What Really Happened in Amsterdam?
A personal reflection on the recent violence in his home city from Amsterdammer Chris Keulemans
Cities have muscle memory. Amsterdam does. On most days, for most people, life is fairly comfortable here, blanketed by consumerist ease. Tensions can flare up, of course, because not everyone can afford to enjoy life, and because the explosive world out there resonates in our streets and living rooms. Whenever that happens, the muscle memory of this city knows how to respond to a crisis that looks like the ones before. But this was new.
The last armed forces to march these streets were the Nazi occupiers. How ironic, that now, the mass of aggressive young men sweeping through the old city centre, picking up objects that could be used to bludgeon anyone who stood in their way, came from Israel.
They were in town to support Maccabi Tel Aviv football club for their game against Ajax. Muscle memory told the city authorities that their first duty was to protect them. The police, out in numbers, marched alongside them and tried to guide them back to their hotels. They were Jews, after all, and we have been educated for 80 years not to let them down again. We had betrayed them once, when they made up a large part of the city’s population and helped it prosper. We could not morally afford to do so again.
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