QFour days after the serious incidents that occurred in Amsterdam, on the sidelines of a match between Maccabi Tel-Aviv and Ajax, the Dutch authorities are starting to see things more clearly. The provisional toll is 62 arrests and 25 injured, including five seriously.
Peter Holla, Amsterdam police chief, listed on Sunday what Maccabi supporters could be accused of. Some of them sang a song in praise of the Israeli armed forces, uttered insults towards Arabs, burned a Palestinian flag that they had taken down from a facade and damaged a taxi.
These are proven, indisputable facts, but they are minor facts in the register of excesses committed by European football supporters in recent years, including in the Netherlands. “ Hamas, Hamas, Jews on the gas “, that is to say “Hamas, Hamas, the Jews to the gas”, is a slogan often used by supporters of Feyenoord Rotterdam, whose aggressiveness is feared throughout the continent.
No clashes between supporters
Moreover, nothing says that the attacks suffered by the Israelis took place in response to physical or verbal violence by Maccabi supporters. There was also no clash with supporters of Ajax, a club known to be close to the Amsterdam Jewish community.
The Israelis were targeted by individuals, whom all witnesses described as overwhelmingly coming from the local Muslim community. This numbers several tens of thousands of people. After the match, which ended around 11 p.m., the attackers, most often masked, coordinated to attack isolated Israelis in groups, far from the stadium. This explains the imbalance in the balance sheet: all the injured are Israeli.
One of them had his leg broken, several were knocked to the ground, collectively, robbed of their wallets and phones. At least one Israeli was thrown into a canal and forced to shout “Free Palestine” to be allowed out of the water.
Femke Halsema, the mayor of Amsterdam, expressed her indignation, denouncing an “explosion of anti-Semitism”, assuring that the Amsterdam police would do everything to ensure the safety of its Jewish citizens.
Israeli targets
According to some media, the attacks targeting Israelis were coordinated the day before, on social networks. Taxis reportedly circulated the addresses of hotels where they were dropping off Israelis. The Central Representative Office of Dutch Jews (Het Centraal Joods Overleg, CJO) reported the testimony of several victims suggesting an organized attack, with numerous complicities. One of them said that, when he wanted to return to his hotel to collect his suitcase, “groups of young people were waiting for him in front of the hotel”.
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
The Dutch authorities have not said anything about this yet. They launched a call for witnesses to try to reconstruct the course of the evening.
Some 800 police officers were deployed to secure the match. There will be 4,000 for the France-Israel match on Thursday, November 14, at the Stade de France. The Israeli authorities have advised their nationals not to go there. According to our information, tickets for the match were selling poorly at the start of the week.
