcouch. He proposed a number of concrete measures to combat the growing anti-Semitism from Muslims.

None of the proposed measures were carried out.

The police had their own method for solving the problem of anti-Jewish incidents. They did not try to apprehend or stop the perpetrators. They did nothing.

Instead, they told the Jews to cover up their ethnicity, or leave.

The Jews left. No Jews, no attacks on Jews, problem solved.

Nowadays, there is no public Jewish life in Amsterdam any more. Observant Jews have retreated to a few neighbourhoods in the south of the city. When they leave these small neighbourhoods they hide their heritage in public.

Seventy years after the end of the Holocaust, Amsterdam Jews are again hiding the fact that they are Jews. And few people care.

They are a liability. It costs money to protect their buildings and their very presence provokes the growing Muslim community.

However, the biggest problem with the Jews is that they support Israel.

Hatred of Israel is a binding factor between the regressive left, (many) Muslims and indigenous anti-Semites. It is not the size of the country that they hate, it is its very existence. For them, Zionism is the same as Nazism and Israel is even worse than ISIS.

In 2018 there are local elections. According to the prognoses, a majority of the vote will likely go to anti-Zionist parties.

What then for the Jews of Amsterdam, who support the state of Israel?  

Ominously, there have been recent verbal and physical attacks on pro-Israel demonstrators and the police have done nothing about them. Even though the attacks were filmed and they know the names of the perpetrators.

There is an arrangement for public participation at council meetings. Anybody can speak to the council for three minutes.

One of the pro-Israel demonstrators who had been physically attacked took advantage of this arrangement. The members of the party that is projected to be the biggest after the next elections, got up and left when he started to speak.

I remember an article in a national daily newspaper written by one of the leaders of an “anti-racist” platform. He wrote that Zionists were traitors and they should be tried for treason. Many on next year's new council in Amsterdam will agree with him.

The clock is ticking for the Jews of Amsterdam. They would do well to remember that the Dutch have a history of betraying Jews. 

Those Were The (High Holy) Days

I came back from my boarding school in 1958, when I was 12 years old.

We had recently moved to West Norwood. That is where I lived with my parents and six years older sister, until I left England when I was 18.

My parents did not work on the Jewish High Holy Days: Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). These were the only days of the year that they went to shul instead of to work.

My father and his peers were tradesmen who could not afford to be religious.

We went to Streatham synagogue, that serviced the small pockets of Jews who lived in our part of south London. Very few people lived near enough to the synagogue to be able to walk there. Most people arrived in their cars.

Nobody was so brash as to park in front of the synagogue on Yom Tov, but the surrounding streets were full of parked cars.

The praying area of the synagogue was quite small and was separated from a large hall by a folding wall. On the High Holy Days the wall was opened and the large hall incorporated into the praying area.

My father went first, quite early in the morning. He took the bus.

My mother, sister and I came later in the car. For the women these days were also a fashion parade and they took a lot of care to look their best.

My sister was of marriageable age. The visits to the synagogue were important in the search for a suitable Jewish husband.

When I arrived at the synagogue I used to put on my kappel (skullcap) and tallis (prayer shawl) and go and sit next to my father.

The men around him would greet me heartily. They would ask about my health and how I was doing at school. Then they would congratulate my father on having such a fine son. It was almost a ritual.

My father had been at the shul for some time, so he kept nodding off. My primary task was to nudge him when we had to stand.

When there was a break, I used to go outside to chat with the other young people, especially the girls. This was in the time when it was not politically incorrect for teenagers to have hormones.

Of course the High Holy Days had mainly a religious significance. However, they were also important in keeping the community together.

The atmosphere was friendly, warm and inclusive.

In those hours we were all brothers and sisters, one nation, one family and safe from the Jew-haters.

I appreciated the warmth and love of those High Holy Days at Streatham shul, but when I was 18 it was time to leave this modern shtetl. Time to join the Jews who wanted to be masters of their own destiny.
A time to build and, when necessary, to fight.

For my dear friend Avraham.
Arim Roshi (I will raise my head).

"If Fascism came to the United States it would come disguised as anti-Fascism."

In the 1920s and early 1930s, the Sturmabteilung (SA) were the military wing of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, that is better known by its abbreviation of Nazi Party. 

The SA gained control of the streets in Germany by beating up or killing anybody who they disagreed with. Many people excused their murderous behaviour because the SA were opposed to the "genocidal" communists.
They wore a uniform with a brown shirt. That is why they were called "Brownshirts", They chose brown-coloured shirts because a large number of them were cheaply available after World War I.

In the beginning, the National Socialists were social justice warriors for tens of millions of Europeans and Americans. They were going to redress the evil done to Germany at the end of the First World War and they were rabidly anti-capitalist.
The street-fighting SA were the main "socialist" group of the Nazis. They are categorized as Strasserites, as supporters of the ideas of Otto and Gregor Strasser. 
Their leader was Ernst Röhm, who saw the SA as the vanguard of the "National Socialist revolution". After the Nazis gained power he called for a second "socialist" revolution. 

Berkeley August 27, 2017. 
A mob of masked Antifa thugs dressed in black roamed Harvey Milk park, beating up anybody they disagreed with.
The mainstream media and many political and religious organizations have nurtured and empowered this violent mob behaviour, because they maintained it was directed against genocidal Nazis and white supremacists.
These thugs have been romanticized. Echoes of "¡No pasarán!"  and comparisons with the groups who fought the Fascists before the Second World War.

During the Antifa thug attacks in Harvey Milk park, a shocked James Queally of the LA Times tweeted the following: "There is a complete mob mentality here. People are randomly accusing random people of being Nazis." 
The tweet is naive at the very least. Anybody Antifa disagrees with is a "Nazi". That is the name of the game.

Antifa is only inclusive of people it agrees with. 
It is against hatred, except the hatred of anybody it does not agree with.
It objects to genocide, except the genocide of its enemies.
It bemoans the slaughter of 6 million Jews and supports organizations that call for the slaughter of 6.4 million (Israeli) Jews. 

"If Fascism came to the United States it would come disguised as anti-Fascism."

Goodbye America, thanks for the ride

When it comes to Americans, most Europeans I have met are snobs.

It may be jealousy, but lots of reasons are cited. I have heard that Americans are, among other things, brash, shallow, ignorant, flashy, loud, cultural philistines and gun-toting maniacs.  

The US has some pretty good wines, yet nobody I know buys them. No, they will say, they are not snobs. There are some very good Chilean and Argentinian wines that they do buy. It does not have to be French. It is just they cannot imagine that Coca-Cola drinking Americans can make good wine.

My Dutch acquaintances prefer a French film to an American one. Even though they usually speak good English and hardly any French.

It is a question of style. I think that is the most important reason for the European feeling of superiority: they think Americans have no style.

I used to speak up for Americans. You see, I liked America. I am an old-style social justice warrior weaned on "Shane"  and "The Lone Ranger".

I admired that wonderful constitution, drawn up by some of the greatest minds the world has ever known. I identified with the cowboy, the individual who stood up against evil. I thought American literature, music and art were among the best in the world. 
“Nighthawks” is my favourite painting.

Most of all, I loved American "film noir".

As a teenager I used to watch film noir on British television. I admired everything about the films: the dark and brooding atmosphere, the stories, dialogue, actors, actresses, and music. 
Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and all those mysterious and seductive leading ladies. I fell in love with Rita Hayworth when I saw her in “Gilda”.
It was one long cultural joyride for me.

I got over Rita Hayworth and I have gotten over America.

It is now the land of psychic epidemics, mob media, zealots, foul-mouthed snowflakes and social justice bigots. It has become an intellectual desert.

Goodbye America, thanks for the ride.

Falling over a reminiscence: A Dirty English Jew

A Swiss hotel put up a notice telling their “Jewish guests” to use the (cold) showers before and after swimming in the pool. This created some consternation.

It also triggered a few old memories of mine.

When I was seventeen I decided to go to Israel and live on a kibbutz.

I had two major problems: No money and nowhere to go in Israel.

I solved both problems by tagging on to a Hashomer Hatzair youth group ("garin") from continental Europe that was going to kibbutz Magen. I was the only member from the British Isles.

Hashomer Hatzair paid my train and ship fare and I even received some pocket money.

I had to spend a few weeks on a “training” farm near Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire. The caretakers of the farm were a young Israeli couple who had a baby daughter.

All I can remember about them is that they were nondescript and short. He had a moustache and she was plumpish and wore tight jeans.

Hashomer Hatzair had few members in England so I was the only trainee there. I slept in a dormitory near the chickens. The caretakers had a small house.

All I did was shovel chicken shit.

Sometimes there were visitors. One who turned up for a few days, was a Dutch member of my European group. He was the first person I met from the group. We later became good friends in Israel and worked together with the sheep.

He was tall and blond. The Israeli wife used to get all bleary-eyed in his presence. Coquettish grins and constantly stroking her hair.

He confided in me that he was banging her up on the side, which was the real reason he was passing through.

Sometimes the couple would invite me around to watch television in the evening. The wife had one rule that I had to comply with: I was not allowed to use their toilet. She thought that the English were very dirty, especially teenage English males. 
She was worried about getting diseases from the dirty English, who wallowed in befouled water when taking a bath and never took showers.

For this Israeli woman I was a dirty English Jew.

The media: feeders of genocide

The headlines of the mainstream media equate the deliberate stabbing murders of the Salomon family in Halamish with the deaths of violent rioters in clashes with Israeli forces. Three dead on both sides, a draw.
They do this all the time. Palestinians on suicide missions get killed before they can kill Israelis and the media sees this as disproportionate violence by Israel.

The media's use of disingenuous language, framing of events, biased selection and connection of facts, prejudiced choice of interviews and "experts", misleading, partial contexts and shallow analysis in order to comply with a preconceived narrative, is having an effect. It is feeding the dehumanization and demonization of Israelis.

Demonization by the media was a major prerequisite for the genocide of both the Armenians and the Jews.
Nazis could love their own babies and brutally kill Jewish babies without any problems because, for them, the Jewish babies were not human like their own.
They were not born with these demonization ideas. They had to learn them and the media were some of the most important teachers.

It is quite common to hear calls for the genocide of 6.4 million Israeli Jews in Muslim countries. In fact, Muslims who only call for the genocide of Israeli Jews are considered "moderate" in the west.

What is new and the result of the cumulative media demonization, is the acceptance and even endorsement in mainstream western society of the call for the genocide of Israeli Jews.

This is often accompanied with a "reason" that blames the victims.

Take the example of the slitting of the throat of the Fogel baby in Itamar. The justification for this wanton murder is usually, "the parents should not have been there". 

Which is also a justification for the killing of all Israeli Jewish babies.

The blaming of the victims for genocide is not new. 

Alex Haak, the octogenarian Dutch Strasserite I have written about, maintains that if the Jews had not tried to take over the world, Hitler would not have had to kill them.

This is the moral dividing line between people. On the one side those who oppose genocide unless it is their enemies who are being massacred.
On the other side those who oppose all genocides.

It makes for strange bedfellows.

The Lietūkis Garage Massacre

"Excerpt from testimony given by Colonel L. Von Bischoffshausen:

I arrived in Kovno on the afternoon of June 27 1941. 

Whilst patrolling the city I came across a crowd of people that had gathered alongside a gas station to watch what was happening in the adjacent yard. There were women in the crowd and many of them clambered onto chairs and crates so that they and their children could get a better view of the “spectacle” taking place in the yard below. 

At first I thought this must be a victory celebration or some type of sporting event because of the cheering, clapping and laughter that kept breaking out.

However, when I asked what was happening I was told the “death dealer of Kovno” is at work and he would make sure that all “traitors and collaborators” received a fitting punishment for their “treachery.” 

When I drew closer I witnessed a display of brutality that was unparalleled by anything I saw in combat during two world wars.

Standing on the tarmac in the yard was a fair haired young man of around 25. He leaned on a long iron bar as thick as a human arm and around his feet lay between fifteen to twenty people who were either dying or already dead. A few feet away from him stood another group of individuals who were guarded by armed men. 

Every few minutes he signaled with his hand and another person quietly stepped forward and had his skull shattered with one blow from the huge iron bar the killer held in his hand. 

Each blow he struck drew another round of clapping and cheering from the enthralled crowd."

"Laimonas Noreika, a resident of Kaunas:

I can’t remember whether we left work early that day (my elder brother Albertas and I) or whether we went home at our usual time. Opposite the Kovno cemetery at the corner of Greenwald St and Vytautas Boulevard there was a small garage, which serviced light vehicles. 

A large crowd had gathered alongside the perimeter fence of the garage yard. So we also went over to see what was happening. 

I keep asking myself whether I just imagined it all but I know I did not.

Those horrific events have been burned onto my memory and will remain there until my dying day. 

In the middle of the yard, in broad daylight and in full view of the assembled crowd, a group of well dressed, spruce intelligent looking people held iron bars which they used to viciously beat another group of similarly well dressed, spruce, intelligent people. It was obvious the yard also served as a horse stable as animal droppings were littered everywhere.

The assailants yelled the word “norma” (move it) repeatedly as they relentlessly battered the Jews until they fell to the ground and began gathering feces. They kept hitting them until finally they lay inert. 

Then, using a hosepipe for washing cars, they doused them with water until they came round following which the abuse would start all over again. And so it went on and on until the hapless victims lay dead. Bodies began to pile up everywhere. 

I stood next to the fence and watched it all until finally, my brother Albertas pulled me away…"

The above murders are known as the Lietūkis Garage Massacre. It was the most infamous incident of the Kaunas pogrom: the slaughter of Jews living in Slobodka (Vilijampolė), the Jewish suburb of Kaunas, Lithuania. It took place between June 25 and 29, 1941.

After the murders at the garage, they moved to Slobodka to continue the slaughter.

According to "Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry" by Ephraim Oshry (1995), the rabbi of Slobodka, Rav Zalman Osovsky, was tied hand and foot to a chair. His head was laid upon an open volume of the Gemara (part of the Talmud). Then they sawed his head off. 

After that they murdered his wife and son.
The head of the rabbi was placed in a window of his house, bearing a sign: "This is what we'll do to all the Jews."

My grandparents came from Kaunas (Kaunus, Kovno/Kovne).