Deport ‘Pogrom’ Perpetrators, Says Dutch Kingmaker Geert Wilders

The power behind the Dutch government and the leader of the country’s largest party Geert Wilders has demanded deportations for the perpetrators of attacks against Israeli football fans in Amsterdam on Thursday night.

Geert Wilders, who met the Israeli foreign secretary and speaker of the Knesset at Amsterdam Schipol airport on Friday afternoon after a delegation arrived in the Netherlands to help repatriate their citizens who had been attacked in a “pogrom” has called for deportations of the perpetrators. While the Amsterdam police and political leadership of the mayor have refused to comment on the background of the attackers who roamed the city on motorbike looking for Israelis to attack, jounalists have spoken of “Dutch-Moroccan” perpetrators and Mr Wilders himself has decried the acts of what he called “criminal Muslims”.

Police lost control in the city on Thursday night as, despite being deployed in large numbers, they were outmatched by fast-moving gangs travelling by motorbike. The violence was described in a press conference on Friday as: ““Boys on scooters were driving through the town looking for supporters, it was hit and run, football fans were attacked and then the rioters took off again, running away from the police forces… the hit and run scooter attacks that were driving through the city, which were already gone as soon as they committed their crimes”.

Speaking of the previous ten years of the centrist, open-borders government of Mark Rutte — now the secretary general of NATO — Geert Wilders reflected that: “We were not allowed to talk about Islam as a source of anti-Semitism and they did not dare to kick criminals out of the country”. That era is now over, however, and the populist anti-Islamification campaigner stated Friday: “Condemning the Amsterdam Jew hunt is not enough. The perpetrators must be expelled from the country. I have been warning for over twenty years about the growing hatred of Jews in the Netherlands due to the ongoing mass immigration and Islamization of our country… Perpetrators out of the country”.

Geert Wilders is a veteran of Dutch politics who has been living under 24-7 police protection for 20 years due to threats against his life, including a fatwa, by Islamic extremists. His party became the largest in the Netherlands in the late-2023 national elections, but as is common in European politics fell short of a majority, meaning a government was only possible through a coalition.

To make that coalition happen Mr Wilders recused himself from the Prime Minister’s position, opting instead to work as the power behind the throne of a technocratic government chosen by the right-wing parties contributing to the coalition. The situation leaves Mr Wilders in a somewhat unconventional position of being the most powerful individual in Dutch politics, able to collapse the government at will, but still technically on the outside of it.

That position was reflected in some of his comments on Friday, where he publicly demanded an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss what has been called by himself and others — including some on the left — the “pogrom” against Israeli tourists to the Netherlands. He said: “A pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam. We have become the Gaza of Europe…. Why don’t you send this scum out of the country? Where are the proposals to denaturalize criminal Muslims?”.

Some have taken exception to these remarks, of course. Het Parool journalist Paul Vugts took exception to Wilders going public to decry Islamic violence, asking rhetorically: “Does Wilders know who the perpetrators are?… Maybe they are born and bred Dutch”.

The Netherlands is also one of only a few countries in Europe which has a Muslim political party, ‘Denk’. Turkish heritage Denk leader Stephan van Baarle was extremly critical of the response to the attacks, stating his view that Israeli football fans had invited the violence. Dutch broadcaster NOS cites his remarks at: “hypocritical politicians were silent when Maccabi thugs chanted racist and genocidal slogans about Gaza, destroyed Palestinian flags and attacked a taxi driver”.