Amsterdam. "Literary" Boycotts. And Housekeeping.

The Dutch government in crisis. Israeli sport and culture under siege.

Nov 17, 2024

Part I. Amsterdam Pogrom and a P.S. on Paris

I’ll begin with developments in Amsterdam in the days since we dropped our intensive podcast on the pogrom that went down on November 7 and 8.

My Dutch-Canadian friend, Pieter Dorsman, was one of the three interviewees featured in that podcast. We have been corresponding over the last few days regarding developments in this very tense time.

The Mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, who is as progressive as one would expect, has firmly stood her ground in unreservedly condemning the violence. It is now well-understood that numerous chat groups and online platforms were used to plan and coordinate attacks on Israelis and Jews in advance and, of course, during, the pogrom.

About one week later, a junior Minister of Finance in the coalition government (comprised of centrist to hard-right parties), Nora Achahbar, resigned from her position. She is affiliated with the New Social Contract party, which is centrist with a slight tilt to the right. This new party is focused on improving how government functions and was borne out of frustration with what was widely perceived to have been the authoritarian tendencies of former Prime Minister Mark Rutte (who is now the Secretary General of NATO).

Achahbar, who immigrated to the Netherlands from Morocco as a young child, studied law and has served in numerous public service positions, including as a state prosecutor. She resigned, she said, due to racist comments uttered during a cabinet meeting following the pogrom. In particular, Achahbar pointed to members of Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom, which is regarded by some to be Islamophobic and extremist. Among the comments prompting her prompted resignation was that “Moroccans have anti-semitism in their genes.”

Since the pogrom, Wilders has openly called for mass deportations of any dual citizens implicated in the “Jew Hunt”, as the participants in the pogroms referred the night of violence in their online chatter. Wilders also suggested that most of the men involved in the violence were of Moroccan descent. Following Achahbar’s resignation, a charged cabinet meeting was held on Friday night and concern was high that the government would fall.

For now, that crisis has been averted. One reason is that should an election be called today, it is likely that Wilders’ party would win in a landslide.

Violence and antisemitism among Dutch Muslims is neither new nor surprising. But since the “Jew Hunt”, tension has spiked.

An Amsterdam-based twitter account which focuses on matters pertaining to the Jewish community posted on “X” November 16 that there are reports of elderly Jews living in old age homes who are afraid to order an Uber to get around. The reason for the fear is obvious. They are vulnerable and most taxi and Uber drivers in Amsterdam are from the Muslim community. The Dutch newspaper Het Parool is cited as a source in this post.

Another Dutch paper, De Volkskrant—a left-leaning, highbrow publication—on Saturday published an article alleging that Israel was “interfering politically” by sending to the Dutch Parliament a report setting out terror connections that some of the pogrom participants had across the middle east. That article (to read in English translation—just click on the top right on the page) can be accessed here.

In saner times, this sort of intelligence sharing would be treated as just that—the sharing of important information between friendly nations. Israel is not telling the Dutch Parliament what to do with the data and analysis, but is making it available. There is a big difference between the two acts. Everything Israel does—in the eyes of many—is sinister. Sharing information regarding possible terrorist ties of violent, anti-semitic pogrom participants is... interfering politically?

Among the pithier comments in the De Vokskrant article, translated, of course:

“Several sources in and around ministries that deal with security believe that there is unwanted Israeli interference in Dutch politics. Concerns about this exist up to the highest official level, say two sources. Due to the sensitivity of the subject and the pro-Israeli stance of the cabinet, they wish to remain anonymous. A spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior did not want to respond to questions about Israeli interference. The National Coordinator for Terrorism and Security (NCTV) says through a spokesperson that it is still studying the Israeli report. 'We cannot say anything about the content yet.'“

It is difficult to conceive of a situation in which citizens of any other country providing such information following an organized, violent attack like the Amsterdam Pogrom, would be accused of “interfering.” I would have thought that this is exactly the role of a well-governed nation: to protect and advocate on behalf of its citizens.

But Israel? Israel is “interfering.”

Meanwhile, Amsterdam teeters on a knife edge. And the Jews. They wait.

P.S. Paris

As we know, the Israel-France soccer match in Paris on Thursday night was a spectacle of the wrong sort, requiring more than 4,000 police officers and an additional 1,600 private security personnel to ensure safety. And even still, brawls broke out in the stands. But they were quelled quickly. And this, in spite of the presence of President Macron and a small but high-profile entourage, showing support for the participation of Israel in the match.

Calls for a sport boycott of Israel were and are pervasive.

Calls for boycotts of Israel are also gaining momentum in the cultural and literary worlds.

I have mentioned Joseph Roth in my musings here every few months in the last year. So, I won’t do so again. Other than to remind readers that he was an accomplished journalist and writer in prewar Berlin. As soon as the Nazis took power in late January 1933, Roth pledged to flee the country. He did so shortly after, settling in Paris and drinking himself to death by the end of the decade. Despair destroyed him.

At the moment, I am working my way through a remarkable memoir— Warsaw Testament—by Rokhl Auerbach. A young, ambitious writer and freelance journalist in Poland, Auerbach was embraced by Emanuel Ringelblum, who has been immortalized for his efforts to chronicle and preserve written testimonies of the inferno visited upon the Jews of Poland and, in particular, the Warsaw Ghetto.

Auerbach organized and worked in numerous soup kitchens that catered to the once vibrant literary community in Warsaw and which was ravaged by disease, hunger, disbelief and indescribable horrors. Her work extended to do whatever was possible for the most vulnerable existing in this Hell, including orphaned and abandoned children and artists of all types – who tended to have little in the way of savings or valuables to buy another few days of sustenance on the black market. She so poetically unfurls the indescribable agony. She sees and dignifies the souls of these wretched beings who are reduced to existing, if you can call it that, in constant terror, in filthy rags, with no physical sustenance. Auerbach describes how books and song became the only salvation for this ghetto of unceasing agony, in which all knew they were doomed but clung to the next moment. She also brings to life how many people (more than I had understood)—among those who had been assimilated and spoke Polish well—managed to find refuge and survive on the “Aryan side.”

Rokhl, of course, was among the survivors and she was instrumental in ensuring that as many of the hidden containers as possible—that had been so devotedly curated and buried by Ringelblum and his accomplices—were located and preserved. We know that many hidden stashes were destroyed or never uncovered. But what was retrieved has become a critically important and immediate testimonial of what occurred in those horrible years.

Having read thousands of testimonies over decades and currently finding myself mesmerized by this memoir, I feel I can make this comment: that what so many feared most was being forgotten. Not mattering.

Just disappearing. More than they feared death. They wanted their lives to have meant something.

The “Literary Boycott” and the War of Letters

Fast forward to the present, in which literary and other “luminaries” are hard at work to “disappear” all Israeli culture and anyone Jewish or otherwise who dares to find value in Israeli cultural expression.

In Holocaust-era Europe there were so very many threats and evils we Jews represented: debauchery, disease spreaders, subversives, too religious, too cosmopolitan, and on and on. Over time, Jews were dehumanized; considered to be subhuman. They were responsible for the most unspeakable crimes against the human race and civilization. Jews were subversive, evil, dirty, corrupt, and debauched. Many believed—what we got we deserved.

Today. It is not just Islamists and leftist extremists who judge Israel and all Jews through such a distorted lens, but now, it seems, our literary elites are joining in the calls for the world to shun us. They say that they are opposing the “genocide” in Gaza. While I deplore all the suffering among Palestinians and Israelis—and more recently, Lebanese—I am not naïve about the cause. It is not Israel. It is Islamist hatred. And the anger should be directed at Hamas, Hezballah, and Iran. Not Israel.

What is occurring in Gaza is not a genocide.

(That issue has been addressed in previous podcasts and written pieces and we will return to it again in the future. For now, you might have a listen here and here. These are two episodes of a conversation I had in the early summer with British barrister Natasha Hausdorff, in which we delve into the issue of genocide and other legal matters with which the UN and many countries constantly pelt Israel. Hausdorff is distinguishing herself as one of the most brilliant, articulate and persuasive advocates for Israel in its ideological war with much of the world. Definitely worth a listen.)

Israel is not engaged in ethnic cleansing. Nor is it the most egregious and extreme violator of international human rights legal norms.

Nevertheless, the great writers of the world—exemplars of historical, legal and political ignorance—have united to declare that all writing, literary works, publishers, agents, every and anything that appears to promote the literary culture of Israel must be boycotted.

You can read their screed, issued by the Palestine Festival of Literature (PFL) on October 28, here.

In response, on the following day, more than 1,000 cultural figures published a rebuttal, expressing strong opposition to this proposed cultural boycott. You can read about this development here.

This, of course, prompted the PFL to issue an update on the same day - announcing that their list of signatories had ballooned to more than 5,000 writers overnight.

On October 31, the New York Times published a guest essay by Jerusalem-based literary agents Deborah Harris and Jessica Kasmer-Jacobs, which forcefully addressed the assertions made in the PFL statement by its signatories. At the end of all the back and forth, what we have, for now, is a standoff. Of sorts.

The shunning of Israeli cultural figures and academics as pariahs is being normalized. The absurdity of such zero-sum positions—like that of the PFL boycotters—is that they silence everyone. They determine that even dissenting voices in the Israeli literary scene must not be tolerated until the genocidal state is either rehabilitated or no longer exists. When you peruse the. names on the list, there is little doubt that they would much prefer the latter outcome.

This is fascism. Cultural fascism. It has permeated university campuses and school boards in much of the west, and now it has become au fait among the artistic class. As with the voices that were stifled in the Warsaw Ghetto, they would do the same to anyone associated with Israel.

They want to disappear us all.

Part III. A Short Housekeeping Note

(with a focus on the much-hated auto-renew feature)

State of Tel Aviv is significantly broadening its base of listeners and readers. That’s the good news. We—me and my small team—engage in this work in order to publish responsible, thoughtful analysis supported by fact, as in, neither partisan nor hysterical. Grounded in solid facts, reporting, and analysis.

Now for the less good news.

Over the last few months, we have noticed an anomaly that we had not encountered previously. There seem to be more than a few of our paid subscribers who object vigorously to the auto-renewal feature of Substack (the platform supporting the State of Tel Aviv site).

This means that when your annual subscription is coming due for renewal, it will be processed automatically. This is a pretty standard feature of all news and online subscription sites. The assumption, presumably, is that if you have not cancelled your subscription, you are pleased with the product and wish to continue receiving it and paying for the content.

But recently there has been a noticeable uptick in the number of subscribers who have indicated that “auto-renew” is why they are not renewing.

It’s a Substack thing. Not a State of Tel Aviv thing. It is built into the Substack platform. If you prefer to disable it on your personal account, you can do so.

I didn’t pay much attention to this until a really good, long-time high school friend cancelled his subscription a month or two ago—and his reason for doing so was “auto-renew”.

He elaborated in a long note, explaining how much he hated that feature. And I’m glad he did that because for me, it was a lightbulb moment.

I paid attention. I wrote to him—a gentle note—and he responded quickly, saying that he had no idea that I would see the note he wrote to the Substack system expressing his strong dislike at having been billed for another year without explicitly consenting to the renewal. It’s the whole “negative option” thing he hates. So do I. And, apparently, so do more than a few State of Tel Aviv subscribers.

(However, it is important to note that everyone receives an email one week before the auto-renewal date to alert them to this imminent event. What I have found is that most people seem to overlook that important bit. They don’t open it. The blowback comes when they review their monthly credit card statement.)

My friend thought that he was venting to a customer service person. But that person was and is me. I am involved in the smallest detail of this site. I generate content. Recruit content producers. Manage the staff supporting this cottage enterprise. I edit. Everything. And I do the final sign-off. Not infrequently in the middle of the night. I am committed to this venture. It is not making me rich. Trust me. It is a passion project.

So. As I did with my old pal, I would ask those of you who have cancelled your paid subs recently because of auto-renewal to please reconsider. I can see that virtually all of you are still reading and listening to almost every post. Yes – I have granular data. That suggests that your cancellation may have more to do with registering anger over auto-renew than any dissatisfaction with the content of State of Tel Aviv.

Please consider how hard we work to get this content out there. And if you take the time to read and listen, then you must find it of value. And at the same time, I would ask our non-paying subscribers—a rapidly growing complement—to also consider supporting our work—which I think is important—with a paid subscription.

And thanks to my dear friend for working through his issues with auto-renewal and re-subscribing. Every person who supports our work means more than you can imagine.