On November 6 and 7, fans of the Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv rampaged through Amsterdam ahead of a match between their team and the Dutch football club Ajax. They assaulted local residents, attacked private property, destroyed symbols of Palestinian solidarity, and chanted racist, genocidal slogans that glorified the slaughter of children in Gaza and the death of all Arabs.
While the Israeli fans were provided with a police escort, pro-Palestine demonstrations were either cancelled or relocated. On the night of November 7, following the match, local residents responded to these events by attacking Maccabi fans. Five people were briefly hospitalised but later discharged and 62 people were arrested, 10 of whom were Israeli.
A letter, released by the Amsterdam City Council and recounting the events, noted that “from 01:30 onward [on Thursday night], reports of street violence rapidly declined”. The story could have ended there. It didn’t.
Overnight, the Israeli propaganda machine went into overdrive, and by Friday morning, the world awoke to news that “anti-Semitic squads” had gone on a “Jew hunt” in Amsterdam.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog denounced the “anti-Semitic pogrom”, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that military planes would be dispatched to evacuate Israeli citizens.
A wave of disinformation unleashed from Israel was replicated unchecked by Western media and the usual cohort of Western leaders, each outdoing the other at expressing the most outrage.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof condemned the “anti-Semitic attacks on Israeli citizens” and King Willem-Alexander lamented that “we failed the Jewish community … during World War II, and last night we failed again”. Amsterdam’s Mayor Femke Halsema condemned the “anti-Semitic” attacks on “Jewish visitors”, drawing comparisons with historic pogroms.
In the following days, the “pogrom” narrative fell apart, as more details and witness accounts surfaced. As the dust settled, one thing became clear: Palestinian solidarity is stronger than ever, and Zionism is crumbling.
‘Weaponisation of Jewish safety’
As major Western media outlets sought to portray the events of November 7 in the terms the Israeli government had outlined, many failed to stick to the facts. For example, while the violence was presented as “attacks on Jews”, no such attacks were reported against the local Jewish community.
On that day, a Kristallnacht commemoration, marking the pogroms against Jews in Germany in 1938, was held in peace. Throughout the day, no attack on a Jewish institution was reported.
What is more, the violence unleashed by the Maccabi fans on local residents was under-reported or not mentioned at all by Western mainstream media. The idea that perhaps what happened was in reaction to the rampage of the Maccabi fans, many of whom are Israeli Army reservists, who were glorifying genocide and chanting death to all Arabs, was never entertained.
Members of the local Jewish community who had critical opinions of what happened were not platformed.
Erev Rav, a Dutch-based anti-Zionist Jewish collective, for example, called the “weaponisation of Jewish safety incredibly alarming” on social media. In an interview, the author Peter Cohen, a former sociology professor at the University of Amsterdam, commented that “the Christian West has always constructed forms of anti-Semitism, mild and lethal, doing devastating harm to Jews in Europe”. But he was emphatic that “people who criticise Israel do just that”, adding “this does not make them anti-Semites!”.
The spin that Western mainstream media gave to the story – that “anti-Semitic” Arabs and Muslims attacked Jews – fits into the false but dominant narrative that anti-Semitism in Europe is now exclusively harboured by Arab and Muslim immigrants. This not only fuels and normalises anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia, but also downplays and obscures the very real and widespread European anti-Semitism.
Palestinian solidarity
Following the events of November 7, Amsterdam was placed under an emergency ordinance, which outlawed protests, prohibited face coverings and permitted “preventative searches” by the police. Local residents, particularly those who have regularly been demonstrating against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, perceived this as an undue and disproportionate infringement on their right to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.
In defiance of a protest ban, on November 10, hundreds of people gathered in Dam Square, including myself, in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Those who turned out to protest represented a broad spectrum of Amsterdam’s population – we were young, old, Dutch, international, Arab, Muslim, Black, brown, white, and anti-Zionist Israelis, united in our condemnation of Dutch complicity in Israel’s genocide.
The police responded by confiscating Palestinian flags, banners and musical instruments, arresting people at random, and charging with batons. One woman suffered a brain injury as a result of police violence, according to her lawyer.
Some 340 people, including myself, were detained on buses and driven through the city, accompanied by several police vans and motorcycles. One might have assumed from the spectacle that the buses were transporting hardened criminals. In fact, they were carrying unarmed peace activists detained for protesting genocide.
We were driven to an industrial estate on the outskirts of Amsterdam and released, apart from one Arab man who was arbitrarily singled out, arrested and taken away. Afterwards, all that remained of the police operation was a drone overhead that monitored our movements.
As we made our way back to the city centre, cars began circling around us and the drivers beckoned for us to get in. They introduced themselves as the Moroccan drivers whose colleague had been attacked by Maccabi fans on November 6. In a heartwarming act of solidarity after hours of police repression, they drove us back to Amsterdam, making sure that we got home safely.
Protesters again defied the demonstration ban on November 13, with 281 people being detained and more acts of police brutality.
Game over for Zionism
At first glance, the narrative that came to dominate political statements and media coverage of the violence in Amsterdam and the actions of the Dutch authorities may appear as another PR success for Israel. But it is not.
It is yet another indication that the demise of Zionism is close. We are witnessing a genocidal regime in the throes of madness, making a last-ditch effort to realise a biblical fantasy of creating a greater Israel by erasing the Palestinian people.
As historian Ilan Pappe predicted in a recent article, “once Israel realises the magnitude of the crisis, it will unleash ferocious and uninhibited force to try to contain it”. The desperate attempt to distort the reality of events in Amsterdam is indicative of this panic, and the willingness of Western leaders and mainstream media to go along with this insanity is unforgivable.
Following a week of unrest, the pro-Palestinian movement scored a small victory: Amsterdam’s City Council passed a motion recognising a “real and imminent genocide” in Gaza and calling on the government to act. Meanwhile, Mayor Femke backtracked on her “pogrom” statement, saying it was weaponised by Israeli and Dutch politicians. A cabinet minister and two parliamentarians resigned in response to racist comments made within the government, sparking a political crisis and exposing cracks in the far-right government.
Though painstakingly slow, the downfall of Zionism has begun, and calls for a liberated Palestine are louder than ever.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.