Ultra-strengthened safety device. Four thousand agents mobilized including police and gendarmes, of which 2,500 around the stadium and 1,500 distributed along the streets and means of transport. Tonight’s France-Israel match at the Stade de France in Saint Denis, just outside Paris, fifth day of the Nations League, is frightening. The shocking images from Amsterdam are too fresh, where a week ago the world witnessed one of the darkest pages in recent European history: the brutal attack, at the end of the match, by the Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv after the match against Dutch Ajax , an act of anti-Semitism that Israeli President Herzog defined as a “pogrom” and for which the Dutch King Willem-Alexander apologized, speaking of “failure, as with the Shoah”.
The match scares the authorities of the two countries involved so much so that, after Prime Minister Netanyahu’s suggestion to Israeli fans to avoid Paris, 20 thousand people are expected in the stands, against the 80 thousand that the stadium can hold. There will be five fans for each policeman and in the stands the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Michel Barnier and former President Nicolas Sarkozy, proving that France does not give in to anti-Semitism. Israeli Finance Minister and far-right leader Bezalel Smotrich resigned after protests at home.
“There is a context and there are tensions that make this match a high-risk event,” explained Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez, adding that the authorities “will not tolerate” any violence. “It’s already very serious that we can’t go to a match in peace,” complains some French citizens of the Jewish religion. Serena, on the other hand, is the Israeli national team, who trains in a secret location: «We feel quite safe here, there are many security forces around us», commented coach Ran Ben Shimon.
French ace Kylian Mbappé will be absent from the field. The France coach, Didier Deschamps, explained the decision not to call him up with a dry “because it’s better this way” and then clarified: “It’s not for non-sporting reasons” (Mbappé has been under investigation for rape in Sweden since mid-October). The conspiracy immediately began. Radio J, the Jewish community’s broadcaster, underlined that «there is something strange in this story. Mbappé will miss two matches for the national team this year, and both are against Israel. I hope for him that it isn’t for political reasons.” In reality the other match is the one on November 17th against Italy, but that was enough to insinuate some suspicions (and for now there are many others circulating about Mbappé linked to his state of mental health).
What ends up in the dock in the political debate is the extreme gauche of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his France Insoumise, which has long been accused of anti-Semitism, even more so after 7 October and the war in Gaza. If French politics unanimously condemned the events in Amsterdam, Mélenchon’s party wanted to highlight the Israeli “provocations”, “the racist chants” and “the torn Palestinian flags” that preceded the beatings. MP Raphaël Arnault remarked that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans “are famous for hosting the largest fringes of far-right, racist and violent hooligans.”
“They didn’t come to Amsterdam to pick daffodils,” he said. The Socialists were outraged by his words: «This is how violence is justified – commented MP Jérôme Guedj – It becomes worrying when it is implied: they asked for it…».
