Dutch Jews struggle with the ‘weaponization’ of their fear after an attack on Israelis

Members of Amsterdam’s small Jewish community confronted the city’s deputy mayor on Friday morning, demanding answers for the failure to prevent violent attacks on Israeli football fans the night before, which international Jewish organizations and leaders had condemned as a pogrom.

“My parents are terrified, I am terrified,” one man shouted in Dutch during the meeting. ‘I have a little daughter – what the hell will happen?’

An older Jewish man, dressed in a winter coat, replied: “Nothing, absolutely nothing. Nothing since October 7.”

It was an expression of the fear felt by many of Amsterdam’s estimated 15,000 Jewish residents the day after five Israeli supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv were hospitalized in the city for a match against Ajax following attacks by Arab and Muslim attackers who the mayor called ‘anti-Semitic hits’. -and-run-squads.”

Videos on social media showed men running through the streets beating Israelis and shooting fireworks at them. “Gaza!” shouts a man setting off fireworks one clip. “Now you know what it feels like.” A Dutch blog screenshots posted from a WhatsApp group in which people discuss a “Jew hunt” before the attacks.

But some Dutch Jews noted that roving gangs of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans had plundered the city center on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings while chanting racist anti-Arab slogans, climbing a facade to snatch a Palestinian flag from the second floor of an apartment building and attacked a building. Moroccan taxi driver.

Jelle Ziljstra, who is Jewish and works as a community organizer in Amsterdam, posted a message that went viral on Instagram stating that “multiple truths can exist at the same time.” It highlighted the attacks on Israelis as well as images of fans chanting “F-Palestine” the night before.

“There was certainly anti-Semitism involved in some of the events that took place,” Ziljstra said in an interview. “Were Jews attacked in the streets? Yes, but those Jews were also violent hooligans.”

Vandalism and street attacks

Hundreds of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans traveled to Amsterdam this week for a Thursday evening match against Ajax, a top soccer team in the Netherlands that has long had warm ties with Israel and whose fans call themselves “Jews.”

Tori Eghermann, an American Jew who moved to Amsterdam 20 years ago, said she was walking along Dam Square in the city center on Thursday evening and saw Maccabi fans singing and lighting smoke bombs. “They were really incredibly well organized and enthusiastic,” she said.

Eghermann noted that violent clashes between local residents and racist football hooligans are not uncommon in Amsterdam. “It is not the case that football fan clubs are known for their peaceful presence in the community.”

The Israeli fans later collided with pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanting “F-you Palestine” and shouting, “Leave the IDF to the Arabs.”

Ori Goldberg, a left-wing Israeli academic who follows sports culture, said Maccabi Tel Aviv does not have a reputation for right-wing politics like the infamous Beitar Jerusalem, whose fans have long prevented the team’s owners from signing Arab players.

“Maccabi Tel Aviv is the mainstream of the mainstream,” Goldberg said. “But the behavior of the fans right now is very Israeli: the world hates us anyway because the world hates Jews, so we will take our fight and our cause with us wherever we go.”

It was unclear to what extent the attacks that took place Thursday night – which included throwing an Israeli fan into a canal and forcing him to shout “Free Palestine” – were pre-planned, versus a spontaneous response to offensive behavior by Israeli fans. Israeli news media reported that hundreds of men gathered outside their hotel after the match and set up checkpoints where they demanded to see tourists’ passports.

“We don’t know if the people who were attacked last night were the same people who were chanting racist chants,” said Asjer Waterman, a rabbinical student in Amsterdam. “There is real evidence that people went hunting for Jews.”

Ami Shuman, a photographer for the right-wing Israeli newspaper Israel Hayomsaid he and his son were trapped as he tried to escape the violence on Thursday evening, and they eventually had to be taken back to their hotel by police.

“We saw violence, we saw people with black eyes, deep cuts under the eyes, we saw someone accidentally hit by a police officer, and a woman crying,” Shuman said. The times of Israel. “They came en masse, running through the alleys.”

Forced to answer for Israel

Waterman, who also works as a strategic advisor for a local nonprofit called Jewish Social Work, on Friday helped Israeli fans who had been volunteered to a safe location by a Jewish sports club in Amsterdam.

He noted that the violence appeared to be directed only against Israeli visitors, and not against Dutch Jews or Jewish institutions. But Waterman said many in the community were nevertheless shocked, especially after a year of dealing with a spike in anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activity in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel and the outbreak of war in Gaza.

Hundreds of protesters protested outside the opening of the city’s first Holocaust museum in March, which objected to the presence of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, but also accused Dutch Holocaust survivors of being “Zionist scum” and “baby murderers.”

Waterman said many Dutch Jews are treated as representatives of Israel, a special burden in a country with only 30,000 Jews. “You might be the only Jewish kid in your school and kids say, ‘Hey, what are you doing in Israel? Why are you killing children?’” he explained. “It can force you to defend things you don’t necessarily agree with.”

Anti-Semitic chants are also common in Dutch football stadiums. “Hamas, Hamas, Jews on the gas” used to be a popular cheer among fans of teams that played against Ajax, because of the association with Jews. It has fallen out of favor in recent years, but other derogatory songs have taken its place.

“I will speak to fans who assure me that they are not anti-Semitic, they only do it because of Ajax, but there are certainly other factors,” said Boaz Krone, a social worker in Amsterdam.

Meanwhile, far-right Dutch politicians, who took control of the government in July, have positioned themselves as protectors of Dutch Jews by seizing on the anti-Semitism of the country’s Arab and Muslim residents.

“A pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam,” Geert Wilders, leader of one of the parties in the government coalition, said on the social platform X (formerly Twitter) on Friday. “We have become the Gaza of Europe.”

This kind of rhetoric hurts Ziljstra, the community organizer whose Instagram post went viral. He is frustrated by the left’s insistence that violence against Israelis was justified — and by politicians like Wilders who decontextualize the attacks to push an agenda that most of the country’s Jews do not support.

“I really think we should try to stay healthy and not allow our pain and trauma to be weaponized in this way,” he said.