The recent attacks on Israelis in Amsterdam after a soccer match between an Israeli team and a Dutch team are despicable.

Disturbing videos show Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans visiting the city to attend a match against AFC Ajax, being hunted through the streets of the Dutch capital by pro-Palestine gangs demanding to know whether they are Jews – demanding to see their passports – with chilling echoes of the Holocaust and its prequel Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass”, in which German Jews were hunted and attacked.

In Amsterdam, the city for ever associated with Anne Frank, this incident places a question mark over the expression “never again”.

Christians United for Israel point out that “the media and anti-Israel activists online are justifying this when they try to blame the victims or pass it off as football hooliganism”.

A small minority [of Tel Aviv fans] who tore down a couple of flags or a group chanting anti-Arab slogans does not justify open attacks on fans or the hunting down of random Jews on the streets. It doesn’t justify attacking women and children. It doesn’t justifying [sic] throwing people onto train tracks. It doesn’t justify pushing people into rivers. It doesn’t justifying [sic] ramming vehicles into Jews in hit and run attacks. It doesn’t justify beating up foreign nationals who assist Jewish victims.

As part of a degree course in Jewish-Christian relations, I studied the Holocaust in depth but found the universal acceptance of this terrible event as the epitome of evil not quite as reassuring as I should. Instead, I found it strangely disturbing: how long would this apparent consensus last, I wondered?

We may now have the answer, as the Western world succumbs to violent anti-Israel feeling evident in countless “Just stop Israel” protests, marches and agitation. Has the age-old disease of anti-Semitism simply transmuted into anti-Zionism, its more acceptable but equally deadly offspring?

The early 21st century terror attacks on British soil – the 7/7 bombings of 2005, the attacks on London Bridge, Borough Market, Finsbury Park, the Manchester Arena and Westminster Bridge, all in 2017, seem to have been disposed of down what George Orwell described in 1984 as the cultural memory hole.

The British public may not have forgotten, but the British ruling classes appear to regard such events as embarrassments to be quietly forgotten, a response not unconnected to the obvious fact that to draw attention to them might provoke yet more terror. We have come to a strange pass when Dutch “far Right” activist Geert Wilderscondemns the attacks on Jews while up until now, at least, the liberal Left media, not least the BBC, have been more inclined to take a more soothing, sympathetic approach to such incidents, along the lines of “move along there, nothing to see”

Nearly 20 years ago, the United Nations introduced Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 every year, but since 2012, November, traditionally associated with remembering those members of our armed forces killed in battle, has been designated Islamophobia Awareness Month. As eminent Jewish commentator Melanie Phillips notes, this is despite the fact that:

“every week, demonstrators have been on the streets of Western cities chanting for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews, sometimes setting fire to the Israeli flag, and tearing down pictures of the Israeli hostages. Are these media outlets — who have ignored, minimised, sanitised and excused this genocidal frenzy against Jews — suggesting that Jews should therefore hunt down anti-Zionists to beat up as a result? Or are the media once again demonstrating a grotesque and all-too revealing double standard?”

It has been disclosed that pro-Palestinian zealots have been training activists to attack targets across Britain. Following the Amsterdam attacks, the Dutch National Security Council revealed intelligence indicating that pro-Palestinian groups were trying to harm Jews and Israelis across Europe under the guise of protests and demonstrations.

As to our own nation protecting Jewish people from anti-Semitism, enormous (and “largely peaceful”) protests are allowed to take place on a regular basis demanding that Palestine be “free from the river to the sea” – a clear reference to genocide.

The Palestine lobby would argue that Israel is recklessly killing innocent Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere. However, while all innocent deaths are to be lamented, they conveniently omit any mention of Hamas deliberately basing their military operations among civilians, with the result that the mainstream media concentrates on these hapless victims without pointing to the real aggressors, who might more accurately be described as terrorists holding their own people hostage. And amidst all this undeniably tragic carnage and destruction, the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas over a year ago, whose plight prompted Israel’s military response, are conveniently forgotten. As is so often the case, more attention is paid to Israel’s response to attacks than to the attacks themselves – it’s not the action, but the reaction, that makes the news.

Despite the determination that “never again” would attempts be made to exterminate the Jewish people, we may indeed see another Holocaust in political, military and terrorist attacks aiming to destroy the State of Israel, itself created as a refuge from persecution for the Jews. And inevitably, the UK may well become embroiled in that struggle, since Britain was instrumental in the founding of the modern state of Israel: the Balfour Declaration, written by Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour and published on November 9, 1917, pledged British support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The British may have forgotten this historical detail, but the pro-Palestinian campaign has not, as evidenced by the attempt to kidnap what were thought to be two busts of the first Israeli President, Chaim Weizmann, to mark the 107th anniversary of the signing of the Balfour Declaration.

Whatever one’s religious beliefs – whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim or even atheist – it is hard to avoid the conclusion that there is something special about this group of people, who persist in existing despite every fresh attempt to destroy them. Where other ancient peoples have died out, the Jews continue, bloody but unbowed, overcoming all such attempts at extermination – even thriving where allowed to do so.

Perhaps it is this stubborn refusal to be killed off which explains the ever-more zealous attempts to destroy them, since the failure of such efforts seems only to point even more plainly to their supernatural origins. The Chosen People appear to have been marked out for destruction by those who resent the possibility that they may indeed have been chosen by God as His emissaries to the world.

Ultimately, the Holocaust failed to exterminate the Jews, but while the world may forget the Holocaust and what led to it, the Jewish people can never forget – and neither will Hamas.

Was this just football hooliganism or part of an anti-Semitic campaign?  

AUTHOR

Ann Farmer

Ann Farmer writes from the United Kingdom.

RELATED ARTICE: A few items on the Kristallnacht that is still taking place across the West

EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

“It’s morning again in America.” — Ad for Ronald Reagan, 1984

It is official: Donald Trump is the 47th President of America. For the second time in my lifetime, Trump has stormed the political scene and won an election that many thought he could not win. By any fair measure, Trump is a political supernova, a force, a once-in-a-lifetime figure, a unique and complicated man who fought the most ferocious outbreak of woke paganism the modern world has witnessed — and triumphed.

But mark this well: Trump is not the true victor here. God is the one who has acted in immeasurable mercy toward our nation. God is the one who gets all the glory and deserves all the praise. In his magnificent kindness and common grace, God has chosen to spare us the plenteous vicissitudes of a Harris administration. The magnitude of common grace in this act is nearly unprecedented in Western history.

This is not hyperbole. We are in one of those rare moments right now when it is clear, abundantly clear, that we are at a hinge point in history. I say this because Kamala Harris represented the specter of Hades in her candidacy. This is not too strong. Death was Harris’s platform. Abortion was her cardinal value, her cherished principle, the beacon that lit her way. Killing precious babies was Harris’s policy. That’s what she ran on.

Not just that, though. Harris took on the very platform of paganism in her candidacy. Most everything that is good, Harris opposed — and opposed to the strong support of the mainstream media, Hollywood, the American academy, and the general drift of our culture. Harris wanted to normalize marijuana usage, transgenderism, the dissolution of traditional strong manhood, crippling federal debt, a truly borderless nation, a weak global presence, with Israel preyed on by a snapping pack of jackals, and much more.

Hear this clear as a bell: Kamala Harris’s campaign was an inversion campaign. In her platform, she championed the inverse of what God loves and blesses. God loves life; Harris proclaimed the liberating goodness of death. God establishes borders; Harris tried to make our country an open country, borderless and subject to a quiet invasion. God loves children; Harris sang the virtues of gender “transitions.”

Kamala Harris, lest we misunderstand, promoted the most wicked agenda we have ever witnessed in modern presidential politics. Had she won the 2024 American presidency, it is hard to see what limits could be reasonably placed on her perverse power. It is not an exaggeration or fearmongering to say that she would likely have destroyed America. And what can one say but this: if God had appointed such an end, would he not be just?

But God appointed a different outcome. He has — I repeat myself — acted in magnificent kindness and undeserved mercy to hold back evil in America. He has not done this because of us. He has done this because he decided, before there was time, to preserve America. Our country as we have known it still stands. It has been battered, it has buckled, it has barely survived, but its heart still beats. America yet lives.

We are like Britain in the summer of 1945. The powers of darkness lost World War II and would have subsumed the world in tyranny without the punishing stand of Britain (with Winston Churchill as the heroic living center of that effort). But lest we forget, Britain came out of the war in a diminished and exhausted state. So it is with us.

We have come through a nightmare, we have woken up in our beds, and it is morning in America. But we have so much to fight for, and so much work to do. With that said, let me offer seven brief reflections on the future implications of Trump’s victory for the church of Jesus Christ.

1. This election was a referendum on wokeness.

Just like that, the long horrible night of 2020-24 is over. It’s done and dusted. Wokeness just received the most severe rebuke possible. In truth, Trump’s election is not merely a rebuke but a repudiation of wokeness. Harris championed social justice in manifold ways, but we have watched as one major company after another has rolled back their noxious DEI initiatives.

I do not mean, of course, that our battle with wokeness is over. It is not over — not by a long shot. But many Americans have come to understand just how pernicious and destructive woke ideology is, as I’ve outlined in this book. This is cause for thanksgiving. This is what God has done in our midst. We praise Him for this.

2. This election was a referendum on men invading women’s spaces.

It is wrong, objectively wrong, for men to use women’s restrooms. It is wrong, objectively wrong, for men to play women’s sports. It took a little bit, but Republicans eventually started voicing these truths. They did so rightly, because Americans have increasingly grasped just how wicked it is for men to invade women’s spaces.

We have much more work to do on these fronts, to be sure. However, we need to see that things have well and truly flipped on the women’s issue. Evangelicals used to be the dread foe of feminists. Nowadays, whatever our standing disagreements, we are some of the only folks out there who are willing to protect girls’ spaces and girls’ sports. For those familiar with the history of feminism and evangelicalism, this is a truly stunning cultural reversal.

My hope here is that this advocacy will lead not merely to political and societal good, but to the salvation of souls. We Christians are truly pro-woman. The pro-transgenderism Left cannot make that claim any longer, and many now see this. Let’s pray for many women who have been left out in the cold by the supposedly pro-woman Left to come into the warmth of the family of God. May it be so.

3. America is no longer captive to the celebrity-media-academy complex.

It used to be that the endorsements of celebrities and Ivy League professors carried massive weight. No longer. So too with the hit-pieces and advocacy journalistic practices of elite media.

Many in America now openly distrust legacy voices and legacy institutions. There can be a downside to this, to be sure. But it is a good thing that many people have turned to more trustworthy outlets than the once-influential leftist collective of Hollywood personalities, Beltway reporters, and Harvard professors. A new and chaotic day has dawned.

4. The Left will punch back.

We should not think that Trump’s election means game over in the political arena. No, it means game on. In other words, the fight for goodness, truth, and beauty has not concluded; it has just begun. The modern Left is motivated — as I said above — by causes that are positively diabolical in many respects. This dark energy is not going away.

Satan, we recall, is a roaring lion. He roams the earth, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). He is a defeated devil, overcome by the power of the cross as I have explored in this book (Genesis 3:15; Colossians 2:13-15; 1 John 3:8). But he is still able to work terrible evil on the earth. He is not done with America.

Satan will continue to try to send many sinners to hell. He will continue to try to ruin children through gender mutilation. He will keep fanning the flames of the culture of death. He will keep working through political means to erode religious liberty and silence the preaching of the gospel. In these and many other ways, Satan will redouble his efforts in this country. Many will follow his lead. So we must be ready. (More on this in a moment.)

5. A new Christian political movement is dawning.

For about 10-15 years now, some evangelicals — particularly the leadership class — ran the “be winsome” play. They engaged the political world like it was a cocktail reception, and their chief responsibility was to be charming, likeable, and to make as many friends as possible. This had massive effects on the church’s political witness.

Chief among them: the church went largely quiet on controversial matters and fell prey to the foolish idea that the Left and Right are morally equivalent. But in the last several years, it’s like God has performed an exorcism on the church. At least, on some who formerly walked in undiscerning moral darkness.

Guilted and shamed by evangelical leaders, these Christians have come to see that they are not vile “culture warriors” because they hold biblical convictions. They have come to see that they are merely walking the faithful convictional path cut for us by God in ages past, a path trodden by figures like Joseph, Esther, David, Daniel, and many others.

So, the old has gone. The new has come. We do not yet know how Christians will regroup and reorganize in days ahead. But hear this: there is something coming. There needs to be a new movement in our midst. We cannot, for example, allow the cause of the unborn to be sidelined in the future. We must build a new coalition.

6. Christians must engage the public square.

As I am at pains to say, we evangelicals are not doing politics the old harmless way anymore. The days of a disengaged, docile, uncaring, undiscerning church are over. In days ahead, we’re not trying to be nice. We’re not going to be quiet. We’re not currying the favor of elites. We will stand boldly and unflinchingly for God’s truth.

Do not misunderstand me. We’re not going to hate our neighbor. We’re not going to approach politics as if it is a zero-sum game. Nor are we going to fall into the trap of confusing the mission of the church with the mission of the state. No, we are going to do everything we can in manner and policy to love our neighbor (Matthew 22:34-39). We want to be a people marked by just this posture: love.

But love is not the same as being seen as nice. Love has a gracious manner, definitely, but love does the hard work that needs to be done. Love motivates us, for example, to do what is genuinely good for our neighbor even if our neighbor thinks that action is hateful. How important this divine principle is for Christians living in the “negative world.”

For too long, evangelicals have tried to get a seat at the respectable Beltway table. Let us be done with those grasping efforts. So let it be said, so let it be done: the days of the church’s Washingtonian captivity are over. They are done and dusted. We are not going back to the old ways. In faith, hope, love, and iron conviction, we’re moving forward.

Let us engage our culture like never before. Here is one way this can take practical form: Christians should run for office like never before. Let this election be a wake-up call to us all. The days are fleeting, and the time is short. We must not sit back. We must not assume that someone else will show up to do the dirty work of cultural and societal engagement. In much prayer, we must do it.

7. We must pray without ceasing.

This is the key to it all. We must be a praying church once more. We must pray for the protection of President Trump. We must pray for him to love righteousness and hate evil and to know the saving grace of Christ. We must pray for the good of our country. We must pray for the church to regain its footing, to leave behind wokeness, to embrace Scripture, and to proclaim the gospel while also being salt and light.

Conclusion

There is so much more to say here. This humble essay has just barely scratched the surface about our current moment. But one thing is clear to me, and I’m guessing to many others: God has chosen in his magnificent mercy and kindness to not give us over to the darkness. We are not yet finished. We have hope. We still have time (until Christ returns, that is).

We have all lived through a long and almost unbroken nightmare. We have been forced to contemplate not only our present darkness, but the possibility of still greater unleashing of darkness through a Kamala Harris presidency. We have trembled at that reality; we have wept; we have felt great surging waves of fear, anxiety, doubt, discouragement, and hopelessness at times.

But for now, we have been granted a reprieve, a temporary stalling of evil as driven by the modern political Left. God has shown up. God has answered our prayers. Let us use this truth to keep praying, and keep hoping, and keep loving. Let us not be weary in well-doing (Galatians 6:9); by the power of the Spirit in us, let us excel still more (1 Thessalonians 4:2).

It’s morning in America.

This article was originally published on Grace & Truth.

AUTHOR

Owen Strachan

Owen Strachan is Senior Fellow for FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.