The Amsterdam violence shows why Israel is needed

The shameful violence against Israeli football supporters in Amsterdam last week was, we now know, planned and coordinated. But for antisemites, Jews must never be seen as victims and always deserve what is coming to them. So when a gang launched a vicious assault on Jews because they were Jews, we witnessed widespread mental contortions to assert that it was, rather, an understandable response to the behaviour of the Israeli fans.

The victims were, in fact, the real guilty parties.

It was a chilling echo of Kristallnacht, 86 years ago almost to the day. The two events were of course very different, occurring in different eras; but the Nazis also denied that there had been any organised violence, describing it instead as a spontaneous and understandable response by ordinary Germans to the assassination in Paris of Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat, by a young Jewish man in Paris.

October 7 last year echoed this when the Hamas massacre was celebrated by some as a legitimate form of “resistance”. No matter that the victims were simply living their lives before being butchered, raped and kidnapped. They got what they deserved.