Israeli Attack in Amsterdam

Some things you may have missed amongst the mainstream coverage and hysteria

A football match between Amsterdam’s Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv ended in violence in the Dutch capital after footage published across mainstream media showed attacks on supporters of the Israeli team, along with claims some had gone missing or taken hostage. 

Approximately 2751 Israelis travelled to Amsterdam for the game, along with Israeli intelligence service Mossad, reportedly in attendance to provide security for the Israeli football team. 

800 police personnel were deployed on the streets of Amsterdam and 62 people were arrested - 10 Israelis amongst them who were later released - with further arrests from police invading homes of locals.

Dutch authorities reported five Israelis were hospitalised, while Israel’s Foreign Ministry claimed the number was ten.

Mainstream media by and large presented the attacks as unprovoked and antisemitic.

The Daily Mail reported on how “Israeli football fans were set upon by 'scooter gangs' and 'anti-Semitic' thugs,” quoting the Israeli embassy in the United States, which referred to the violence arising from a “mob who targeted innocent Israelis.”

Hysteria in the media reported on pogroms and lynchings, with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust claiming the attacks were “a stark reminder of the ongoing threat faced by Jewish people worldwide.” 

Britain's Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said on X: “This should be a watershed moment for Europe and for the world, when it realises how severe the scourge of anti-Jewish hatred has become.”

The head of the Holocaust Educational Trust said, “We are reminded yet again that anti-Semitism starts with words but ends in violence.”

Following the attacks, on social media the term Kristallnacht was trending, after many commentators claimed the violence was reminiscent of a pogrom in Germany in 1938, when Jewish institutions were destroyed, homes and shops looted and where thousands of Jews suffered racist violence at the hands of German Nazis.

The Netherlands Prime Minister Dick Schoof said he was “horrified by the antisemitic attacks on Israeli citizens. This is completely unacceptable.”

Amsterdam’s Mayor Femke Halsema said, “I do understand that this reminds us of pogroms” and that “Jewish culture has been threatened.” 

The Israel government responded by saying it would send two rescue planes to evacuate its citizens, demanded all military personnel return immediately and placed a ban on Israelis flying to the Netherlands, while Israel’s National Security Council urged its citizens against attending further Maccabi Tel Aviv games scheduled in Italy and France.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed it had made contact with all visiting Israelis in Amsterdam, contradicting earlier reports of any missing or taken hostage. 

Hysteria and misinformation spread like wildfire, including false reports of violence occurring in Russia, as well as in Amsterdam in the year prior being attributed to this week’s events in Amsterdam.

One social media poster, Eyal Yakoby, shared a clip of a man he claimed was chased by a group of “Middle Eastern migrants” in Amsterdam on a “hunt” for “Jews,” until the creator of the film chimed in to inform Yakoby he was “spreading fake news,” informing him, “this is a group of Maccabi supporters starting a fight and beating one Dutch man.”

So what really happened in Amsterdam?

Early reports of the night before the game revealed Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters had rampaged the streets of Amsterdam, while local police confirmed “attacks from visitors” had taken place against local taxi drivers.

The Daily Mail - before its report claiming the violence was borne out of antisemitism - wrote of how “Israeli football hooligans” tore “down Palestinian flags..in night of chaos ahead of” the game, as well as on racist attacks by Israelis who were seen “chanting 'f*** you Palestine'” while footage “shows one thug thumping a taxi with a crowbar before the driver takes off.”

Dashcam footage showed a man, believed to be a Maccabi Tel Aviv supporter, threatening a taxi driver with a metal chain.

Footage of another Palestinian flag torn down by visiting Israelis was shared on social media, along with clips showing them vandalising buildings and trains with graffiti and stickers.    

At a demonstration held at Dam Square by Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters before the game, some Israelis attacked one local, however police slowly intervened. The visiting Israelis were also seen chanting “Fuck the Arabs!” and “Let the IDF win!” as police stood by.

At the game, a minute of silence was held for the 220+ victims of the floods in Valencia, Spain, which the Maccabi fans ignored, jeered and disrupted. 

Sky News in its original reports, revealed “Maccabi fans were seen attacking locals” and singing “racist and anti-Arab songs.” The reports later removed the violence and racist chants by Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters.

Provocations by Israelis were also reported in Israeli media and corroborated by a reporter at the BBC’s Live Blog, who said she had “spoken to a fan who went to the match last night, who reports seeing Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters on the Amsterdam metro ‘going up and down the carriages three or four times looking for a fight’” 

Local journalist Ome Bender revealed on the night following the game, masked up Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters were armed with planks of wood and metal sticks and seen throwing rocks and bricks and lobbing fireworks in central Amsterdam. Bender said he was instructed to stop filming, for what one Israeli told him was “your own safety.” Bender did not take heed and continued reporting on stand-offs between Maccabi fans with both the police and local taxi drivers. The journalist reports he received further threats from Israelis, along with middle fingers and rocks thrown at him and his cameraman. While covering events, Bender said the violence seemed organised by a “team leader” among the mob, who others would go to for instructions.

Footage also surfaced showing Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters shouting “Fuck you” at the police and lighting fires.

Amsterdam’s police chief Peter Holla confirmed who instigated the violence, saying at a press conference, “Maccabi supporters ripped a flag from a building on the Rokin and they destroyed a taxi. On Dam Square, a Palestinian flag was set on fire.”

A local posted on X, “I live in Amsterdam. The Zionists of Macabi were terrorizing our streets yesterday. They attacked muslim homes, muslim taxi drivers.” 

While one local Jewish woman hit back at the absurdity of referring to local resistance against Maccabi fans as a “pogrom”, adding she was “proud to see the complete & total rejection of fascist Nazi Zionism in our streets.” 

Amsterdam City Councillor Jazie Veldhuyzen reported on how Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters rampaged the streets attacking “people that looked like Arabs or Muslims” and were vocally “glorifying genocide” in Gaza. He criticised the one-sided media coverage following the violence, saying “I think this is actually a well-known Zionist tactic, to provoke, to attack and then to play the victim.”

In another report, Veldhuyzen spoke about Maccabi fans being former or current Israeli soldiers, “These are trained people and potential war criminals.”

Yuval Gal, a member of Erev Rav, which describes itself as an “Antizionist Jewish Collective” is from Tel Aviv and now lives in the Netherlands. In a report in Dutch media, he spoke of the violent reputation of Maccabi supporters, with many serving in the Israeli army, “We know many of them are soldiers or ex-soldiers in Gaza right now. If somebody just came back from Gaza…came back from killing a lot of people, you don’t expect them to behave normally in your city.”

Gal went on to say of the Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters, “Many of them came here as kind of a demonstration for Israel, many did not come for the football, the football was a side thing for them, but many of them came to make a pro-Israel or pro-genocide demonstration in Amsterdam.”

This was confirmed when Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters who were presented as victims in Western reports, were later identified as soldiers of the Israeli army. 

Meanwhile back in Israel, on the day following the match in Amsterdam, Maccabi Haifa fans at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem were seen burning flags of both Palestine and the Netherlands, while singing “Gaza is a cemetery.”

A member of the Israeli army responded by blowing up homes in Gaza, dedicating the “explosion to all the fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv.” while another threatened attacks on “women and babies in Gaza” as revenge.

According to Israeli media, Maccabi Tel Aviv is in the top two most racist football teams in Israel and its supporters have a history of racism against its Arab and Black players, who Maccabi supporters would direct monkey sounds at, and who they eventually drove out of the team.

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans also have a history of glorifying the Israeli army and receiving support by military personnel, who they have “hosted..for meals,” and set up “foundations and fundraisers for.” 

Violence amongst the team’s supporters is no new phenomenon. In March, Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters brutally attacked and hospitalised a man in Greece for carrying a Palestinian flag.

Palestinian organisations commented on the events on Telegram. The socialist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine praised “the confrontation of supporters in the Netherlands for countering attempts by zionists to burn the Palestinian flag,” asserting “the zionist entity has become globally isolated and reviled.”

Muhammad Al-Hajj Musa from the Islamic Jihad Movement said, “The claim of the Zionist Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, that his team’s fans were subjected to violence because they were Jewish and Israeli is a sheer slander that is belied by overwhelming evidence, and reveals to the entire world that anti-semitism is nothing but a slogan used by the entity to cover up its crimes.”

Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett took to social media stating, “This seems like a PLANNED and ORGANIZED POGROM in Amsterdam.” 

It appears events in Amsterdam were planned, however not quite how Bennett may suggest.

The events appear to have been a psyop, or false-flag, to bolster support for Israel at a time it is viewed as a pariah across the world for committing genocide against Palestinians. After all, Western media coverage made the Israeli instigators of violence in Amsterdam the victims of the story.

Further, the events present the idea that Jews are unsafe living in Europe, or really, anywhere outside of Israel, encouraging them to move to Israel, or make aliyah, perhaps to replace ever-dwindling Israeli Jews following reports of between half a million and a million leaving Israel in the last year. Former Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, immediately after the attacks, wrote on X, “I urge the Jews of Europe not to wait, as many did on the eve of the Holocaust. Leave everything and come home to Israel.”

Despite police confirming the violence was instigated by visiting Israelis, authorities in Amsterdam have banned protests for Palestine, which thousands have defied by organising demonstrations on an almost nightly basis since the ban was put into place, where they are protesting the ban, as well as the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

These protests have resulted in arrests and increasing police brutality, which has including men and women being viciously beaten with by police with batons, clad in riot gear.

In Belgium, The Hind Rajab Foundation issued a complaint with Amsterdam police, demanding an investigation, which Amsterdam police are complying with.

Back in Israel, returning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans at Ben Gurion Airport, were seen on Israeli television showing off messages that read, “Death to Arabs,” while others are seen chanting jovially, "Why is there no school today in Gaza? There are no children left there."

A building vandalised by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans has since replaced its Palestinian flags