Israeli football fans home after ‘frightening’ Amsterdam violence
Dutch leader condemns anti-Semitic incidents, Israel evacuates some of its football supporters by air.
Dutch authorities said they were tightening security to protect Jews and Jewish sites as they investigate an overnight wave of violence in which Israeli soccer fans were chased and beaten by crowds in the capital in what leaders of both countries condemned as anti-Semitic attacks.
A plane bringing Israeli football supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after the night of violence.
Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a Europa League football tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after a first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israel Airports Authority said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered the Mossad spy agency to draw up a plan to prevent unrest at sporting events in the future.
Fresh off a flight home, Israeli football fans back from Amsterdam recalled the clashes and violence they experienced after a Europa League match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Dutch club Ajax.
Kobi Eliyahu, 40, said people with their faces covered “waited (on) every single corner … it was very frightening to see that”.
Another returning fan, Eliya Cohen, said that after the match between Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv and Dutch team Ajax on Thursday, he saw “Muslims looking for Jews to beat them up” in central Amsterdam.
“So I left. On the one hand, I wanted to help people out, but on the other hand I didn’t want to stay there,” Cohen told reporters at Ben Gurion airport near Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
Police declined to comment on the identities of the assailants. They had warned of tensions between the Israeli fans and others amid heated public rhetoric over the war in Gaza.
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema told reporters that anti-Semitic rioters and criminals had surrounded and beaten up visitors from Israel. She said people on scooters travelled around the city looking for Maccabi supporters, attacking them before fleeing from police.
“Yesterday there was an outburst of anti-Semitism the likes of which we hoped not to see again in Amsterdam,” Halsema said. “Among our Jewish Amsterdammers, there is fear, dismay, anger, disbelief.”
Officers made 62 arrests in total but police chief Peter Holla said the hit-and-run tactics of the rioters made it “exceptionally” difficult to prevent the attacks.
He said that 800 officers had been deployed, a very large number for Amsterdam, adding that “we spent weeks preparing” for the match.
The Palestine Football Association had a different take on the sequence of events in Amsterdam, AFP reported, and insisted the violence had started with the “deplorable incitement to violence, anti-Palestinian racism, and Islamophobia expressed by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans”.
It said the Israeli fans had “attacked homes and shops displaying the Palestinian flag” and complained it was still waiting for “concrete action” by world football governing body FIFA in response to the extensive evidence it had presented.
Amsterdam’s police chief gave some support to the PFA’s allegations, saying there had been “incidents on both sides” on Wednesday, 24 hours before the match.
He said Maccabi supporters had “removed a flag from a facade on the Rokin and they destroyed a taxi”.
“A Palestinian flag was set on fire on the Dam,” he added, referring to Amsterdam’s central square.
In scenes that showed the tensions, unverified video on social media purportedly filmed on Thursday appeared to show some Maccabi fans chanting in Hebrew: “Let the IDF (army) win! We’ll fuck the Arabs!”
Israeli authorities urged their citizens in Amsterdam to stay in their hotels and avoid showing Israeli or Jewish symbols if they went outside.
Anti-Semitic acts have been on the rise in Europe in the past year. Several Jewish leaders noted that the Amsterdam violence occurred close to the anniversary of Kristallnacht – when German Nazis attacked Jewish people and property on Nov. 9-10, 1938.
Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said: “The police have stood idly by and watched these pogrom-like conditions.” Other community leaders also said the police didn’t do enough to halt the violence.
Halsema said the city was doing everything it can to ensure the safety of Jewish people in Amsterdam.
She said her office, the public prosecutor and the Amsterdam police would investigate authorities’ preparations and actions. Dutch officials said police had to intervene several times Thursday to protect Israeli fans who were attacked, including with fireworks, and escort them to hotels.
Israel’s flagship carrier, El Al, said it would arrange free “rescue flights” beginning Friday. Israel’s military had said it would provide the flights, but the government later said it would rely on civil aviation.
Israel’s National Security Council urged Israelis in Amsterdam to stay off the streets, shelter in hotel rooms and avoid showing Israeli or Jewish symbols. The Israeli military forbade service members from travelling to the Netherlands until further notice.
Dutch police made arrests before and after the soccer match. On Thursday, police had ordered a planned demonstration against the Israeli team away from the stadium, but protesters still tried to head there and clashed with police, Dutch police said.
Sagiv Barazani, 24, a fan who attended the game, said that he and other Israelis fell to the ground as they tried to escape attackers. He said his head was stomped on as people chanted “Free Palestine.” He saw one fan being punched in the face and another one being cut in the face with a key, which led to a lot of bleeding, he said.
“I thought I was going to die,” he said. “Everyone was running like crazy.” He said that the attacks started after the game at around 11.30pm local time and that he only made it back to his hotel room at around 3am as he and a large group of other fans attempted to escape the attackers and, at one point, tried to hide in a KFC.
“I’m not coming back here in a long time,” he said, speaking from Amsterdam. He said he was searching for an emergency flight back to Israel.
Videos published online by the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., and verified by Storyful, showed several scenes of men punching and kicking people including in Amsterdam’s central Dam Square. Storyful is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal.
One clip filmed from inside a car driving on the sidewalk shows it hitting a pedestrian who rolls over it and onto the ground, as a voice is heard saying “Drive over him.” Another video showed a man trying to offer his money to assailants, who screamed: “For the children” and “Free Palestine now.” Police had already ramped up their presence in Amsterdam ahead of the violence, they said.
On Thursday morning, before the first reports of attacks, police said there were signs of tensions in parts of the city centre that might be linked to coming soccer games.
Messages circulating on the messaging app Telegram appeared to have been used to encourage and co-ordinate attacks, police said.
Telegram said that it closed down a group chat that might have been linked to the incidents in Amsterdam and that Telegram is prepared to co-operate with Dutch authorities. “Calls to violence are not tolerated on the Telegram platform,” Telegram Chief Operating Officer Mike Ravdonikas said.
One video verified by Storyful showed people taking down a Palestinian flag as a crowd cheered and chanted “F**k you Palestine.” Authorities said taxi drivers appeared to be involved in planning some attacks. They said taxi drivers had driven on Wednesday night to a casino where Maccabi supporters were gathered. Police said they evacuated the supporters and avoided a major confrontation at the casino despite minor scuffles.
Eldar Shahar, 25, a Maccabi fan who flew from Israel to Amsterdam for the game, said he awoke Friday to a tsunami of messages from friends and a call from his mother. He went straight to the hotel after the game, so didn’t see the violence, but said some friends told him they had been attacked.
Some Israeli soccer fans said they felt they were being watched by groups of people in the city even before the game, Shahar said.
“On Wednesday, we felt that there were groups in the city that were photographing us and documenting where all the Maccabi fans were,” he said, speaking from the airport as he boarded a flight back to Israel.
Dutch Prime Minister Schoof said he followed the news with horror and had assured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the perpetrators would be tracked down and prosecuted. “Completely unacceptable antisemitic attacks on Israelis,” he wrote on X.
Shoshi Kaminski, 67, spent the early hours of Friday morning in Israel frantically searching for her son, Matan, who attended the match in Amsterdam. “It was a nightmare,” she said. “I couldn’t stop crying until I heard from him.” She was able to track him down with the help of his friends but said he still hadn’t been able to find a flight home and was sheltering at his hostel in the city.
Authorities in the US and Europe have recorded an increase in anti-Semitic acts since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The attack killed around 1200, saw more than 200 taken captive and sparked an Israeli response that has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians.
Some European Jewish communities reported an up to fivefold increase in antisemitic acts after the Hamas attack, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, a rights watchdog, said in a July report.
The increase came against a backdrop of steadily rising hostility toward Jews. Some 80% of Jewish people surveyed in a poll that predated the Hamas attack said they had experienced an increase in antisemitism in the previous five years, the agency said.
In Germany, antisemitic incidents, ranging from online and verbal harassment to arson and physical attacks, rose 80 per cent in 2023, with half the incidents occurring after the Oct. 7 attack, according to the Federal Association of Research and Information Centres on Anti-Semitism, a German anti-hate group. France, the UK and the Netherlands also recorded similar trends.
Authorities across the region have banned some pro-Palestinian groups and anti-Israel organisations after they expressed support for Hamas, which is regarded by the US and the EU as a terrorist organisation.
But with protests against the Israeli government still taking place in European capitals almost weekly, they have struggled to draw a line between criticism of Israel, covered by free speech provisions, and outright antisemitism, banned as hate speech in many countries.
“These shocking antisemitic attacks on the streets of a European city should be a wake-up call to Dutch and European authorities about where uncontrolled anti-Israel demonstrations lead,” Ariel Muzicant, president of the European Jewish Congress, said Friday.
Entangled with politics and protest in Europe is also violent soccer fan culture, known as hooliganism, which experts say is fuelled by socio-economic tensions and societal disruption, political anger and sometimes organized crime.
Dutch police last year arrested more than 150 supporters of the club AZ Alkmaar who were chanting antisemitic slogans on their way to a match against Ajax. Ajax has roots in a historically Jewish part of the Dutch capital and its fans sometimes wave Israeli flags on the stands.
London’s police last year arrested more than 120 far-right protesters, including soccer fans, trying to counter a massive pro-Palestinian march in the city. In some countries, such as Serbia, ultranationalist parties have used soccer fan groups to protest homosexuality and target Pride parades.
The Dutch government has announced plans to combat violent fan culture, as well as what it sees as growing antisemitism. Last year, then-Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgoz called soccer violence “a multi-headed monster that’s not easy to eradicate.”
– with AFP
Dow Jones Newswires
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