Israeli soccer fans on Friday recounted their terror when mobs of antisemitic rioters targeted and beat up Israelis Thursday, and said the police failed to protect them, in what was described as a twenty-first century “pogrom.”
Israeli officials said 10 Israelis were injured in the hours of overnight violence, which the victims said was perpetrated largely by local Muslims and Arabs, with hundreds more people reportedly besieged in their hotels and fearing they could be attacked again when trying to reach their flights home. The Israelis were mainly fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv, who came to watch their team play against Ajax in the city.
Amsterdam police said five people were hospitalized and 62 arrested after authorities said antisemitic rioters attacked Israeli supporters following the soccer match.
The police said that they had started a major investigation into multiple violent incidents. Amid rumors that some people had been taken hostage, officials said there was no sign of this, and Israeli authorities said all Israelis were accounted for.
Two Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, Aviv and Harel, told the Kan public broadcaster: “There was a police force standing on the side, not doing too much when there was some kind of protest. Everything was planned down to the last detail. Each of us had been to the Netherlands four times; we had never felt like this before.
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“We saw people on the ground in the middle of the road. They arrived by car, by bike, they kicked. Some came in taxis, so we had trouble finding a taxi driver to get out of there. I suggested we hide any signs that could identify us and just pass through them, so they wouldn’t suspect us.”
Footage posted to social media shows anti-Israel assailants attacking fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv after a soccer game in Amsterdam on November 8, 2024. (Social media/X; used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
“It was a pogrom. We were abandoned by the Amsterdam police. Until other Israelis arrived at Dam Square and drove away the rioters, an hour and a half from the start of the event, the Amsterdam police didn’t lift a finger,” Dan Kopleh, an eyewitness, told Kan.
Footage from the scene screened on Israeli television included a video clip in which an assailant asked an Israeli where he was from and attacked him while shouting “Free Palestine.”
“Three people approached me on the street and asked where I was from. I said, ‘Greece.’ One of them grabbed my hand and told me to show my ID. I pushed him away and went into the casino. I was with five friends,” recalled Maccabi fan Amit Amira.
“We stood at the entrance to the casino, and no one wanted to help us. They told us, ‘Why did you come here?’ In the end, an Arab Israeli helped us. He said, ‘No one will mess with you. You’re with me.’ He ordered two taxis for us, and we escaped.”
Nir, a 39-year-old fan who came to the game with his 69-year-old father, told Haaretz that the two witnessed three fans being run over. “After the car ran into them, the fans got up, and before we understood what was happening, about six or seven people in big black coats, probably Muslims, ran toward us. I immediately told my father to turn around quickly, and we went into the hotel.”
“I saw a car-ramming, kicking on the ground, fans being beaten up,” Dan, a Maccabi fan, told Haaretz. “They also tried to knock me down. They punched me in the ear, and when they saw they couldn’t knock me down, I ran away. There were fans trapped in shops, some went into homes to seek rescue and help. It was a pogrom. If there had been internet in ’38, that’s what Kristallnacht would have looked like.”
Ami Shuman, a photographer for Israel Hayom, came to the game with his son and got trapped at Dam Square, the main square in Amsterdam, with many other fans.
“[The police] locked us in a KFC restaurant until things calmed down, but it didn’t calm down. So the police decided to surround us at Dam Square, and they started transporting us in police vans to hotels. Our hotel was within walking distance, so I had to walk with my child, surrounded by police,” Shuman said.
“We saw violence, we saw people with black eyes, deep cuts under their eyes, we saw someone accidentally hit by a police officer, and a woman crying. They came in masses, running through the alleys,” Shuman continued.
“While we were in Dam Square, closed in by the police, some fans said, ‘You can take a taxi,’ but someone replied, ‘No way, my friend got into a taxi, and the driver took him to a side street so they could beat him up.’ The taxi drivers physically participated in these lynchings, really.”
Speaking to Channel 12 on his return to Israel on Friday afternoon, Maccabi fan Tomer Talias said he and other fans feared for their lives the entire time they were in Amsterdam. “There was trouble from the start,” he said. “That people were not killed was because of the fans [managing to save themselves] and not the police.”
He said the assailants were organized “like a terror group” and that “they waited for the fans of Maccabi everywhere… with clubs and knives. They had their faces covered, carried Palestinian flags.”
“They didn’t distinguish between women, child, men or the elderly,” he said. “They attacked everyone they saw as Israeli.”
Two Israelis who left Amsterdam on Friday morning and flew to London said to a Channel 12 reporter on arrival in the UK that they were attacked on Wednesday evening — a full day before the soccer game — by Arab gangs in the city.
The two, who gave their names as Oren And Or, said they were targeted as Israelis and beaten. They also said that they reported the attack to local police, who took no action.
A third Israeli, named Gal, told Channel 12 on arrival in London that he had been forced to the floor by assailants who had demanded to know if he was Israeli. He said he was beaten up by a gang of 8-10 people — “punched in the head; two teeth broken.” He said he “woke up in an ambulance covered in blood” and was told afterward that he was found in a pool of blood.
