Tel Aviv, Israel – A plane bringing Israeli football supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic”.
Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a Europa League football tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israel Airports Authority said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered the Mossad spy agency to draw up a plan to prevent unrest at sporting events in the future.
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema said the city had been “deeply damaged” by “hateful anti-Semitic rioters” who hunted down and attacked fans of Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv in a night of “unbearable” violence.
Halsema described gangs on scooters targeting fans of the Israeli club, beating and kicking them in “hit-and-run” assaults, leaving five people hospitalised.
“This is an outburst of anti-Semitism that I hope to never see again,” Halsema said, adding that she was “ashamed” by the violence.
Despite a “sporting” atmosphere in the ground and a huge police presence, authorities were unable to stop the rapid attacks on fans in several parts of the city.
Fan Amit Ganor, 21, said he was attacked on the way from the railway station to his hotel.
“We were lucky enough to run and to manage to go to the hotel, but some guys in the streets weren’t able to do this so they got hit,” he told AFP at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.
“We came for a football match… We came to support our team and cheer them. The fact that I was attacked, only (for) being Jewish… makes no sense.”
‘Incidents on both sides’
Officers made 62 arrests in total but police chief Peter Holla said the hit-and-run tactics of the rioters made it “exceptionally” difficult to prevent the attacks.
He said that 800 officers had been deployed, a very large number for Amsterdam, adding that “we spent weeks preparing” for the match.
The Palestine Football Association had a different take on the sequence of events in Amsterdam, insisting the violence had started with the “deplorable incitement to violence, anti-Palestinian racism, and Islamophobia expressed by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans”.
It said the Israeli fans had “attacked homes and shops displaying the Palestinian flag” and complained it was still waiting for “concrete action” by world football governing body FIFA in response to the extensive evidence it had presented.
Amsterdam’s police chief gave some support to the PFA’s allegations, saying there had been “incidents on both sides” on Wednesday, 24 hours before the match.
He said Maccabi supporters had “removed a flag from a facade on the Rokin and they destroyed a taxi”.
“A Palestinian flag was set on fire on the Dam,” he added, referring to Amsterdam’s central square.
In scenes that showed the tensions, unverified video on social media purportedly filmed on Thursday appeared to show some Maccabi fans chanting in Hebrew: “Let the IDF (army) win! We’ll fuck the Arabs!”
Israeli authorities urged their citizens in Amsterdam to stay in their hotels and avoid showing Israeli or Jewish symbols if they went outside.
UN ‘shocked’
Netanyahu’s office warned fans against attending a Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball match in the Italian city of Bologna on Friday, citing “calls… on social media to harm Israelis and Jews”.
In the end, there were no incidents at the EuroLeague match which Virtus Bologna won 84-77.
After the football-related violence, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof denounced the “terrible anti-Semitic attack”.
European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen said she was “outraged” by the “vile attacks”.
US President Joe Biden said the “despicable” attacks “echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted”.
UN chief Antonio Guterres was “shocked by the violence”, his spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay said. “He condemns all forms of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bigotry,” she added.
A pro-Palestinian rally against the Israeli football club’s visit was initially scheduled to take place near the stadium on Thursday, but was relocated by Amsterdam city council for security reasons.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history.
The world has since seen a spike in anti-Semitic attacks to levels unseen in years, as well as a wave of solidarity with Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,508 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
In another potential football flashpoint, France are scheduled to play Israel in Paris next Thursday.
France’s interior minister said the match would go ahead as planned.