By Mira Oklobdzija, Foreign Policy In Focus
In early November, according to many news reports, a group of anti-Semitic boys with a “North African appearance” brutally attacked Israeli citizens who came to Amsterdam to support their football team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, during a game with the Dutch team Ajax.
But that’s not the whole story of what happened last week in Amsterdam.
On November 4, the international action group Week4Palestine asked Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema to ban the upcoming match on the grounds that among the Maccabi fans are (ex-)soldiers of the Israeli army “who are trained in (extreme) violence.” Two days later, the unrest started in the center of the Dutch capital. Maccabi supporters, recognizable by their yellow club colors, chanted on the escalators of the metro: “The IDF will win, fuck the Arabs.” Another slogan they used was ‘There are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left.” They pulled down a Palestinian flag from a facade and burned another. They assaulted taxi drivers.
The unrest continued the next day as Maccabi supporters clashed with a group of men in dark clothing, some on scooters. Police Commissioner Peter Holla reported that there were “fights on both sides, hit & run actions.” At the end of the afternoon, groups of boys with “a North African appearance,” almost all dressed in black, gathered around the stadium. One group said that they came there to stand up to hypocrisy: “Where were the police yesterday when the Maccabi supporters were beating our taxi drivers?”
Before the match, there was a moment of silence for those who died in the recent Spanish floods. The stadium remains nearly silent, except for a small section where Maccabi supporters were seated.
After the match—which Ajax won 5-0—fights broke out as Maccabi supporters walked through the city center. Rioters attacked and abused these supporters. Around midnight, Maccabi supporters were escorted to their hotels, while a few injured were treated in hospitals for minor injuries and released. Some 62 rioters were arrested—with only four of them still in jail this week—and the town started to calm down.
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