DUTCH INSANITY

Last week, protesting soccer hooligans in Rotterdam screamed obscenities and insults at burgomaster Ahmed Aboutaleb.
Among other things, they called the honourable Ahmed Aboutaleb a "Filthy Jew" ('vuile Jood'), and chanted 'Hamas, Hamas, all Joden aan het gas' (Hamas, Hamas, all the Jews to the gas). They also offered to gas the aforementioned "Filthy Jew".


This pursuant a decision by the burgomasters of Rotterdam (Ahmed Aboutaleb) and Amsterdam (Job Cohen) to limit fan-attendance at matches between Feyenoord (the Rotterdam soccer team) and Ajax (the Amsterdam soccer team) for the next five years, due to violence and misbehaviour at such matches - the rivalry between Feyenoord and Ajax is representative of the cultural superiority of Amsterdam ('good') versus the depravity and criminal tendencies of Rotterdammers ('evil'), and soccer matches are, more than just symbolically, wars. It is a complex situation with many layers.


Two articles in Dutch from the Algemeen Dagblad:

http://www.ad.nl/rotterdam/stad/3020182/Grimmig_protest_Feyenoordfans.html
Quote: Circa tweehonderd demonstranten trokken het drukke centrum van de stad in en liepen dreigend tussen winkelend publiek door. Ze scandeerden leuzen en er zouden vernielingen zijn aangericht.
[Around two hundred demonstrators marched through the busy centre of the city and mingled threateningly with the shopping public. They chanted slogans, and there was vandalism.]

http://www.ad.nl/rotterdam/stad/3028447/Hooligans_vrijuit_na_uitschelden_Aboutaleb.html
Quote: De Feyenoord-hooligans die de Rotterdamse burgemeester Ahmed Aboutaleb dit weekend in de binnenstad uitmaakten voor ‘vuile Jood’ en scandeerden dat hij ‘aan het gas moet’, gaan vrijuit.
[The Feyenoord hooligans who called Rotterdam burgomaster Ahmed Aboutaleb a "Filty Jew" this past weekend and chanted that he should be gassed will not be prosecuted.]

I should probably mention that the nickname of Ajax is "de Jooduh'' ('da Jooz'). That has some bearing on this.
Mr. Ahmed Aboutaleb (the aforementioned "Filthy Jew"), is the son of a Moroccan Imam. Which seems beside the point, but is nevertheless a relevant detail.
The gentlemen who so helpfully offered to chuck him into a gas chamber are mostly Moroccan Dutch - many of the Moroccans in Rotterdam are fanatical supporters of their soccer club.

The Moroccan-Dutch supporters of Feyenoord are furious over the tendency of Ajax supporters in Amsterdam to beat the living daylights out of them whenever they scream anti-Jewish obscenities or burn an Israeli flag in a public place while visiting. The Israeli flag is the guerilla banner of the Ajax fans, waved from the stands whenever Ajax is playing, especially at Ajax-Feyenoord games. The primary purpose of waving the Israeli flag is to irritate the spit out of the Feyenoord supporters on the other side. Who hop up and down red-faced and gibbering whenever this is done.

Many of the Ajax supporters are also Moroccan-Dutch. Who thoroughly enjoy the apoplexy they have thus given their cousins from a city the name of which no true Amsterdammer will even admit knowing ("Rotterdam" - it's probably some German word that means garbage or prostitute or something like that, totally unimportant").


Amsterdam is probably the only town in the universe where an anti-Semite burning an Israeli flag may have the crap kicked out of him by angry Arab teenagers.

RIOTING IN HOLLAND

Much commentary in Dutch about the Gaza situation reflects two venomous hatreds. The smaller one is anti-Semitism, the more prevalent and dominant one is Xenophobia (particularly aimed at Muslim immigrants). In actuality, these are merely 'two hands on the same stomach'.
Many Dutch cleverly combine both hatreds.
And the Dutch, as we now know, are not inclined to be humble about strongly held opinions.
The worst rhetorical tendencies in Dutch are now obscenely on display, the Dutch are exhibiting their usually soft-voiced talent for vile dialectic at full volume, cacophonous and nauseating.

I am fairly disgusted with my fellow-Dutchspeakers at present.



AHMED ABOUTALEB

A noteworthy exception is Rotterdam burgomaster Ahmed Aboutaleb, who firmly let it be known that phrases like "hamas hamas all joden aan het gas" ('Hamas Hamas all Jews to the gas'), "falastin baladna wa'l Yahud kilabna" ('Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs'), "itbach al Yahud" ('massacre the Jews'), and "al mawt al Yahud" ('death to the Jews'), are utterly unacceptable, and will lead to arrests and prosecution.

[The Netherlands has laws about hate-speech and incitement that in some respects are more authoritarian than laws in the United States.]


"Aboutaleb, maak het waar!"

[Kaptein Jean-Luc Picard]

Of course he will hampered by the wussie ineffectiveness of the Dutch police, and red-tapish attitudes of the Dutch judiciary.
But at this point, not only are the Feijenoord fans rabidly disgusted with him, but also members of his own ethnic group and religious community. Nor did this win him any friends among ordinary Dutchmen, many of whom either despise the Jews or loathe the Arabs.


DUTCH MUSLIMS

There are nearly a million Muslims in the Netherlands. Most of them live in the Randstad (the conglomeratus of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht). Most of them are urban. Many of them were born there, and many of them speak Dutch as their first language.
Dutch is the only language in which they read and write.

What you see in the videos of the demonstrations in the Netherlands are a few thousand people, fully half of whom are 'autochtoon' (native Dutch). The Rotterdam riot videos show a slightly greater number of people than Amsterdam or Utrecht, with a slightly greater proportion of allochthonous background.
That accounts for maybe about ten or twenty thousand angry Muslims, all told. Probably less, as the same people have taken part in several demonstrations.

What you do NOT see are the majority of Islamic-Dutch, but the rowdy problem cases. What you see are not the quiet shopkeepers, businessmen, or labourers, but the failures to assimilate. These are the people who are marooned between two societies, who do not even fit into their own ethnicity, and have no hope of ever blending into the mainstream.

As with all ethnicities, the problem cases tend to confirm to stereotypes.

The majority of every ethnic group are usually invisible. By assimilating, they fade into the background. It is only when members of a group misbehave that their ethnicity or affiliation becomes an issue.

The anti-Israel riots in places like London, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Antwerp - all seem to have rigidified ethnic/cultural hatreds. Precisely the same animosity as marked European society when the only groups to hate were Jews, Gypsies, and Lombards.

Europe has not changed much. But it has learned to share its hatred.

AHMED ABOUTALEB NEEDS A HOUSE

The honourable mr. Aboutaleb needs to find a roof over his head in Rotterdam.
Apparently burgomaster Ahmed Aboutaleb of Rotterdam is legally required to live in the city of which he is the mayor. The law allows him a year's grace in which to find a suitable dwelling for himself and family - he has twelve months in which to achieve the impossible.
[Note: Burgomasters in the Netherlands are appointed by the government, not elected. This detail is only slightly germane to the rest of this post. I made mention of mr. Aboutaleb's appointment here:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2008/10/dutch-and-their-missing-marbles-ahmed.html
Mr. Aboutaleb becomes Rotterdam's mayor on the fifth of January.]



This blog wishes him the best of luck finding housing in that town. Rotterdam is, to this blogger, the very arm-pit of Europe, and should count itself exceptionally favoured by his appointment. He is an intelligent, ethical, and very capable man, and one sympathizes with his quandary.
I myself would not wish to live in that place, and long ago resolved to avoid it like the plague.
[See this post:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2006/01/xenophobic-cheese-rotterdam.html
In this short piece I dump as much bile over Rotterdam as her natives do over everyone and everything else. They deserve it.]



Predictably, several persons writing in Dutch (and by so doing bringing disgrace to the noble language of Vondel and Brederode) have suggested precisely what Ahmed Aboutaleb should do, and where he should go. They were inspired to do so because mr. Aboutaleb is a Dutchman of Moroccan extraction - and the Netherlands is not nearly as tolerant as it would pretend to be.
[For an illustration of "not nearly as tolerant as it pretends" see this post:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2007/05/dutch-bigotry-moslim-gezin-wil-snel-weg.html
One example is given, several more are available. The list, alas, grows larger with each passing day. ]



I will not reproduce their appalling texts, but will merely state that if, one hundred years from now, people still read Dutch, they will not be rereading those angry comments, but will more likely be reading the prose of Abdulkader Benali, another talented Dutchman of Moroccan extraction - and one of the best Dutch writers of this generation.
Our literature would be poorer without him, just as Dutch society would be impoverished without the many talented Moroccans who call the Netherlands their home.

Her immigrants do her credit, her natives..... sometimes not.

THE DUTCH AND THEIR MISSING MARBLES: AHMED ABOUTALEB APPOINTED TO TOP JOB

It has been decided that the next burgomaster (mayor) of Rotterdam shall be Ahmed Aboutaleb, who is of Arab origin.
Mr. Aboutaleb is the son of an imam, and was born in Morocco. He has been a resident of the Netherlands for twenty-two years. He has dual-citizenship. And he is a practicing Muslim.


There are TWO problems with this appointment!!!


The first is that he is an Amsterdammer - not a positive thing in the heartland of FC Feyenoord. The Rotterdam soccer team has always been a rival of Ajax (the Amsterdam team), and the supporters of both teams are not at all averse to whacking each other. Several times over the last few years confrontation has become brawl, brawl has turned to murder. There are violent tendencies at play in Dutch soccer fandom.

The second problem is that his appointment is causing all the retrogrades to come foaming out of the woodwork. If you thought racism was a factor in American politics recently, you have not looked at the Netherlands, where being a Moroccan is nearly as bad as being a Jew in Czarist Russia. Consequently, the appointment of a Jew Moroccan as mayor of Rotterdam has got the bigots all a-flutter. Loudly so.


One would not have thought that the denizens of the world's first modern democracy, where the laissez faire approach to societal administration was born, would prove themselves so...... barbaric.

But no.

The internet commentary shows many of them to be utter scumbags. Anybody wading through the river of Dutch bile that has been dumped in recent days on the internet will have recoiled in disgust at the sentiments that, like fermenting cadavers, have risen to the surface of an already rank and putrid sewer. Even the Flemish nationalists are adding their sickening slime to the flow - Flemish Nationalist blowhard and politician Flip de Winter (Vlaams Belang) wrote that "de aanstelling van een Rotterdamse Marokkaanse burgemeester overal in Europa de arrogantie van de Marokkaanse allochtonen alleen maar zal doen toenemen" ('the appointment of a Rotterdam Moroccan mayor will only cause an increase in the arrogance of Moroccan allochthones everywhere in Europe').

Shut up, Flip, you're an idiot.


I would like to point out, at this juncture, that mr. Aboutaleb is Dutch.
He became an adult in the Netherlands, he was educated there, and his entire political career has been there. He lives there. His future is there.
At this point he is as Moroccan as I am.

Furthermore, even his political opponents have admitted that he is a very capable and intelligent man. By all accounts he is eminently suited to the job.

If his ancestry or his religion are enough to disqualify him in the eyes of many Dutchspeakers, then Dutch society is more poisonous than I had heretofore imagined.


When I was living over there, I had to put up with any number of horrendous comments about Jews and Americans - I am an American, and thus by the peculiar logic of the blinkered cretins in the Netherlandish bog, I am probably also a Jew - and I am relatively sure that most Jews in the Netherlands have likewise been held accountable for American sins. Especially in recent years.

Muslims in the Netherlands are probably not unaware of the festering hatreds beneath the bland and 'polite' surface of Dutch society either.


But to hold a person's ancestry and religion against him?
In the United States we may be considerably more advanced than the Dutch.


That he is an Amsterdammer should be the ONLY objection to the man.
And it is a very valid objection, because as everyone knows, the Amsterdammers are all Jews - that's why the Feyenoord supporters customarily offer to gas the Ajax fans at sporting events (traditional chant: "Hamas, Hamas, alle Joden aan het gas").
It is therefore not likely that mr. Aboutaleb can give Feyenoord his wholehearted support, certainly not without a feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach.

He has my sympathy.

============================================
Attentive readers may remember that I mentioned mr. Ahmed Aboutaleb nearly two years ago in this post:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2006/01/ahmed-aboutaleb.html
I recommend that you re-read that piece - it will give you a better idea of the man.
============================================

AHMED ABOUTALEB

Two recent postings of mine indicate jaundice in my view of Europe.

But, as usual, there are also positive things; things that must in fairness be noted.


One of them is Mr. Ahmed Aboutaleb, labour party (PvdA) member of the city council in Amsterdam.
[And yes, as can be guessed from the name, he is of Moroccan extraction. Let me also mention that he has received death threats because of his politics, and has been under police protection for a few years. It isn't easy being a Dutchman. ]

Website: http://www.amsterdam.nl/gemeente/college/ahmed_aboutaleb



Wethouder Ahmed Aboutaleb warns of growing anti-Semitism, as mentioned in an article in today's Volkskrant online: http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/1138255731885.html


Some lovely quotes:
"In het publieke domein heb je respect voor elkaar. Je dient met je poten van elkaar af te blijven. Punt uit."
[In the public domain, you respect one and other. You keep your paws off each other. End of discussion]

"Het kan niet zo zijn dat je zegt: ‘‘ik ben moslim en dit moet je wel doen en dat niet’’. De straat is van iedereen."
[It cannot be that you say 'I am Muslim and you have to do this and not that'. The street belongs to everybody.]

"In Nederland is er geen religie die dominant is, dat zullen we ook nooit aanvaarden."
[In the Netherlands there is no religion that is dominant, nor would we ever accept it.]

"Hoe kun je respect voorop stellen, als je weinig bereid bent anderen te respecteren?"
[How can you demand respect, if you aren't prepared to respect others?]


Recently, in a discussion with youths of Moroccan ethnicity, he asked "Je wilt niet dat je vader wordt bespuugd als hij in djellaba naar de moskee loopt, maar je mag dus wel een keppeltje van het hoofd van een joodse meneer trekken?"
[You don't want your father to be spat on when he goes to the mosque wearing a djellaba, but somehow it's okay to yank the kippah off the head of a Jewish gentleman?]
Apparently there was no answer to this.


He thinks that anti-Semitism is extraordinarily dangerous, and said:
"Die ideeën heersen onder de bevolking en zijn veel gevaarlijker dan we denken. Het wordt nu weggepoetst onder het mom dat antisemitisme alleen leeft onder de allochtone onderontwikkelden. Maar let op: het gevoel heerst ook onder hoog opgeleide autochtone Nederlanders. Laat je niet in slaap sussen."
[Those ideas are out there and they are far more dangerous than we think. Now we pooh-pooh them by pretending that anti-Semitism only has currency among the uneducated immigrants; but beware - those beliefs are also current among well-educated Netherlanders. Don't let yourself be fooled.]

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Please note that these quotes do not give a full sense of the pungency and point that they have in Dutch. Certain idiomatic ways of speaking cannot be translated, and much eloquence is consequently lost in translation. You may have noticed the same problem in some of my previous posts.

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There aren't many living Dutchmen I admire, but I just added one more to the list.