Thread by @GordonDarroch

So we're slowly getting a picture of what happened in Amsterdam last night and this morning. An explosive blend of football hooliganism, racism, anti-Semitism and cynical political opportunism.

The first major flashpoint was in the late afternoon when Maccabi Al Haifa supporters beat up a taxi driver in the street.
Other taxi drivers put the word around and confronted Maccabi fans outside a casino. Police cordoned off the casion to protect them. rtl.nl/nieuws/binnenl…

Elsewhere there were reports of Israeli supporters roaming the streets and subways looking for fights, tearing down Palestinian flags and shouting obscenities against Arabs.

https://x.com/ASE/status/1854864070584713611

None of this excuses the anti-Semitic violence that happened later. It just shows that it didn't come out of nowhere and wasn't motivated solely by blind hatred.
It also addresses a couple of lies: first, that Dutch police "weren't interested" in protecting Israeli fans.

And secondly, that the taxi drivers were organising a premeditated pogrom. It was a vigilante action that was triggered by an assault on a colleague.
To be clear: I'm not a supporter of vigilantism.

There was also a pro-Palestinian protest taking place against the match. This was moved from Dam Square, where the Maccabi fans were gathered, following the casino incident. Some demonstrators tried to get to the square; police made two arrests. at5.nl/artikelen/2294…

Demonstrators also tried to encroach on the Johan Cruyff Arena at the start of the game. Riot police pushed them back and kettled them in Bijlmerplein. Around 20 people were arrested: some were carrying fireworks.

After the game Maccabi fans were targeted by youths on scooters who picked out anyone wearing yelllow (the club's colours), until 4am. City mayor Femke Halsema called them "hit and run" attacks. Police chief Peter Holla said this was the worst violence.
nos.nl/artikel/254371…

The match went ahead. Ajax won 5-0. Maccabi fans chanted and let off fireworks during a minute's silence for the victims of the floods in Valencia. Spanish media were understandably furious about this – though, again, it doesn't excuse what went on later.

https://x.com/BartvanHorck/status/1854916643563901418

Maccabi fans described being targeted by groups of youths, on scooters or travelling by taxi, as well as explosions and "loud Arabic music" outside their hotels. ad.nl/binnenland/mac…

There was a lot of chatter about the attacks on Thursday night, but the outrage didn't really get going until Friday, when Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was flying in military rescue teams on two planes to evacuate Israeli citizens.
nos.nl/artikel/254366…

There was a lot of confusion about this. At one stage Israel said it had tried to send an aircraft but was denied permission. Schiphol airport said it wasn't expecting any unscheduled flights. In the end the planes never came and the Maccabi fans went home on regular flights.

Reports circulated that Israelis had gone missing in Amsterdam or been taken hostage, or were victims of mass attacks. In the end five people were reported injured, police made 62 arrests, everyone missing was accounted for and there were no hostages.

It's quite a stretch to call a few dozen anti-Semitic incidents causing a total of five injuries a "pogrom", but it's a stretch that the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, had no hesitation making. And this was the point when things got really heated. timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry…

The Dutch prime minister, Dick Schoof, said he was "horrified by the anti-Semitic attacks on Israeli citizens", while King Willem-Alexander said he and Queen Maxima were "shocked by the violence against Israeli supporters who are guests in our country."

https://x.com/koninklijkhuis/status/1854846329765122055

In Herzog's version of the call the king said: "We failed the Jewish community of. the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again." There's no record of this phrase in any statement by the royal household but it made lots of headlines. timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry…

Schoof was eventually pressured into coming home early from a summit in Budapest – a supremely pointless gesture, given that the violence was over, most fans had gone home and even Herzog had given up on acting as if his citizens needed to be evacuated from the depths of hell.

And, of course, the whole incident was grist to the mill of Geert Wilders, who used the words "pogrom" and "Jew hunt" to ramp up his campaign of hatred against Muslims and demand the resignation of the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema.

If you want a measure of how cynical this is, recall that Wilders has a criminal record for making a speech in which he promised to cull the Moroccan population of the Netherlands. politico.eu/article/geert-…

Another curious detail: Israel said that the Dutch authorities had been warned in advance about plans for violent demonstrations before the match, but Halsema directly disputed this, saying there had been no warning from the intelligence service. timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry…

What was galling was Halsema's statement that Maccabi's fans were not considered violent and the match was not deemed to be high-risk in footballing terms. According to the New Israel Fund, they're one of the most racist sets of supporters in the country. haaretz.com/2003-06-11/ty-…

Fifteen of their fans were arrested in Athens at a European match two years ago for carrying smoke bombs, fireworks and flares. They even caused a volleyball match to be suspended last year. worldofvolley.com/latest_news/ce…

In the end, it comes down to this. If you're nit-picking about whether these attacks were anti-Semitic, you're doing yourself no favours. They were. There's enough circumstantial evidence in the statements by the city council, the police, the prime minister and the king.

And if you can't see that running round the city picking out random Jews to attack as retaliation for an incident they had nothing to do with isn't anti-Semitic, there's no saving you.

But if you call this scale of violence, ugly as it is, a pogrom, you're doing Geert Wilders's work for him. The reason this became an international incident is that, 43,000 dead Palestinians later, we still expect Herzog and Netanyahu to give a truthful or proportionate response.

Welcome to the world of Trump 2.0, where there are no adults left in the room and the toddlers are running around with matches and cans of petrol. It's going to be like this for at least four years, and that's if we're lucky.

"The aim of the language of the Third Reich is to expand the popular stratum in everyone to such an extent that the thinking stratum is suffocated."
Victor Klemperer, May 23, 1938.