Antisemitic attacks prompt emergency flights for Israeli soccer fans

Authorities in Amsterdam on Friday were investigating what they called antisemitic attacks on Israeli soccer fans that took place amid a charged atmosphere surrounding a soccer match involving a visiting Israeli team.

Police in Amsterdam said at least 62 people had been arrested in connection with attacks in the city, which unfolded over two tense days that saw people gather in support of the Israeli team while others protested its presence.

Dutch police said the violence included assaults on Israeli fans by people, some riding scooters, who kicked and beat them in “hit and runs.”

Most of those arrested were later released, police in Amsterdam said, though 10 people remained in custody as of Friday afternoon. Five Israelis who had been hospitalized with injuries were discharged, police said, and between 20 and 30 others sustained light injuries.

Concerned about the safety of its citizens, Israel’s government warned fans in Amsterdam to stay off the streets and helped arrange at least three flights to bring Israeli citizens home — an unusual move since the national airline, El Al, normally does not operate on the Sabbath.

Street disturbances in Amsterdam, the Dutch capital, had been building since Wednesday night, a day before the match between an Israeli club, Maccabi Tel Aviv, and the Dutch team Ajax. Some people angered by the war in the Gaza Strip were upset that the Israeli team and their supporters had come to the city, and a protest had been planned for Thursday.

Dutch police said that the night before the game Israeli fans had vandalized a taxi and burned a Palestinian flag. Officers later intervened to protect a group of several hundred Israeli supporters inside an Amsterdam casino after what police described as an online call among taxi drivers to mobilize themselves.

On game day, the tension and violence continued. Videos showed Israeli fans on their way to the match shouting an anti-Arab chant as they were escorted by police near Amsterdam’s central train station. At the stadium, police said, riot police units and mounted officers were required to keep pro-Palestinian groups and Israeli fans apart.

The game went on largely without incident, but confrontations and assaults on Israeli fans took place in several parts of the city in the hours after the match.

More than 800 police officers had been mobilized throughout the city in anticipation of the game, Dutch authorities said, an extraordinarily large number that reflected trepidation about the potential collision of Israeli fans and supporters of the Palestinian cause in a city with a significant Muslim population.

“Because of an announced pro-Palestinian demonstration, in combination with the commemoration of Kristallnacht, we foresaw risks to public order,” Peter Holla, Amsterdam’s police chief, said in a reference to a 1938 anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany.

The violence appeared to be the product of multiple combustible forces in Europe: a rise in antisemitism on the Continent, the charged atmosphere and unrest that can accompany top-flight soccer matches and tensions over the yearlong Israeli military offensive in Gaza that followed the deadly Hamas attack on Israel.

Those tensions have been on display in European soccer this week. In France on Tuesday, supporters of Paris Saint-Germain unveiled a 50-meter-long banner reading “Free Palestine” at their Champions League match. And in Turkey on Thursday, fans of one of Istanbul’s biggest teams did the same.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that he had spoken with his Dutch counterpart, Dick Schoof, after the violence. Schoof, in a social media post early Friday, condemned what he said were “completely unacceptable antisemitic attacks on Israelis.”

Schoof and other Dutch officials vowed to track down and prosecute anyone involved. Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema said at a news conference that the violence “has nothing to do with protest, or demonstration — it was a crime.”

“Hateful, antisemitic rioters and criminals harassed and beat up Israeli visitors who were guests in our city,” she added.

Gideon Saar, Israel’s newly appointed foreign minister, traveled to the Netherlands on Friday to meet with his Dutch counterpart as well as with Israelis and members of the Jewish community.

Videos circulating on social media and a video distributed by The Associated Press provided a glimpse of the tensions in the hours before the game. In the AP clip, dozens of men wearing scarves with the colors of Maccabi are seen gathering on Thursday at Amsterdam’s central Dam Square, where flares are being lit amid a heavy police presence.

Ten people were arrested there before the game, police said, mostly on charges of disrupting public order.

At a pro-Palestinian protest in another part of the city, about 30 people were arrested on charges of disrupting public order and setting off fireworks at the police, police said.

Videos on social media after the match showed violent clashes on the city’s streets. One video verified by Reuters captured a crowd of more than a dozen men appearing to attack someone near the city center early Friday. The crowd dispersed when emergency sirens could be heard.

“Mobs chanted anti-Israel slogans and proudly shared videos of their violent acts on social media — kicking, beating, even running over Israeli citizens,” the Israeli Embassy in the Netherlands said on social media.

As the attacks went on, Israel warned its citizens in Amsterdam to stay off the streets and remain in their hotel rooms. Maccabi Tel Aviv warned its fans not to show Israeli or Jewish symbols outside, and to fly back to Israel as soon as they could.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog wrote on social media that the images and videos of the violence were of the sort that “we had hoped never to see again.”

Geert Wilders, the head of the biggest party in the Dutch parliament and known for anti-Muslim vitriol, wrote on social media after the attacks on Israeli fans that he was “ashamed that this can happen in the Netherlands.” Using incendiary language in both English and Dutch, he demanded that “criminal Muslims” be deported, and criticized the government for not doing enough to protect the Israeli fans.

Investigators are now combing through public closed-circuit television feeds, and they have asked witnesses to share any videos they filmed during the attacks.

”We are in the process of laying out the facts and investigating antisemitic motives,” Holla said at the news conference.

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands spoke with Herzog on Friday morning.

“Our history has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse, with horrific consequences,” the king said in a statement.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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