The Lies From The Amsterdam Riots Are More Dangerous Than You Think
Outright media lies are reinforcing the world’s silence about the genocide of Palestinians. The harm it is certain to do in the future to Jews could be just as bad.
Friends, this work is only possible with your support. If you can possibly become a paid subscriber, it’s more important than ever that you do. In these days, a s we face a next Trump administration, we all need to support work that is not going to bring back the same, failed Democratic opposition, but presses for something new. We need fact-based strategies that don’t repeat the mistakes of the past and are not beholden to flows of money from the wealthy and a consultant class that has every incentive to never admit its mistakes.
All your support is appreciated, and if you don’t have the means to pay for a subscription or donate in support, sharing this newsletter and helping to bring in more subscribers is great too!
To become a free or paid subscriber, just click this button.
You can also support this site with a one-time donation, rather than—or in addition to—a subscription, through CashApp, by clicking this button.
To share this newsletter with your friends, just click this button.
Coverage of events in and about Israel and Palestine has never been a strength of mainstream media, to say the very least. There are occasional exceptions, but on the whole, the Israeli narrative underscores most coverage, producing biased reporting and, in some cases, communicating blatantly false or at least wildly inaccurate versions of important stories.
But even in that context, the narrative that has emerged from the violence in Amsterdam before, during, and after a soccer match between Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv team and Amsterdam Ajax has been twisted into a dangerous, and wholly unreal, story.
What happened in Amsterdam and what was the context that led to it? These are the important questions, and they need answers now, because this incident is being used to trigger repressive measures, using the fight against antisemitism as a cover, a process which is dangerous not only to everyone’s civil liberties but threatens the lives of jews everywhere. It is also adding fuel to the already rising tides of anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, and antisemitic sentiment that have the entire world on the brink of a truly horrifying era.
The missing context
As is always the case, how episodes are framed goes a long way toward explaining how they are understood. What was the background of this incident?
The better accounts of these events offer a full description of the despicable and provocative behavior of the Maccabi TA fans. But Palestinian-Dutch analyst Mouin Rabbani does what few others have been doing, and provides the broader context.
First we must understand that while the most notoriously racist and vicious soccer fans in Israel are those of Beitar Yerushalayim, Maccabi TA runs a respectable second. Soccer hooliganism is, of course, not confined to Israel, but is a widespread phenomenon. But Maccabi TA’s fans are particularly obnoxious at their best. We saw them in Amsterdam at their worst.
Rabbani notes that there have been numerous efforts over many years to bar Israel from international soccer competition, based on its war crimes, apartheid nature, and human rights violations. The two organizations in charge, FIFA and UEFA, have employed a familiar double standard in their position that sports and politics should be separate.
“FIFA’s position on the strict separation between sports and politics is at least in theory an arguable proposition, but it was never consistently applied,” Rabbani wrote. “Fans of Ajax… routinely waved giant Israeli flags in support of their team, and were consistently able to do so freely. It was only when supporters of opposing clubs began waving Palestinian flags in response that action was taken by the football authorities to ban both symbols.
“More importantly, the reasoning adopted by FIFA and UEFA ultimately proved to be a complete sham enveloped in brazen hypocrisy. Specifically: within days of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, both FIFA and UEFA suspended the Russian Football Union and every single Russian football club. The entire process literally took less than a week. And in contrast to the suppression of gestures in support of the Palestinians, explicit solidarity with Ukraine, and the prominent display of the Ukrainian flag, were if anything encouraged.”
By contrast, the Palestine Football Association’s petition to bar Israel has been “under investigation” by FIFA since May. The double standard couldn’t be clearer.
The trouble in Amsterdam began well before the match. Ajax fans include many supporters of Israel, including a respectable number of Amsterdam’s Jewish population, but also has a substantial Muslim fan base. Police, thinking that this meant that confrontation between fans of the two clubs would not fight each other, took a lax approach to the Maccabi hoodlums. Instead, they decided on an approach of keeping Palestine solidarity protesters away from the stadium, and away from the places they expected the Maccabi thugs to congregate.
They clearly underestimated the determination of Maccabi fans to spew their hate and celebrate their genocide as far and wide in Amsterdam as they could.
Maccabi violence included racist chants of “Fuck You Palestine” and the usual “Death to Arabs.” Yet, perhaps emboldened by the police protection they were getting—which surely made them feel right at home—they expanded their actions into violence. As Rabbani reports one Dutch witness put it, “for days before the match, chat groups of pro-Palestinian activists had been warning members not to wear keffiyehs, Palestinian buttons, or other visibly Palestinian items in public because such people were being physically assaulted and spat upon by Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters.”
Maccabi fans started ripping down Palestinian flags from private residences, assaulted Arab Dutch cab drivers and others. Just prior to the soccer match, while the entire stadium was observing a moment of silence honoring those killed by the floods in Spain, Maccabi fans again started their hateful chanting and even set off fireworks.
By the time the match ended, and the Maccabi fans set out for their post-game rioting, local citizens had mobilized to confront them. As Amsterdam City Councilman Jazie Veldhuyzen said, “[Maccabi fans] began attacking houses of people in Amsterdam with Palestinian flags, so that’s actually where the violence started. As a reaction, Amsterdammers mobilized themselves and countered the attacks that started on Wednesday by the Maccabi hooligans.”
It seems fairly clear that those who went to confront the Maccabi mob had trouble on their mind, and were prepared with some tactics designed to evade the police that were, shamefully, acting as if they were Palestinian Authority police, exposing their own people to violence whilst protecting the marauders. Just like in the West Bank.
No doubt, if some of the video and intercepted WhatsApp and telegram messages are to be believed, there was some antisemitic language and there was violence and behavior that went beyond what can be considered acceptable. But when one considers that these Maccabi fans were singing proudly about there being “no schools in Gaza because all the children are dead,” the violence the Israeli thugs had been instigating, all in the context of Israel’s vicious genocide in Gaza, the deliberate provocations by the Israeli fans justified a reaction, even of some of that reaction, predictably, crossed the line.
The real crime
Yet, it could have been just one more ugly incident in a Europe that has been blazing new trails in the expansion of the far right xenophobia directed at brown-skinned immigrants, even those who, like the large Muslim population in the Netherlands, are there with legal protection or even citizenship. Antisemitism, as well—even though it is commonly disguised as a fanatical Zionism—is on a very sharp rise all over Europe, and the Netherlands is certainly no exception.
But it quickly became more than that. In an act that is not only exceptionally cynical even for Israel and its supporters, and a profound insult to every Jew who ever suffered a real antisemitic attack, the Israeli government quickly spun a fanciful tale about modern-day Nazis rampaging through Amsterdam, hunting down any Jew they could find.
As we’ve seen, this just isn’t what happened. In fact, I have yet to find a single report of a Jewish site or a Dutch Jew being attacked.
Amsterdam’s small Jewish community is certainly frightened, and they have every right to be. There has been a real rise in antisemitism in the Netherlands just like elsewhere in Europe. So when Amsterdam’s mayor affirms the message that marauding bands of Jew-haters are roaming the city on a “Jew hunt,” it’s going to frighten them. One Jewish Dutch citizen, speaking to The Forward, said he believed there was real antisemitism in the actions of the pro-Palestine crowd, but “he noted that the violence appeared to have been targeted only at the Israeli visitors, and not Dutch Jews or Jewish institutions.”
One can disagree with, even condemn, the actions of those who confronted the Israeli thugs, but this simply was not an antisemitic incident. It was very much anti-Israel both at its core and in its extremes.
Now, it is also true, that it has become increasingly common in Europe (and here in the US as well) for people to accuse Jews in their own country of being guilty of Israel’s crimes, and that is certainly unfair, and, yes, antisemitic. And for some of Amsterdam’s Jews, this may be a part of what they’re experiencing.
But can we just take a moment and give some perspective to this? The Maccabi thugs were rejoicing in the deaths of children! Not just tens, or scores, or hundreds of children, but untold thousands. We know the figure of dead children in Gaza is at least 16,000, and that doesn’t include those killed by hunger, disease, and other causes. Why does celebrating that—especially considering that some significant percentage of the Maccabi fans almost certainly served in the army of genocide in Gaza—not draw the kind of outrage we are seeing directed at those who were angered and responded to it?
Can we imagine for a moment what the reaction would be to such celebrations of the murders of Ukrainian children by Russia? Or of the many children slaughtered by the Nazis during the Holocaust? There is no political context that can possibly justify such glee at the wholesale massacre of children. Yet somehow, in the sole case of Israelis being the monsters who are celebrating so, the monsters become the victims.
The Israeli government laughably made a show of sending planes to “rescue” the poor, besieged Israelis in Amsterdam. No such effort was necessary, of course, and all the hooligans returned safely to Israel where they continued their celebration of genocide.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden, PM Justin Trudeau of Canada, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Netherlands King Willem-Alexander and many other western leaders disingenuously condemned the “antisemitic attacks” in Amsterdam, and the story was amplified was amplified all over the western press.
The distortion was epidemic. Sky News, for one example, reported in a balanced manner the accurate story of what happened in Amsterdam. Yet shortly after, that report was deleted and replaced with a wholly fictionalized one. Journalist Owen Jones has the receipts.
A Dutch reporter filmed the Maccabi thugs chasing and beating an innocent bystander. The video she shot was picked up by other news outlets, but was reported as “antisemitic rioters” beating up a Maccabi fan. It was just a shameless lie, for which, at least, one reporter did eventually apologize. But most have simply maintained the lie as truth.
That has to be taken seriously. We already live in a world where we can’t trust our media, but this raises that to a whole new level.
Researcher Marc Owen Jones has done an outstanding takedown of the western media coverage of this event. And, as Jones alludes to, the proximity of this event to the anniversary of Kristallnacht—the “Night of Broken Glass” that took place on November 9-10, 1938, where Nazi thugs and Hitler Youth rampaged throughout Germany destroying Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues, and assaulting and killing Jewish citizens—brought many comparisons to the Holocaust, to Anne Frank (who had hidden in Amsterdam), and to the Nazi era in general. It was effective in adding further pressure to frighten anyone in the Netherlands or outside away from trying to address the blatant lie that was manufactured.
The use of the Holocaust to cover for Israeli crimes has been going on for as long as there has been an Israel, and it has accelerated greatly in recent years, as more supporters of Israel recognize that there is no moral or practical argument to defend Israel’s apartheid nature and genocidal behavior. Bu this has seen the manipulation and the literal spitting in the face of the millions of Jews tortured, humiliated, and slaughtered by the Nazis to a new low.
Israel and the pro-Israel narrative has always benefited from media bias. Yet now, when evidence of the truth is so readily available, that has become less effective than it once was. Yet instead of recognizing this and determining to do their jobs as journalists, mainstream news outlets are resorting to ever more brazen and obvious lies. It’s a losing strategy in the long term, but the harm it is already doing in reinforcing the world’s silence about the genocide of Palestinians is devastating. The harm it is certain to do in the future to Jews could be just as bad.
My Latest Articles
The role of the Gaza genocide in Kamala Harris’s loss
The cause of Kamala Harris’ disastrous failure in the 2024 presidential election will forever be debated, but there are good reasons to believe the Israeli genocide in Gaza played a significant role.
Mondoweiss, November 9, 2024
VIDEO: The Past and the Present Tell US: Palestine's Future has to be Different!
I was privileged to moderate a panel of some brilliant Palestinian thinkers reflecting on some old documentaries and how they apply to our situation today.
Voices From the Holy Land, October 20, 2024
News Roundup
Why Dutch support for Israel's football hooligans has roots in colonial racism
By Joseph Massad, Middle East Eye, November 12, 2024
Congress Is About to Gift Trump Sweeping Powers to Crush His Political Enemies
By Noah Hurowitz, The Intercept, November 10, 2024
MBS condemns Israel's 'genocide' in Gaza as Saudi frustrations mount
By Jennifer Gnana, Al-Monitor, November 11, 2024
‘Gaza Scorecard’ – Israel Failed to Meet US Deadline on Deteriorating Situation
Palestine Chronicle, November 12, 2024
Blinken decides against changing military assistance to Israel
Reuters, November 12, 2024
In Jenin, families are enduring poverty and an endless cycle of Israeli raids
By Aziza Nofal, Middle East Eye, November 12, 2024
As always, follow me on:
Twitter @MJPlitnick
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MitchellPlitnick
Bluesky @mjplitnick.bsky.social
Threads @mjplitnick
Mastodon @MitchellPlitnick@journa.host
for my latest hot takes, comments, and news updates.
You really have drank the Kool Aid
Tonight's PBS News Hour had a story about this, headlined "Antisemitism in Europe":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUe_iyWzwwg&t=23m30s
Only 11 seconds was spent on what the Maccabi fans had done in Amsterdam (starting at 25:07):
"Israeli hooligans were accused of provoking trouble by tearing down Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Arab slogans."
That may sound as if the correspondent is saying that the claims of tearing down Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Arab slogans are merely *accusations*, but actually, to PBS's credit, they show footage of these actions happening (no translations of the chanted slogans, though). So the correspondent is acknowledging that these actions *happened*, but the *accusation* is that these actions "provoked trouble". As if there might be some debate about whether or not these actions did in fact provoke trouble.
Then the correspondent continues by saying, "But the attacks that followed were widely characterized as a hunt for Jews." Yes, passive voice again. And he doesn't tell us whether or not this characterization (by whomever) was accurate.