Israel Urges Jews To Stay Away From France Soccer Match After Amsterdam Pogrom (Worthy News In-Depth)
By Worthy News’ Stefan J. Bos, with additional reporting by Worthy News’ Johan Th. Bos in Amsterdam
JERUSALEM/AMSTERDAM (Worthy News) – Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) has urged Israeli soccer fans not to attend the match between France and Israel in Paris on Thursday after Jews were hunted in the streets of Amsterdam in scenes resembling the 1930s and World War Two.
The NSC, the Israeli government’s central security body, made the call after the antisemitic violence in the Dutch capital on Thursday following a match between Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv and Amsterdam’s Ajax teams.
Some 4,000 police officers will be deployed around the upcoming soccer match in France, explained Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez, nearly four times more than in Amsterdam.
His announcement came while back in Amsterdam, police said they detained over 50 people during a pro-Palestine protest on Dam Square on Sunday. “Also, 340 people were relocated,” the Amsterdam police said.
Pro-Palestinian groups wanted to rally on Sunday despite a protest ban in Amsterdam under an emergency decree imposed after the attacks against Jews shocked the nation.
Footage and sound material about last week’s violence reviewed by Worthy News revealed that Israeli soccer fans were kicked to the ground and forced to show their passports and say, “Free Palestine!”
Separately, at least one Israeli was thrown into an ice-cold Amsterdam canal and forced to say the words “Free Palestine!” by laughing people of reportedly Arab Muslim descent, Worthy News learned. Only after uttering those words the fearful Jewish man was allowed to somehow get out of the water.
JEWS HUNTED
Numerous Jews were hunted and attacked in hit-and-run attacks described by Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema and police as “scooter youth” and “taxi drivers.”Halsema, a former leftist Green parliamentarian, refused to confirm that the perpetrators were what survivors and eyewitnesses called “Arab Muslims.”
After the incidents, described by several Jews and others as a “pogrom,” Halsema imposed an emergency decree banning protests.
The measure was supposed to be in effect until Monday at 7:00 a.m. local time, but it was extended to Thursday morning after a court ruling prohibited a pro-Palestine protest.
Despite these measures, hundreds gathered at Dam Square to protest against what they saw as “the media framing” of last week’s attacks.
They also carried slogans such as “Free Palestine.” At least one protester said, “No to antisemitism, no to Zionism, and no to genocide.”
Israel has vehemently denied carrying out genocide in Gaza, saying it responded to Hamas’ worst massacre on its soil since the Holocaust, or Shoah, on October 7, 2023, when some 1,200 people were killed in Israel.
Yet Amsterdam police has come under pressure over its perceived reluctance to protect Jewish people adequately, charges strongly denied by several officers.
MORE ARRESTS
“I predict many more arrests in the coming weeks,” said a police commander on condition of anonymity. “In addition, all the messages via social media are being examined,” he told Dutch daily De Telegraaf (The Telegraph).
Police said two investigations are underway, including one focusing on the perpetrators and one into a possible central plan behind the antisemitic hit-and-run attacks.
“These perpetrators of Arab descent do not always have a criminal record, which means we cannot properly determine what kind of person we are dealing with. It is partly the same group that misbehaves at fairs or in the nightlife,” a riot police officer stressed.
“We have also warned management in recent months that this will get out of hand at some point. Unfortunately, Jewish people are now the victims. This clearly crosses a line. This street terror must no longer be tolerated,” he added.
Police also denied suggestions by the Palestinian Authority and several Dutch media that Israeli soccer fans provoked the violence. They are “still shocked” by what happened on Thursday night in the capital of the Netherlands. “We have seen the ferocity of the attacks but also the cowardice to beat up groups of defenseless people in dark alleys and streets. It was disgusting.”
“I was there all day and evening,” said a riot police officer. “I do not recognize myself at all in the image painted by some that Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters provoked or provoked violence. On the contrary. When pro-Israel stickers were put up on Amsterdam’s Dam Square, and we explained that this was our national war memorial, everything was neatly removed.”
A colleague added: “If the entire city is filled with thousands of Israeli supporters and a Palestinian flag is deliberately hung out of the window on [a house at the nearby central street of] Rokin, who is provoking who?”
INVESTIGATION UNDERWAY
A police officer said about an incident with a taxi driver who Jewish supporters allegedly assaulted: “We are still investigating what exactly happened, but the reaction of a group of drivers to then attack a group of Israelis in the Casino [where many Jews were hiding] was completely out of line. The people who were inside had nothing to do with that incident.”
Yet those words did little to calm down
Rob Oudkerk who “can name quite a few things that Jews” like himself “would rather not do for now. Putting on a yarmulke, wearing a Star of David on a chain, going to the kosher shop” in [the Amsterdam area of] Buitenveldert now that the Sabbath is over. “These seem like small things, but they are not,” insisted the former Dutch leftist Labour Party (PvdA) lawmaker and deputy mayor.
He rolled up his shirt sleeve to show a tattoo on his forearm. “It says ‘trust’ in Hebrew. If it had been summer, I would have covered it.” Later this weekend, he took a taxi to a TV appearance in the Dutch town of Hilversum. “I have never wondered who will actually be behind the wheel, but now I do.”
Oudkerk, who previously served as a deputy mayor of Amsterdam for education, stressed that “Jews feel anxious and lonely. You get the feeling that you have no one to turn to and are abandoned in your own city.”
Samuel de Leeuw recognizes that feeling of loneliness. “I always thought that non-Jews would stand around us and say: stay away from them. But that is not the case.”
He teaches Holocaust education at schools andtells how he was placed with a foster family in Limburg province as a 1-year-old boy.
His entire family was deported, and only his mother came back from the Nazi death camps. “I always thought: this will never happen again. It did.”
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