Amsterdam is a Riot: Violence Rocks Immigrant Neighborhoods
PJM Groningen: Unrest in the Moroccan neighborhoods of Amsterdam have many fearing that the chronic violence that rocked the Paris suburbs will spread to the Netherlands. If the Dutch police don't get much tougher much faster, warns Michael Van Der Galien, that is exactly what is going to happen.
On October 14, a female police officer was working in the police station in the Amsterdam neighborhood of Slotervaart.
Her job that day: she had to help civilians at the counter. She had helped several people that day when a 22-year old Moroccan Dutch, Bilal B., entered the office. He walked towards her, jumped over the counter, pulled a knife and stabbed her in her neck. When she fled, he stabbed her twice more in her back. A male colleague tried to help her, but to no avail: he too was stabbed by Bilal, in the neck and chest. The heavily wounded female police officer felt that there was only one way to stop Bilal B. from killing both her and her colleague, pulled out her gun, and shot the attacker. Bilal B. died.
Shortly after the attack and death of Bilal, reports came out that he was a troubled young man: he suffered from schizophrenia, he was institutionalized in the past and even committed voluntarily the week before the attack, saying that he was suicidal. After one day, however, he escaped from the mental hospital, a run which ended in his premature death. But there was more. Bilal also had contact with members of the terrorist group the Hofstadgroup. Dutch intelligence officers had kept an eye on Bilal and had even considered ’stalking’ him. This means that they would monitor his behavior, but not just yet, they would let him know that they were watching him. It had been decided, however, that although he had contact with Hofstadgroup members, it was not necessary to devote much time and attention to him.
Following the attack, the two severely wounded police officers were brought to the hospital where they underwent surgery. Shortly after, word came out that their lives were no longer in danger. Instead of mourning the loss of Bilal B. – by all accounts a tragic figure – and celebrating the survival of the two police officers, Moroccan youth took the streets, burned down cars and attacked the police station in their neighborhood, destroying windows and, generally terrorizing Slotervaart. It even got so bad that the president of the neighborhood Slotervaart, Marcouch (who is of Moroccan descent himself), called on the police to adopt a zero tolerance policy.
Strangely, however, the police in Amsterdam refused, for a long time, to do so. They favored a ’soft policy’ which meant that they hoped that Slotervaart’s ‘buurtvaders’ (the neighborhood fathers who serve as an ‘example’ to the children of immigrants because they’re integrated well and generally behaving in accordance to the laws of this country) would talk to the Moroccan-Dutch youth who were terrorizing the city. The police thought that the buurtvaders would be able to calm things down.
Ironically, the buurtvaders agreed with Marcouch and wanted the police to arrest the trouble makers and to use force if necessary. The buurtvaders understood that there is only one thing these thugs listen to: power. The police, sadly, did not. The result is that Moroccan-Dutch thugs terrorized Slotervaart three nights in a row, burning down cars in front of police officers and destroying whatever comes in their way.
This continued until Wednesday night, October 17 when finally, the Dutch police decided to act and arrested eight individuals. However, although they were arrested, the youths were released shortly afterwards which enables them to cause trouble time and again. According to the head of the police in Amsterdam, there are some 35 Moroccan-Dutch delinquents between the ages 12 and 15 at the core of the violence and he has now warned the rest of the country that what happened in Paris last year, may happen here now as well. Obviously, the intention of the police is to prevent that from happening, but in order to do so, the youths causing the trouble, breaking the laws and burning down the cars, have to be arrested and taken off the streets, and not treated with kid gloves.
What we have learned from the riots in France is that the police has to act immediately. If they allow the rioters to go on for a couple of days, until things are so bad that even the most conciliatory elements in the government considers it necessary to act, they’ve already waited too long.
Whatever the police does at that point will only serve as fuel on the fire. Right now, there is still time to act, but the police should do what the buurtvaders are urging they should do: get tough, starting now. Pulling them off the streets the one night, only to put them back on the following morning is neither tough nor effective.
We Dutch have displayed enough patience with our badly integrated Moroccan-Dutch minority. We have displayed enough tolerance, we have given them everything they wanted except for a second Morocco. Zero tolerance should be our policy from now onwards; not just in Amsterdam, but in the entire country.
Michael van der Galiën, based in the Netherlands, is founder and editor of The Van Der Galiën Gazette and Chief Political Reviewer at the Monsters and Critics books section
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27 Comments
1. Fred Beloit:This is a shame and one fears this kind of thing will happen in more and more places to which Islamists have migrated. The countries of the West had better decide what to do about it and prepare so they are not surprised by these attacks on civilization.
Oct 21, 2007 - 7:44 am 2. David Thomson:I suspect that things are only going to get worse in Holland. It is probably best to leave the country as quickly as possible. Don’t forget to turn off the lights when you leave. The Dutch are mostly cowards. We should never forget the disgraceful behavior of their UN assigned soldiers during the trouble in the Balkins. Also, remember Anne Frank? They have done so much to spread their intellectual and moral corruption to the rest of the world. Well, the crap has finally hit the proverbial fan. The Dutch, alas, have no one but themselves to blame for their predicament.
Oct 21, 2007 - 8:19 am 3. Shadow Merchant:Shoot them dead in the streets like rabid dogs. Every night for months, if necessary. Put their heads on pikes in front of the mosque, and shoot dead anyone who tries to take them down. Non-citizens arrested for terrorist violence should be parachuted out of airplanes over their countries of origin the very next morning.
Oct 21, 2007 - 8:56 am 4. Cato:Shadow Merchant: Your sarcasm is typical of leftist rhetoric. Don’t trouble to discuss reasonable alternatives, instead, paint an extreme caricature of your opponents. Is there truly no middle ground between absolute, hands-off “tolerance,” and goose-stepping fascism? Talk about an inability to understand nuance, of shades between black and white.
Oct 21, 2007 - 10:48 am 5. C. Siegel:G-d bless that policewoman. She did the right thing. I wish her a speedy recovery, and may we all have the guts and discernment to do the right thing.
Oct 21, 2007 - 10:56 am 6. Chip:The Dutch police are following EUrabian policy which precludes imposing indigenous European values on their new parallel Muslim enclaves. Bat Ye’or wrote an entire book on the subject.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s1250346.htm
Oct 21, 2007 - 11:05 am 7. Dusty:Apparently, being the President of a neighborhood means little when it comes to administration of the safety and security of a neighborhood.
Maybe your next report can include an explanation of who does control and direct police policies in Slotervaart and whether that person has expressed the desire for Zero Tolerance (assuming the head of the Police Department in that area reports to someone and is not a government of one). It certainly seems that that person hasn’t done so, but if this is incorrect, then you can report on who is going to apply Zero Tolerance of insubordination to the Police Department and when.
Oct 21, 2007 - 11:31 am 8. subrot0:I happen to agree with Shadow Merchant. However non citizens should not be thrown out of airplanes. That’s a bit extreme and wasteful. They should be tossed in the North Sea.
Seriously Cato, what is the middle ground when dealing with Muslims? Talking hasn’t helped, being reasonable has not helped; what is it that will make Muslims be tolerant and understanding? Apparently reasoned argumentation just doesn’t work. They seem neither to be interested in reason or interested in talking. What do you do with people bent on irrationality?
Oct 21, 2007 - 11:38 am 9. Lambert:First this message is for Michael Van Der Galien. Please allow me to say that you are an ignorant or at least you are trying to change the truth to suit your own terms .
The truth is that all those kids are Deutch and they should not be above the Deutch law.
Oct 21, 2007 - 12:44 pm 10. Michael van der Gali√ɬ´n:They’re Moroccan-Dutch. Why’s it so hard to admit that Lambert?
Oct 21, 2007 - 2:18 pm 11. Paul from Florida:On Saturday, February 25, 2006, I attended a demonstration for Free Speech and Denmark in Amsterdam at Damn Square. We had a permit, were peaceful. It was hard to even call it a demonstrations as it was sunny, cold and all we did was stand around.
However a larger party of anarchist, of which we had heard were coming, came, and more or less the Amsterdam police requested we leave. I was personally warned with arrest.
We, the legal and lawful were set up by the Amsterdam Police and the city elite in union with the far left and Islam.
Why? Because the elite are in their last throws of holding power in Amsterdam. So, they have sold out their citizens and their values to keep their positions, as beards, for a few more years until Muslims are comfortable running the city. Like the Jews, known as capo’s, who worked in the camps for the Nazis, these Dutch are in it for themselves and their pensions. This includes the Police.
What has gone around is now coming around.
Oct 21, 2007 - 2:25 pm 12. JonathanInTelAviv:Clearly the police reacted with disproportionate force to the Slotervaart militants who were resisting occupation. This only contributes to the cycle of violence.
The only solution that will guarantee the legitimate rights of the Slotervaart people is for the police to retreat immediately and completely from Occupied Slotervaart, to pre-October 15 borders. Following elections for the new Slotervaart Authority, negotiations will begin with the goal of a two-state solution, including the Right of Return for all relatives and friends of the Slotervaart freedom fighters, wherever they may be.
Oct 21, 2007 - 3:02 pm 13. Truth:Amsterdam is the safest place I have ever been, I just got back a few weeks ago.
Oct 21, 2007 - 3:59 pm 14. reliapundit:david thomson is right again.
the dutch intifada bodes badly for holland; they have no sarkozy.
DAVID THOMSON: posting comments isn’t good enough for an important voice like yours: i want you to post at my blog.
say yes. leave a comment in any thread at TAB.
Oct 21, 2007 - 4:12 pm 15. Mark in Texas:As the Dutch continue emigrating to be replaced by Muslim immigrants, I keep thinking of how much of both Holland and New Orleans are below sea level.
When the Muslims take control of the system that keeps the water out, I think that they are going to discover that “Innishallah” does not work any better as an engineering philosophy than “Laissez le bon temps roulez”.
Oct 21, 2007 - 4:54 pm 16. Ennis:The Netherlands will be the first to come under the sharia. All the people who I know who had lived there are emigrating, some to Australia, some to Canada and quite a few to the US.
These are all people that if you told them 10 years ago that they would be moving to the US they would have laughed. In fact I asked one of my friends (the most moonbat liberal of the bunch) why would he want to come live with all us “cowboys” here in the US and not go to a nanny state like Canada. Want to know what he said? Canada is about 10 years behind what the situation is in The Netherlands and the Islamists would pull the same shite there. But, he saidThe Netherlands will be the first to come under the sharia. All the people who I know who had lived there are emigrating, some to Australia, some to Canada and quite a few to the US.
These are all people that if you told them 10 years ago that they would be moving to the US they would have laughed. In fact I asked one of my friends (the most moonbat liberal of the bunch) why would he want to come live with all us “cowboys” here in the US and not go to a nanny state like Canada. Want to know what he said? Canada is about 10 years behind what the situation is in The Netherlands and the Islamists would pull the same shite there. But, he said< at least in America you have the right to defend yourself and Americans would not put up with the crap the Dutch or the rest of Europe put up with. I asked him where he was thinking about moving and he said to Texas! Why not some nice “blue state” like New York or city like San Francisco I asked. he said that the people who live in those places are as stupid as the people in Europe.
Oct 21, 2007 - 10:02 pm 17. Al:Chip wrote: “The Dutch police are following EUrabian policy which precludes imposing indigenous European values on their new parallel Muslim enclaves. Bat Ye’or wrote an entire book on the subject.”
This is sick. If you move to a Muslim country, they are not going to worry about offending you!
As I said, this is sick, but it is explainable. Watch this video by a guy named Evan Sayet. It’s called how Modern Liberals think. You’ll see why leftists will gladly give up everything so as not to have to judge someone or something. So the lefty’s can’t bring themselves to do anything – even if it means losing the country. Even things like gay rights will be outlawed at some point and the lefty’s will do nothing.
Oct 21, 2007 - 11:30 pm 18. ic:The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c Watch the questions and answers at the ned too. I have watched it many times and it explains these people.
Did Ayaan Hirsi Ali predict that? They evicted her from her home, forced her to leave the country, refused to pay for her body guards. Were the militants appeased?
Seems the Dutch govt. is only good for threatening law-abiding citizens.
They didn’t listen to AHA. They should at least listen to the Islamist sage OBL: weak horse vs. strong horse parable.
Oct 21, 2007 - 11:58 pm 19. Moro:‘They’re Moroccan-Dutch.’
Sure – I’m sure it says exactly that on their Moroccan-Dutch passports. And these Moroccan-Dutch citizens were born in Morocco-Nederland, attended Moroccan-Dutch schools, etc.
I’m also intrigued thinking that Dutch soccer hooligans could have pulled off an equally ‘impressive’ display, but then ‘hooligan-Dutch’ doesn’t sound so threatening – maybe their orange coloring helps people keep a safe distance.
Of course, if the Dutch want to follow an earlier German example, after a few years of calling them ‘Moroccan-Dutch,’ you can start singling them out, making sure that any sham integration is reversed, and start having them wear the appropriate emblems in public – I would assume that a green crescent would be the new shining star in a future where only the Dutch are Dutch, and people who were born and raised in the Netherlands can be treated appropriately to solve any number of social problems.
Ask a German – though don’t be surprised at how they look at you while attempting to seriously discuss how you can tell the ‘real’ Dutch citizens from those who aren’t.
Oct 22, 2007 - 4:08 am 20. Michael van der Gali√´n:Moro: I’m afraid that that doesn’t work any longer. There’s literally no Dutch person who listens to that nonsense.
Oct 22, 2007 - 6:58 am 21. Moro:I realize that the Flemish Vlaams Blok has nothing to do with the Netherlands, nor does the Schweizerische Volkspartei – and yet, ever so surprisingly, both parties seem to be studying German history with a certain fanaticism, shall we say? And attracting a significant number of followers who seem to feel that these parties represent a chance to restore the social balance to what it should be. With a fist, if necessary, but only in self-defense, of course.
Years ago, one of the most interestingly distasteful things I saw in Austria (apart from the place of honor for fallen Austrian SS soldiers in a Catholic church’s cemetery) was a book describing how only J√∂rg Haider was strong enough to save Austria from the ‘bad’ Nazis. It was prominently displayed in several bookstores, by the way, in those pre-Amazon days.
You may be quite correct that no modern Dutch citizen would do what some of their parents or grandparents did. After all, rounding up Jews tended to be the sort of work the Nazis let the locals handle – and only in the case of the Danes were the Nazis broadly mistaken.
I am sure that the same government that finds protecting a Somali-Dutch citizen too much of a burden will never commit any acts of moral ambiguity, much less anything actively evil. Like exposing one of its citizens to death due to her freely expressed opinions. (Ironically, when checking the spelling for Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch woman with a Somali-Dutch passport, I found a link saying that various Danish communities had offered her shelter – http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380568544&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull )
And though this may be more than a bit unfair, you still remember the picture of Dutch soldiers toasting with murderers, right? ( http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,425024,00.html ) Please don’t tell me that there is something so special about the Dutch nation that it would never stand and watch a massacre, as ‘literally’ no Dutch person would have believed that such would happen, before it did. ‘Some of the Dutch United Nations soldiers who failed to prevent the massacre of Srebenica in July 1995 gave the Serbs a back-slapping welcome, handed over their uniforms and even actively helped to separate Bosnian men from their families, say relatives of the 8,000 men and boys who were murdered….After all, many people in the Netherlands do not want to reminded of the events in Bosnia….why did the Dutch commander in charge, Colonel Ton Karremans, even drink a toast with mass murderer Ratko Mladic whose Serbian troops were wreaking havoc outside?’
Yes, I know – the facts are from a German media source, but as noted, when you want to find out how horribly wrong scapegoating a minority population for political gains can turn out, Germans are definitely a reliable source. They no longer have the comforting illusion that barbarity can ‘literally’ never happen.
Having such confidence, oddly, is considered to be a weakness by Germans, but then, they have all too much reason to doubt themselves. After all, they were toasting with the Catholic Croatian Ustaša regime back then, not the Orthodox Serbian one ten years ago.
Oct 22, 2007 - 11:10 am 22. Michael van der Gali√´n:You don’t get it: the nazi references don’t work. You can leave that type of comments 100 times, but it doesn’t make one iota difference. They don’t work. We realize that the danger today isn’t nazism or fascism, it’s islamic extremism.
Oct 22, 2007 - 11:43 am 23. LarryD:Hmm, Mark in Texas may have a point. The Iranian mullahs haven’t be doing the maintainance that their oil industry needs, which is why their out is now declining by double digits.
The consequences of not maintaining Holland’s dikes and pumping stations is apt to be more catastrophic
Oct 22, 2007 - 1:42 pm 24. trailing wife:Dear Moro,
It’s awfully sweet of you to have such faith in the ability of the Germans to learn from the actions of their parents and grandparents. But these are the same Germans who, as a society, firmly believe the Palestinians are noble aborigines whose land was stolen by America (or Britain, or somebody!) to recompense the fascistic Zionists for the Holocaust… The fascistic Zionists being completely unlike the pure and innocent German Jews the horrid Nazis murdered in their wicked ignorance of the higher philosophies of non-violence always, and the Brotherhood of Mankind — except for fascists, of course.
I am at the moment editing a translation of a supplementary textbook for high school students published a few months ago by one of the German Laender (states), the thirteenth volume of a series on the history of the Jewish women in that Land during the Nazi era. This particular volume contains my grandmother’s war memoir, about her time in hiding in Amsterdam, with appendices about and/or from some of her and my mother’s protectors there and back in Germany, earlier. So I can speak with some small authority about the attitude and tone, and of course we’ve all seen the articles and cartoons in the German press about Israel, Ariel Sharon, etc.
Oct 22, 2007 - 3:23 pm 25. moro:Of course I don’t get it – with a percentage of the population under 5% (being generous here, as even you are unlikely to think that every follower of Islam is a radical follower of Islamo-fascism – oh wait, did I use the word fascism? silly me) how are the Moroccan-Dutch etc. supposed to take over the Netherlands?
These fantasies of dangerous Islamic terrorists may make more sense in the Netherlands, but then, I guess you don’t have too much experience with terrorism, unlike Spain with ETA – and notice how when the bombs went off in Madrid, the conservative government was eager to claim it was ETA. Which a few months later, at the Madrid airport, turned out to be true – it was an ETA car bomb. If I recall, ETA is about as Christian as the IRA.
If you wish to talk about terrorism or how societies respond to it, please do. To start talking about a group of Moroccan-Dutch rioters as the beginning of the end of Dutch society seems more than a bit hysterical.
At least you still seem to be aware of how deluded the idea of ‘Eurabia’ is – unless those Islamic women, all 2.5% of them (again being generous) find a way to speed up their births to take less than 9 months.
Pointing out how ugly things have been in Europe, and how ugly they can get again, seems almost a waste of time for an American.
Quite honestly, I would think the death of innocent people would be the central point in discussing terrorism – for example, how 8,000 Islamic men and children were murdered by apparently god-fearing Orthodox Christians, under the eyes of a Dutch military unit that was supposed to protect them. Though that was so last century.
But I guess that isn’t terrorism, since in this case, it was the Muslims that were dying.
Except they weren’t Muslims or Christians, they were just people, some dying, some doing the killing. The categories tend to be added on afterwards, as justification or explanation.
As an aside to trailing wife (an interesting name – do you trail your husband for biblical reasons?) – Germans know all about walling people off, depriving them of contact with the outside through the use of guards with guns, until a final decision is made what to do with them. Though admittedly, the Germans were not following any biblical rules when deciding what land they wanted to take – they just took it, without bothering to fill out any paperwork making it ‘legal.’ As for Sharon – maybe you should read about the Kahan Commission ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahan_Commission ), carried out by the government of Israel to detail ‘facts and factors connected with the atrocity carried out by a unit of the Lebanese Forces against the civilian population in the Shatilla and Sabra camps.’ It concluded, according to the article, ‘Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon, was found to be personally responsible. Sharon’s negligence (that is, complacency not complicity, the Commission maintained) amounted to a non-fulfillment of a duty with which the Defense Minister was charged, and it was recommended that Sharon be dismissed as Defence Minister, which he was.’ Where Nazis used the defense that they killed innocent people because they had orders to follow, Sharon had a better defense – he simply didn’t do his job, and the death of refugees – from an Israeli invasion – was just one of those things. You know, break a few eggs, omelette, etc.
Oct 22, 2007 - 11:46 pm 26. wayne:Immigrating to the US isn’t going to help you for very long.
Minneapolis (and several other cities!) isn’t far behind.
Women are being attacked in some neighborhoods for wearing “inappropriate dress” or for associating with non-Moslems.
Many of the cabbies at the airport (mostly Somalis) refuse to pick up anyone carrying pork products, alcohol, anyone who is obviously Jewish, or women in revelaing clothing.
They have already forced the government to provide special prayer washes (foot baths?) for the cabbies at the airport.
That is not to mention that 4 of the 6 Imams involved in the “Imams simulate terrorists on a plane” incident were from Minneapolis.
The other 2 were from Pheonix (which was one of the locations some of the 911 scum used for refuge and planning).
These sorts of problems are everywhere and Canada is much worse than the US.
Oct 23, 2007 - 1:28 pm 27. Little Much:How about making these little brat’s parents be responsible for reimbursing the costs of the damage their evil spawn commit.
The Dutch…pfft! How utterly weak-minded. Obviously too much weed in the air.
Oct 23, 2007 - 9:20 pm