You’ll Just Have to Understand, That’s All.

A multiple target terror attack has been foiled in the Netherlands.

Seven people have been arrested in the Netherlands on suspicion of planning a terror attack on an Ikea furniture store and a number of shops near the Ajax stadium in the capital Amsterdam.

It might have something to do with that distant and vapid sense of style, the silly kids’ names given to the inanimate objects sold at Ikea, or the “hypocritically cheap” batteries and lightbulb-lectures, or what with all the featureless forms and sag-prone bookcases, but I doubt it.

In the course of Thursday morning, the Ikea store and a number of other shops in the area were evacuated. The shops are on Arena Boulevard, named after Ajax's Arena football stadium which is nearby.

The shops and the Heineken Music Hall remained closed all day on Thursday

One of suspects picked up and later released was connected with people of interest the Madrid train bombings. Inasmuch as it’s the Netherlands we’re talking about, debate, debate, and yet more debate will turn to profiling, and that should keep people sufficiently busy and too distracted to consider the harm that could have been done by the attack.

The motive, beyond scaring Europeans from inside their own safe little cocoon, seems even stupider than that considering Ajax’s team nickname:

Instead, Ajax Amsterdam is struggling to stamp out the bizarre tradition by which its most devoted fans call themselves "Jews", even tattooing themselves with Stars of David and waving Israeli flags, although they are not Jewish and know little of Judaism.

The dispute has escalated into the latest test case for Dutch tolerance

Although one can only wonder why it is that the natives’ “tolerance” itself is a problem when you’re dealing with people who are disturbed by Ajax fans calling themselves “Superjoden”, or “Super Jews” while they are statistically about as likely to be Jews as Netherlands’ immigrants from Morocco. The name, apparently, is enough to make the aboriginals a target for death and destruction.

It used to give rise to a rather strange form of “side taking”, but fans of their opponents, even the ones that nickname themselves “the SS” probably didn’t go so far as to terrorize the public with attempts at mass murder.

Oddly enough, the social habits of the garden variety European, sports fans included, besides infecting the stupidest terrorists on earth, seems to lack “nuance”.

More recently, the issue has become a significant social problem in that in an increasingly bizarre and racist way, opposing supporters specifically use anti-semitism to express their antipathy towards Ajax. This is expressed in chants such as Hamas, Hamas/Jews into the gas (Hamas, hamas, joden aan het gas) or producing hissing sounds that imitate the flow of gas.

The irony is that had the bombers been successful, while they would subject the innocent to their death penalty, the guilty themselves would never have to hear that hissing sound.