Would this be acceptable if Jews were not the victims?

This is what happens when Jews are the victims — and why it so often goes ignored.

Screenshot from a video shows violence on the streets of Amsterdam in which Israelis were attacked by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel gangs on November 8th, 2024 (X screenshot; used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

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Imagine this scene: a soccer game in Amsterdam on a random Thursday evening.

Not a playoff game. Not a rivalry game. Just another game on the schedule.

But after the game, violence erupts. Fans of one of the teams that just played, Maccabi Tel Aviv, are attacked by Arab and North African gangs on the streets of Amsterdam. The attack is not random or reactionary; it is organized, deliberate. As for the victims, they are identifiable not by team colors alone, but by their Jewish identity.

A senior Israeli security official said Friday that Israeli security services had identified a “flare-up” on Dutch social media ahead of the game with calls by “pro-Palestinian” groups to hold a violent protest near the stadium.¹

As such, the Mossad (Israel’s foreign intelligence agency) passed a warning to security services in the Netherlands with a request to immediately and significantly reinforce the security for Israelis in the area of the stadium and across the city, emphasizing hotels where the fans were known to be staying.

However, Israel’s National Security Council had not been briefed on the threats and thus did not issue a warning to the public, including some 3,000 fans who had traveled to see the match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Amsterdam-based Ajax.

The attacks, which the aforementioned Israeli security official said “spread like wildfire,” were apparently organized by Islamic elements in the Netherlands, and not by Iran, which has been accused of fomenting violent attacks on Israeli targets in other parts of Europe, particularly Sweden and Denmark.

Israeli Adi Reuben, 24, said he was kicked on the ground and had his nose broken when he and his friends were confronted by a group of over 10 men while walking back to their hotel. The men asked Reuben where he and his friends were from. “They shouted ‘Jewish, Jewish, IDF, IDF’,” he said.²

“They started to mess with me and I realized I had to run, but it was dark and I didn't know where to go. I fell to the floor and 10 people were kicking me. They were shouting ‘Palestine’,” Reuben told the BBC.

Some Israeli football fans said they were ordered to show their passports when they were set upon. Gal Binyamin Tshuva, 29, told the BBC that he was attacked on Wednesday outside a casino after watching a different football game.

“We faced around 20 people who ran towards us. They asked me where I was from, and I said I was from Greece. They said they didn’t believe me and they asked to see my passport,” said Tshuva, who told them that he did not have it, prompting the men to beat him, push him to the ground, and kick his face. “I don’t remember anything after that, and I woke up in an ambulance with blood all over my face, and realised they had broken two of my teeth.”

Two British men, Aaron and Jacob, who are Jewish, told the BBC that they went to the match, but left early. Afterwards, they said they saw men yelling antisemitic threats and stamping on an Israeli man. They intervened, helped the man to his feet, and went to leave. Shortly after, a group asked the men if they were Jewish, and Aaron said that they were British. “But they said ‘you helped the Jew’, and he punched me in my face and broke my glasses,” said Aaron. “I was bleeding and have a black eye. I’m okay but a bit shaken.”

Israeli officials said 10 citizens were injured in the violence Thursday. Hundreds more Israelis huddled in their hotels for hours, fearing they could be attacked. Many said that Dutch security forces were nowhere to be found as Israeli tourists were ambushed by gangs of masked assailants who shouted “pro-Palestinian” and anti-Israel slogans while hunting, beating, and harassing the Jewish fans.

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Amid escalating antisemitism across the West, this scenario seems less like a flare-up of sports-related violence and more like an alarming flashback. Much of the world, however, largely shrugs it off.

Should we care?

The answer to that question reveals more than most people would like to admit about our collective moral compass, if one even exists.

To understand this phenomenon, let’s consider what I call the “Flip the Script” test. It is a two-part examination of bias and hypocrisy, a way to spotlight inconsistencies that are glaring when viewed from another angle.

Let’s apply it here.

Test 1: Placing Another Minority Group in the Jews’ Place

Take any marginalized group — say, Black Europeans or Asian Muslims. Now imagine gangs deliberately hunting them down in Amsterdam following a match, on the streets of a city they call home. Picture the headlines: “Black Fans Ambushed in Post-Match Attack” or “Asian Muslims Targeted by Gangs after Sporting Event.”

There would be immediate outcry, would there not? Social media would erupt with hashtagged outrage, demanding justice and denouncing the racist or at least bigoted motivations behind such an attack. News outlets would give it continuous, in-depth coverage, and government officials would undoubtedly release condemnatory statements of the strongest magnitude.

The aggression, we would hear, was vile, the result of an entrenched racial animus, a disgusting reminder of society’s capacity for targeted hate.

But here we are: Jewish fans are attacked in an overt antisemitic incident.

The response?

Deafening silence or, at best, a few whispers. The same fury does not ignite; mainstream media are not on high alert. No commentators step in with moralistic analyses. In fact, many of those who merely mention it contextualize these events through the prism of “rowdy sports fans” rather than premeditated antisemitism on the streets of what is supposed to be one of Europe’s most liberal parts.

The attack, to most, seems almost expected — as if to be Jewish and targeted was somehow “par for the course.” And that very shrug of indifference exposes how society has relegated Jews to a sort of perverse exception, stripped of the empathetic alarm afforded to virtually every other group.

Test 2: Switching Jews from Victims to Aggressors

Now let’s reverse roles and imagine the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were the aggressors instead of the victims. Picture this: Israeli or Jewish gangs organize to attack a group of Arab fans.

The outrage would be blistering — splashed across headlines, held up as proof of a systemic, pervasive hatred. It would be labeled a “hate crime,” a direct assault on multiculturalism, human rights, and societal equality. Activists, political leaders, and even the casual social media user would use this event to issue broad critiques, to accuse not only individuals but entire communities and countries.

Jewish behavior would become the focus, and moralistic reprimands would surge across every news outlet and social media feed.

So why, when the assault flips back, when Jews are the targets, is there no similar rush to condemn? Where is the shared humanity, the consistent moral standard?

In the double standard, it is as if Jews exist within a bubble of grudging tolerance — a group whose suffering is inconvenient to champion, whose attackers are implicitly given more grace.

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The “Flip the Script” test not only points to hypocrisy; it highlights a systemic erosion of empathy.

Jewish people, and particularly Israelis, seem to be the group to which “normal” standards do not apply. They are relegated to the role of societal scapegoat, frequently depicted as provocateurs by default, even when blatantly attacked.

And this moral lopsidedness is not limited to street-level violence after a soccer game. It surfaces in global politics, in academic discourse, in online spaces, and across the media (both legacy and digital). The irony is brutal: In an age when everyone is hyper-aware of social justice, of historical oppression and prejudice, Jews remain a convenient exception.

This double standard is especially dangerous because it normalizes antisemitism in a world where antisemitism has already worn many masks — sometimes hidden behind politics, other times appearing as misplaced criticism, and too often erupting as violent attacks like the one in Amsterdam.

But to wave off an attack on Jewish people as somehow “different” from other hate crimes is to participate in a silent form of prejudice, to become complicit in perpetuating a pernicious, centuries-old pattern.

Why does this double standard exist? The answer lies in a peculiar social phenomenon: the tendency to make Jews seem perpetually “other,” a group forever enmeshed in geopolitical complexity, their oppression minimized by a distorted moral calculus.

The complexity of Israel’s position in global politics has bled into perceptions of Jews everywhere, leading to a desensitization of the Jewish People’s suffering. Somewhere along the line, Jews — and in this case, Israelis — are often seen not as individuals but as extensions of a political entity, a grossly oversimplified “side” in a complex geopolitical arena. Their suffering, when filtered through this lens, loses its human urgency.

The “Flip the Script” test challenges us to uphold moral consistency, to honor the dignity of every community. When a Jewish person is attacked for their identity, it should evoke the same disgust and collective condemnation as it would for anyone else.

Yet the indifference to the attack in Amsterdam is not merely a failure of empathy; it is a dissolution of the very standards that so many (fraudulent) liberals parade around, flaunting their obnoxious (yet hollowed) demonstrations of virtue-signaling as if they are doing God’s work (when convenient and suitable to their hypocritical views of the world).

If you are not particularly concerned about what happened in Amsterdam last Thursday (as just the latest in countless examples of antisemitic attacks across the Western world), then I do not have any interest in hearing how you (superficially) feel about “the women and children” and “the uninvolved civilians” in Gaza or Lebanon. Be consistent, or keep your mouth shut.

And if you are willing to be consistent, then the next time Jewish people are attacked, the next time antisemitism surfaces with its usual ferocity, try the test.

Flip the script.

Ask yourself whether you would tolerate such silence, such moral passivity, if the roles were reversed.

Because, after all, justice that applies selectively is not justice at all. And the test exposes who society is willing to make an excuse for, and, more importantly, who it is not.

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1. “Dutch government probing missed Israeli warnings ahead of Amsterdam ‘pogrom’.” Times of Israel.

2. “‘They shouted Jewish, IDF’: Israeli football fans describe attack in Amsterdam.” BBC.