Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Nach Deutschland kontrollieren auch Frankreich und die Niederlande ihre Grenzen wieder. Das ist nicht im Sinne Europas.

[Ajax] fans—blond-haired men with beer guts, boys with blue eyes—sing “Hava Nagila” as they cram into the trams taking them to the stadium on the fringes of Amsterdam. Ajax fans tattoo the Star of David onto their forearms. In the moments before the opening kick of a match, they proudly shout at the top of their lungs, “Jews, Jews, Jews,” because—though most of them are not Jewish—philo-Semitism is part of their identity.

Last night, the club that describes itself as Jewish played against a club of actual Jews, Maccabi Tel Aviv. As Israeli fans left the stadium, after their club suffered a thumping defeat, they were ambushed by well-organized groups of thugs, in what the mayor of Amsterdam described as “anti-Semitic hit-and-run squads.” What followed was a textbook example of a pogrom...

...a swath of the press—and an even larger swath of social media—has minimized the assault, sometimes unintentionally. Some headlines described the anti-Semitic nature of the assaults in quotation marks, despite all the conclusive evidence about the motive of the mob. Because some of the Israeli fans ripped Palestinian flags off buildings and chanted bigoted slogans, it was implied, the mob was justified in stabbing and beating Jews. Such widespread ambivalence over the attack reflects a culture that shrugs in the face of anti-Jewish violence, which treats it as an unavoidable facet of life after October 7.

But the most bitter fact of all is that these assaults transpired the same evening that the Dutch commemorated the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht. In the presence of actual Jews, the Dutch failed them again.

“Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.”

A pogrom in the streets of #Amsterdam.

We have become the Gaza of Europe.

Muslims with Palestinian flags hunting down Jews.

I will NOT accept that. NEVER.

The authorities will be held accountable for their failure to protect the Israeli citizens.

Never again.
6:03 AM · Nov 8, 2024

The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s northern Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table.

Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town website suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried – for use in making flavoured butter, for instance.

Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply from Belgium’s federal agency for food chain security, AFSCA, was a resounding “No”.

“Christmas trees are not destined to enter the food chain,” it said in a statement.

As part of the regime’s efforts to quash capitalist culture among citizens, it has forbidden the sale of budae-jjigae – a dish imported from pro-Western neighbor South Korea.

It [budae-jjigae] was born from meats discarded by US soldiers based in the region during the Korean War of the 1950s, with hungry locals using the items to create stews.

This leaves the impression that in Scandinavia it is normal to eat Christmas trees, while in Benelux there is still some work to be done to sway the public towards more ecological behaviour.

...there's a small chance you might still have some of those rails in operation in Estonia...