First report on Amsterdam pogrom discusses “Israeli hooliganism”
Police officers clash with protestors during a demonstration on Dam Square on Nov. 10, 2024. Photo by Robin van Lonkhuijsen/ANP/AFP via Getty Images.
(JNS) — In its first report on the mass assaults on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam, the city’s municipality has accused them of chanting “hateful and racist songs against Arabs.”
This language, which appeared in the fifth sentence of the 12-page report published on Nov. 11, marked a shift from city officials’ rhetoric so far, including Mayor Femke Halsema’s statement that “there is no excuse” for the assaults.
Herman Loonstein, a prominent Dutch-Jewish lawyer, accused the municipality of victim-blaming, telling JNS that the document suggests that “the Jews did it.”
The report, titled, “Violence in Amsterdam Around the Ajax-Maccabi Match,” was published ahead of a debate scheduled for Nov. 12 about the events of Nov. 7, when at least 100 Arabs perpetrated a coordinated series of assaults against Israeli soccer fans following a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local Ajax team.
It was the largest-scale series of antisemitic incidents in the Netherlands since the Holocaust and one of the largest events of its kind in Europe in recent decades.
The report’s release coincided with a fresh wave of unrest in Amsterdam that featured the torching of a tram amid antisemitic shouts about “cancer Jews” and anti-Israel protest actions across Amsterdam and Utrecht.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the Nov. 7 event a “pogrom,” as did many locals, including Geert Wilders, the leader of the Netherlands’ largest political party and ruling coalition partner. Wilders tweeted following the tram’s torching: “First a Jew hunt, now intifada.” He has called for deporting all perpetrators of the Nov. 7 assaults.
Prime Minister of the Netherlands Dick Schoof reportedly called the attacks a source of “shame,” as did Dutch King Willem-Alexander, who referenced the abandonment and near annihilation of Dutch Jewry during the Holocaust.
Yet amid intense media coverage of the assaults locally and internationally, some voices criticized the Israelis and asserted or suggested that they had instigated the violence.
The introduction of the report by the municipality reads: “On Nov. 8, the world awoke to terrible images from the pitch-black night Amsterdam had experienced. Four days later, anger and fear and disbelief are still felt. Images of Israeli soccer fans chased, assaulted and abused. Screenshots of antisemitic messages like the call for a ‘Jew hunt.’ Films of hateful and racist chants against ‘Arabs.’ Of pulling down and burning of a Palestinian flag and targeted assaults of Jewish and Israeli fans, featuring many antisemitic statements. With regards to this, city authorities declare that one party’s violence is never an excuse to more violence. Our city’s heart bleeds due to these events. Amsterdam residents everywhere feel pain.”
“It’s a hopelessly naive report, a terrible piece of bureaucratic-speak,” Rabbi Meir Villegas Henriquez told JNS. He called it “cover for officials to not take responsibility.”
Loonstein, the lawyer, noted that the municipality’s reference to the behavior of Maccabi fans fails to explain why hundreds of people on Nov. 10 defied a ban on anti-Israel protests on the Dam, which led riot police to arrest dozens. It also does not explain why dozens of people participated in rioting on the night of Nov. 11, where a tram was torched on 40-45 Square, named for the victims of the Nazi occupation, he said.
“I haven’t heard yet that the Jews also torched the tram yesterday,” said Loonstein.
In the report’s timeline, Maccabi fans were “walking in a large group around midnight near Dam Square, some with sticks, and causing vandalism.” After that, “problems began involving small groups of rioters spread out across the center. They staged violent hit-and-run actions” against Israelis.
Several eyewitnesses told JNS that groups of Arab men were scanning the city center for Israelis systematically and not in response to any violence by Maccabi supporters that they’d witnessed. Three riot police officers who were on the streets of the city center the night of Nov. 7 told the De Telegraaf daily on Nov. 10 that the Maccabi fans had not acted violently.
“I absolutely don’t see why it’s being claimed that Maccabi fans were out to stage confrontations, the opposite is true,” one officer told the Dutch daily on condition of anonymity.
Amsterdam Police Chief Peter Holla on Nov. 8 said at a press conference that Israelis had damaged a taxi cab and stolen a Palestinian flag in the city center. One of the riot police officers interviewed by De Telegraaf said the flag had been hung prominently and deliberately to provoke the Israelis. Another police officer said that the circumstances surrounding an incident involving a taxi were not yet clear.
The police report says a group of taxi drivers “was mobilized” and headed towards the Holland Casino, where some 400 Israelis were present. “Police led out the Israelis to avoid a large-scale confrontation,” the report said. It did not say whether the taxi that was allegedly damaged was part of the “mobilization.”
Earlier in the day, footage surfaced online of two men attempting to burn a Palestinian and a Dutch flag at a soccer stadium. Men were chanting “Gaza is a cemetery” in the background. The dozens of people in the video are wearing short-sleeved T-shirts in sunny weather and clear skies. Amsterdam was heavily overcast on Nov. 7, with temperatures around 11°C (51.8°F) in the daytime.
Footage also showed dozens of men shouting “Let the IDF win” and “F**k the Arabs” in Hebrew as they entered a metro station after sunset.
Jazie Veldhuyzen, a councilman on the City Council of Amsterdam for the BIJ1 party, which says it promotes anti-racist policies but has often been accused of espousing antisemitism, is one of several Dutch politicians and opinion shapers who have blamed the Maccabi fans for the assault against them.
“Video footage of armed Maccabi hooligans, attacking people from Amsterdam that look like Arabs or Muslims with metal pipes, stones and fireworks. All under the protection of the Dutch police. Here you have your ‘victims,’” tweeted Veldhuyzen. He was among those present at the illegal demonstration Sunday at Dam Square. Lucas Winnips, a senior municipal adviser, was also present.
On Nov. 8, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema, who was a leader of the left-wing D66 Party, was asked by a journalist at a press conference about the alleged provocations by Israelis. She replied: “There can be no excuse for what happened.” Asked as to reports that the perpetrators were all Arab or Muslim, she said: “This is an issue that needs to be researched. The background and ethnicity of people, that’s not something I can comment on right now, nor do I want to.”
On X, De Telegraaf journalist Wierd Duk anticipated an inversion of the narrative about Nov. 7 which would turn the Israelis from victims to perpetrators. “From this evening on, there will be a new dominant narrative in media, the political echelon and public opinion,” he tweeted on Nov. 10. “The framing is that the Jews again brought it on themselves — in this case that Maccabi hooligans misbehaved terribly, which is true — prompting our Moroccan-Islamist street heroes to react appropriately, with a few minor excesses here and there.”
Police arrested 62 people before and after the assaults, but none during them, police officials confirmed on Nov. 10. Of those, 10 were Israeli residents, 49 were residents of the Netherlands and the residence of the remaining three was still being determined, according to the report. Currently, only four people are in custody, all of them Dutch. Police or prosecutors are looking into taking legal action against only 11 people, the report said. It did not say whether those suspects facing potential prosecution were Israeli or Dutch.
The report stated that police and city authorities had taken “extensive action” to avoid violence. It does not name any failures in their actions, stating that these may be outlined in independent research into the events of Nov. 7.
The document notes that, despite efforts to avoid violence, “nasty incidents happen regularly in Amsterdam, affecting Jews but also increasingly Muslims, Palestinians and other minority groups.”
In the conclusions of the report, the authors wrote: “What has happened in recent days is the result of antisemitism, hooliganism, and anger over the war in Israel and Palestine and other countries in the Middle East.” The report also said the ethnic identities of the perpetrators will be looked into in the independent research of the events of Nov. 7.
On Nov. 11, police in Belgium arrested six suspected copycats of the Amsterdam assaults who are suspected of planning, using instant messaging, to attack ultra-Orthodox Jews.
The assaults in Amsterdam happened on the eve of the anniversary of the Kristallnacht Nazi pogroms of 1938 in the Third Reich.
Some victims of the Nov. 7 assaults were made to beg for mercy on their knees and say “Free Palestine.” Others, including at least one woman, were set upon by men without any verbal exchange. At least one man jumped into a canal to escape his attackers; another was hit by a vehicle. According to reports, attackers asked to check the passports of people they confronted on the street.
About 25 people were hurt during the assaults, with injuries ranging from moderate to minor.
As many as 2,000 Israelis returned to Israel on eight emergency flights out of Amsterdam over the weekend, El Al, Israel’s flag carrier airline, reported.
Following the Hamas-led onslaught on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and abducted another 251, Israel went to war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s critics in Europe have accused it of genocide, including at weekly rallies in European capitals that have featured numerous calls for violence against Israelis and Jews. Several countries reported an explosion in recorded antisemitic incidents. In the Netherlands, the Center for Information and Documentation recorded an increase of 245 percent in antisemitic incidents in 2023 over 2022.
