My Word: The international sport of kicking the Jew

Pity the fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv. First, their football club badly lost a match, and then they took a beating. Literally.

When my alarm went off on Friday morning, and I turned the radio on, I heard news of an emergency evacuation of Israelis from Amsterdam. I double-checked that I was awake. 

I should have double-checked the date, November 8 – or more to the point, the year. This was no ordinary alarm and wake-up, it was a wake-up call.

The emergency airlift was a rescue operation for some 3,000 fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv football club who had flown to the Dutch capital for a game against the local team, Ajax. After the game, which the Dutch team won 5-0, the Israeli fans were hunted down by gangs shouting pro-Palestinian slogans.

As Melanie Phillips put it: “For the last year, Jew-hating demonstrators on the streets have been screaming ‘Globalize the intifada!’” What happened in Amsterdam is what “globalize the intifada” looks like in practice.”

“Douglas Murray’s book The Strange Death of Europe is here,” declared my friend Chana Melul.

This was not a case of football hooliganism. It was Jew-hunting. The attackers were not impassioned fans of the rival team, which ironically has a long history of being identified with Jews. This was tribal warfare.

Well-organized gangs of Muslim immigrants and their descendants came armed with knives and clubs against the Israeli fans.

The visitors were easily identified by their clothing bearing Maccabi TA’s emblem: a blue Star of David on a yellow background. The emblem includes the date the club was founded, 1906, when the region was under Ottoman rule, long before “Free Palestine” slogans had been invented.

In a Reshet Bet radio interview, one woman explained that they knew that their team would lose the match but had gone anyway – a family trip for good sports. 

Another man said the tickets to the match were a bar mitzvah present – meant as a father-and-son bonding experience. Instead, Israeli children were attacked.

THERE WERE stories of bravery. Melhem Asad, a Druze Maccabi TA fan, shouted in Arabic at the roaming hordes in a ruse to distract them; Dutch Jewish editor Esther Voet took Jews into her home; Israelis living in Amsterdam went into emergency mode; Chabad Houses in Holland offered safety and a Friday-night meal for those still stranded; some local non-Jews allowed the visitors under attack to take shelter in stores.

Many Israelis flocked to a local casino, but an employee there – who was later fired – reportedly turned them in. Militant Muslim taxi drivers are also suspected of having informed the assailants of where to find the Jews.

The local police, who according to Israeli fans had protected them before the match, disappeared once the game was over. Or worse. At least one Israeli recalled police sitting idly by in a patrol car as he was being attacked.

A KAN 11 Israeli news team covering the aftermath was also safely escorted to the site for a broadcast only to find that the police later disappeared, and the gangs that had threatened them returned. 

Several reports noted that Dutch police officers who didn’t want to protect Jewish sites or the visiting Israelis could turn down the assignment.

“It’s like the Holocaust all over again,” opined one friend. Not quite. During the Holocaust, Dutch police actively participated in the roundup of Jews and guarded the Nazi Westerbork transit camp. Nowadays, they just feel free to ignore the attacks.

A meme that circulated on social media during the evacuation stated: “Anne Frank House has reopened for its original purpose.” Humor helps, but the situation is not funny.

The attack took place ahead of the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the pogrom against the Jews in Germany and Austria that marked the prelude of the Holocaust.

The Dutch monarch, King Willem-Alexander, told Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on Friday, “We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again.”

A highly disturbing incident 

ONE OF THE most disturbing aspects of the Amsterdam attack was how quickly it was blamed on the Jews themselves. Even before the first plane of rescued Israelis landed at Ben-Gurion Airport, social media and traditional media began turning the narrative.

Multiple media outlets tied the anti-Israeli attacks to a Palestinian flag being torn down from a building in Amsterdam the previous night and anger that the authorities banned a pro-Palestinian demonstration near the stadium (thus depriving them of a chance to attack the Jews before the match and not just after it). 

The HonestReporting media watch group noted: “Unfortunately, the New York Times’s coverage reflects a broader trend. Reuters, the Associated Press, and The Guardian also rushed to frame the violence as soccer ‘clashes,’ ignoring the condemnation of what Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema likened to ‘antisemitic hit-and-run squads.’”

As Seth Mandel wrote in Commentary: “Even if you were to grant the worst possible interpretation of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans’ behavior, would it mitigate the evil of the pogrom? Did random Jews deserve to be stabbed and run over because other Israeli soccer fans were rowdy?”

Elsewhere in Commentary, John Podhoretz wrote: “We have just seen the first unambiguous pogrom after October 7.”

Similar to the Hamas mega-atrocity last year, the perpetrators of the violence were proud of their actions and shared the footage on social media.

The writing was on the wall, or in a stadium stand. The night before the Dutch pogrom, a giant “Free Palestine” banner was displayed at Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League match against Atletico Madrid at the stadium in the French capital. The banner unfurled by fans of the Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) included a map of “Palestine,” in the form of a Palestinian keffiyeh, covering the entire State of Israel.

UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, did not pursue disciplinary measures against PSG, telling Reuters: “The banner that was unfurled cannot be in this case be considered provocative or insulting.” This is not the view of those of us who live “between the river and the sea,” our existence erased on the Palestinian flag, and still under daily rocket attack courtesy of Iranian sponsorship of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other terrorist armies. Meanwhile, Qatar’s mindboggling wealth allows it to play a double game, buying friends and influence.

I’m writing this column before the scheduled November 14 match between France and Israel in Paris. Israeli authorities have issued travel warnings that it’s not safe for Israeli fans. 

They don’t want to have to launch a second emergency rescue from violence in Europe within a week.

My friend and colleague Jonathan Spyer noted earlier this week that the popular pro-Iran “Sabereen News” Telegram Channel, had posted: “Next Thursday, the French national team will play against the rabble of the Zionist entity in Paris at the Stade de France. The occupying people and the Zionist audience who will attend the match want to enjoy themselves while children, women, and civilians under siege are being slaughtered in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. 

“Therefore, we extend our invitations to the zealous Muslim community and all the free people in Paris to present a show no less brilliant than what happened in Amsterdam, where many lakes and narrow alleys are spread throughout Paris.”

So much for claims the attacks were spontaneous. So much for blaming the violence on Israeli “provocations.” Warning of the situation is not an act of Islamophobia. The ordinary Muslim citizens of Europe are themselves the victims of the increasing jihadist radicalization of the youth. 

The role of social media platforms, particularly Telegram, in facilitating the organization of attacks and violent rallies also needs to be addressed. International law must catch up with the dangers. Such posts aren’t free speech, they’re anti-democracy.

Threat of falling victim to gaslighting 

I fear that not only will the attacks continue but that Israel will fall victim to gaslighting. Countries and venues will refuse to host Israeli sports teams, entertainers, and other cultural activities on the grounds that they can’t ensure the safety of the visiting Israelis.

But this is a lose-lose situation. If a country can’t protect Jews on its soil, it won’t be able to protect its own citizens. This is not a fight against hooliganism. It’s the battle against terrorism.

It is no good kicking the Jew-hatred down the road and trying to ignore it. Europe is not yet lost, but it needs to combat foul play.