The Media Can't Figure Out Why Some Racist Israeli Soccer Hooligans Were Beaten Up [View all]

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://defector.com/the-media-cant-figure-out-why-some-racist-israeli-soccer-hooligans-were-beaten-up

After a few hours and several substantial edits, the Times' article about Thursday's events has something approaching a comprehensive picture of what went down—though to get it, you still have to patch together a timeline from the facts scattered throughout the article. It all started on Wednesday, the day before the match, when a sizable number of Maccabi fans arrived into Amsterdam to watch their team take on Ajax in the Europa League. Coinciding with the Maccabi fans' arrival, pro-Palestinian activists assembled in Dam Square in protest of Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.

Groups of Maccabi fans reportedly went through the city, confronting the pro-Palestine protesters and generally causing trouble. Videos show Maccabi fans tearing down Palestine flags from the windows of private residences. In one such video, you can hear people serenading the flag-ripper with "Fuck you, Palestine." Per the NYT, Amsterdam police say some Israeli fans burned one Palestine flag and also vandalized a taxi. One Twitter account posted a video that purportedly shows a Maccabi fan smashing a taxi with a chain.

Tensions remained high going into Thursday, the day of the match. Maccabi fans again took to the streets, at times chanting racist phrases like "Death to the Arabs." One chant heard on video goes "Let the IDF win, we will fuck the Arabs." Lyrics of that same Maccabi song include "Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there." A photographer spotted one Maccabi fan unfurling a Make America Great Again flag. These scenes led to further clashes with pro-Palestine protesters. Several videos going around social media show violence between locals and Maccabi fans. The following, widely shared video can be found in many news articles, often positioned as evidence of Dutch violence on Israelis—a CNN World video explicitly presents the video as "Israeli football fans [being] beaten and injured"—even though the photographer who took the video has clarified that it depicts Maccabi fans attacking a Dutch man

In response to Wednesday's events, Amsterdam police were out in full force on Thursday, though their presence didn't prevent all of the violence. After the match itself, a 5-0 Ajax victory, during which Maccabi fans disrupted a moment of silence for victims of the recent floods in Valencia, Spain—the Spanish government has made efforts to distance itself from Israel in light of the attacks on Gaza—Dutch authorities escorted Maccabi fans onto a fleet of buses that took them from the stadium to their hotels. However, some Maccabi fans who lingered around the city found themselves set upon by groups of Dutchmen, who, as Amsterdam city council member Jazie Veldhuyzen put it in an interview with Al Jazeera English, "mobilized themselves" and "countered the attacks that started on Wednesday." On social media, there are videos that purportedly show these "scooter youth" fighting Maccabi fans.