Fights, insults, manhunts, destruction of windows and street furniture: Amsterdam was the scene, on the night of Thursday November 7 to Friday November 8, of violent clashes between pro-Palestinian sympathizers and Israeli supporters of Maccabi Tel- Aviv, who met Ajax, the club from the Dutch capital, in the Europa Football League. Commenting on the clashes, Femke Halsema, the city's environmentalist mayor, said on Friday: “It was a dark night. » She immediately announced a ban on all demonstrations in the city and the establishment of preventive searches, in an attempt to prevent other scenes of violence in the coming days.
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According to authorities, around thirty people were slightly injured and five were briefly hospitalized. Sixty-two people were arrested and ten indicted. The authorities denied the rumors of kidnappings and disappearances which quickly circulated. Only an Israeli-Bulgarian national, residing in London, was missing on Friday.
The mobilization of some 800 police officers undoubtedly made it possible to avoid a heavier death toll but the events which occurred in the center of the capital, after the match won by Ajax (5-0) at the Johan Cruyff Arena, quickly mobilized the Israeli authorities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the situation as “terrible incident”, while President Isaac Herzog denounced, on the X network, “an anti-Semitic pogrom”.
The Israeli Embassy in the United States, for its part, issued a press release on “horrible clashes reminiscent of Europe’s darkest history”. On Thursday, several hundred people gathered in Amsterdam to commemorate Kristallnacht, the pogroms carried out across Germany by the Nazis against the Jews on the night of November 9 to 10, 1938.
Strong police escort
Dutch authorities quickly condemned the events. While Prime Minister Dick Schoof castigated “totally unacceptable anti-Semitic acts”, King Willem-Alexander assured that “Jews must feel safe in the Netherlands, everywhere and always”. Emotions were also strong on the international scene. “No one should be subjected to discrimination or violence on the basis of their national, religious, ethnic or other origin”said Jeremy Laurence, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said “outraged” by these “despicable attacks”.
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