I don’t know enough about Dutch police to speculate on why the warnings were not heeded.
Here’s everything you need to know about the Dutch police: Dutch police refuse to guard Jews, claim moral objections - The Jerusalem Post
…there is a HUGE amount of disinformation flying about over this. And any source that begins with Mossad, with all due respect, has to be treated with skepticism.
Then you have to pose the age-old opposing possibilities in the aftermath of every security breach: were they incompetent or devious?
And, historically, the claim of incompetence usually wins out. Roosevelt didn’t tease Yamamoto into attacking Pearl Harbor, Dick Cheney didn’t let 9/11 happen so as to grab that sweet Iraqi oil, and Israeli intelligence didn’t let 10/7 happen so as to shred Gaza. Having later served with a few US Marines who’d climbed out of the rubble of October 23, 1983, I’ll relay their testimony that it’s all too more easy to fuck something up than it is to set something up.
…historically, disinformation often wins out.
Accidentally posted.
I see. But Mikkel is wrong; their countries of origin are 100% a factor, whether or not some of the attackers in Amsterdam were also Ajax supporters. The Maccabi fans are reported as chanting anti-Arab slogans and tearing down Palestinian flags, not insulting Ajax fans. And then they were attacked by youths arriving on scooters and driving Ubers, implying they weren’t already present for the match.
NPR said there was concern before the match, and the Dutch increased police presence, but not enough.
OK, so I’m looking for factual information on the attacks. Is it clear that there was organization online (telegram or what have you) before November 6? The timeline on wikipedia makes it seem like that isn’t the case, and the only thing I could find in the Telegraaf article (or rather, an automatic translation thereof, so grain of salt and all that) is:
The ‘Jew hunt’ had been announced well in advance on the messaging service Telegram. It is said that rioters from far outside Amsterdam came to the capital to join the fight against ‘Zionists’.
(Now, of course, it goes without saying that this is an appaling incident, and anti-Semitic violence can absolutely not be tolerated. But that just makes it all the more important to get the facts straight.)
That’s because there is a concentrated disinformation campaign on Wikipedia.
Yes, it is very clear. Note that the attacks on Jews began the night before, before the Jews supposedly brought this on themselves (just like every other pogrom). Yet another cite:
Oh no Dutch people yet? Ugh here goes, I guess.
This was a media frenzy fuelled by lies, ultimately making it impossible for our wonderful mayor Femke Halsema to say: “Let’s all calm down, there was no pogrom.” Over the next few days, serious publications are going to have to publish some apologies and it’s going to get embarrassing.
It’s been mentioned in the thread but European football hooliganism is weird beast on its own. It’s incredibly intense, violent and destructive. The Maccabi fans are known for the same, as is Ajax, so it was wild that anybody thought this would end wel or should have been allowed to happen.
Maybe also good for background info (I’m not sure if this is the same everywhere): Amsterdam taxi drivers are almost like a gang. You can rely on them in a pinch and they will help you, but they have internal codes and you shouldn’t mess with them. (I don’t know if this is a universal taxi driver thing, different places have their own weird things, like Rotterdam has violent window washer turf wars and the taxi drivers are less tight.)
Also as has been mentioned, Ajax’s nickname is The Jews, much as you’d have Redskins or what-have-you. They proudly call themselves Jews. Most men in Amsterdam will support Ajax. Other teams chant gas the Jews, it’s nasty but all of it is nasty. They chant that the keeper of the Hague has a dildo in his stomach because in Dutch it rhymes, all the chants are stupid and awful. When hooligans say they’re going to hunt the Jews, they mean they’re looking to fight Ajax supporters, consensually (it’s weird and awful but it is what it is.)
Some facts that the media originally omitted:
- Maccabi supporters goaded online in advance that they were all military/former military and were bringing Mossad, saying they were coming for violence
- Once here, violence between the supporters is expected and inevitable, the normal violence is somewhat coded and kinda consensual
- Maccabi supporters chanted through the minute silence for victims in Spain
- Maccabi supporters violently roamed the streets (this is expected), chanting “Gaza has no more schools because we killed all their children” (this breaks the code) and pulled down Palestinian flags from people’s homes (also breaks the code)
- A Maccabi supporter attacked a taxi driver (bad idea)
From video reports by independent media, people were shocked by their level of violence, military training and their targets.
This all comes into a place where tensions are already rising. Government support for Israël is not popular, especially in Amsterdam. We stopped arms exports through the courts and the government was not happy about it. The biggest party in government is the extreme right party but even their voters for a large part (when they think at all) think their support of Israel is too much.
I think there is some confusion about “hunting the Jews”, which is a football thing, vs the escalating situation being anti-Israeli/anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish. Bizarrely, there were even people checking passports in the chaos, so that it would really be only the Israelis targeted.
Calling this a pogrom is outrageous and insulting. Frankly, I think the thread title should be changed. The people who were attacked, were attacked for their actions, not their identity. Efforts were made to verify this, which is strange but better than running the risk of attacking someone for their identity. The Maccabi hooligans came looking for football violence and chose to escalate that to political violence. They’re not victims, they’re all (former) military, capable fighters, who chose this situation and willingly escalated. Five people ended up in hospital and left the following morning — that is not even bad for football hooligan clashes and it’s certainly not what happens in pogroms and to pretend it is insults history.
Because pogroms are a part of our history. Our Jewish community was murdered by the Nazis and we are reckoning with that to this day. We learn about it at school, everyone visits Anne Frank’s house. But we also learned about it directly, from family and community. Antisemitism is one of the worst sins you can commit here, in a way that is more acute than in the UK (my other country). This is something you only know when you are raised in two countries and only one of them lives with the shame of having allowed a minority to be wiped out. Antisemitism is insidious and sneaky, you have to really know a culture to see it. In the UK, it is normalised among older generations, in the Netherlands it is not. There are pockets of antisemitism, but they are small, powerless, irrelevant. The plight of the Palestinians has become clear, over the years, to various parts of the population (Muslims, the left, the intellectuals) and there is an effort to distinguish between Jews, Zionists and Israelis.
Dutch media will take a while to untangle this mess, the best news outlets will have to address it. But it is very, very clear to almost everybody here that the representation in the media left out almost everything important. It’s a small country, Amsterdam is never far from anywhere and everybody knows people in Amsterdam. Reading news that is entirely incongruous with what you’ve just seen has been shocking to so many people, it’s what everyone is talking about. It’s literally that, that is the talk of the town. Not football hooligans roughing each other up.
Here is a description by a Dutch journalist. He has a legal background and made his name with national newspaper AD, dead centre, low brow tabloid but actual news, not Daily Fail awful but not really good either. He currently has an independent blog, it largely follows the centre- mediumness of his former paper. I chose this because it is average. Your browser should translate this for you:
This is a left-wing opinion internet publication. I agree with their political leanings but their writing is trash. It’s not journalism, a lot of it can barely be called writing. It gives a description of independent video journalism happening on the ground. I’m linking this one because even people on the centre right are sharing it. Again, your browser should translate it for you:
Finally, I want to stress again that most actual accounts of people who were there say that Jews were not targeted, the targets were willing Maccabi hooligans who escalated hooliganism to politics and five were barely harmed. That absolutely precludes it from being a pogrom and I find the thread title offensive for calling a hooligan clash in my country a pogrom. If, in my life time, there is a pogrom in Amsterdam, I will be there defending innocent people targeted for their identity with a fucking frying pan. If anyone complicit in genocide wants to come here to gloat over the murder of children in Gaza, I’ll leave their idiotic arse to the mob.
If there was a Redskins game against a team of actual Native Americans, and after the game people hunted down Native Americans to bash their heads in, I highly doubt that people would be explaining to me how the chants about the Trail of Tears weren’t targeting the actual Native Americans but the Redskins supporters.
You can watch the videos of that attack for yourself.
I have seen hooligans clash. This is not what it looks like. This is a mob curb stomping people who are fleeing.
Everyone in Israel is former military (other than the super religious but they aren’t travelling to football games anyways). And if burning a flag justifies this, should me and my boys invest in motorcycles and baseball clubs and go visit some college encampments? What the actual fuck is this standard?
Your king and prime minister, and the mayor of Amsterdam, have some integrity, at least. They understand exactly what this was.
But these aren’t the only voices. Unfortunately, there’s also a horrifying and familiar chant in the background. It didn’t happen; and it wasn’t that bad; and the Jews deserved it. The same familiar and self contradictory chant that accompanies every pogrom in history.
Wait, you’re saying it’s clear that there was organization before November 6 (i.e. Wednesday), but the cite you provide explicitly speaks of messages from that day. The wording in the article also implies that the online exchanges took place after the first instances of violence on that day. Right after the bit you quoted:
“Tomorrow we work them.”
Another member of the group says: “Who can sort fireworks?” adding, “We need a lot of fireworks”. Participants refer to “cancer dogs”, a particularly vile insult in the Netherlands.
The previous day had some skirmishes, which the Jewish fans escaped by going into a local casino. One of the messages sent by the pro-Palestinians said: “They won’t go to the casino any more.”
So can you clarify what you mean—do we know whether there was online organization before November 6?
Maybe I misunderstood your question. I thought you were asking if there was coordination before the pogrom, which there clearly was.
I still haven’t seen any evidence of these alleged Maccabi fan provocations. When one side has hours and hours of video evidence, and the other side has “reports”, I tend to get suspicious.
As if it matters. The “provocations” under discussion happen in protests across America on a daily basis. They don’t justify a campaign of vigilante violence, and certainly not one branded as a “Jew Hunt”.
And this is why there’s a movement in America to rename teams with (nick)names like “redskins”. Yikes!
A YouTube kid was one of the only reporters around:
Here is a tweet from a photographer who received an apology after her picture was labelled “antisemitic violence against Israeli football supporters” when it was the Maccabi supporters:
This is the crazy thing, I am surrounded by images & word-of-mouth of what was happening and what is being reported is very different. Media here are starting to report differently, now.
There are chants about the people they have killed, like they chant about Carlo Picornie’s death in a hooligan clash. The cost to society of the violence and destruction is huge.
I’d support a movement to just ban this shit and be done with it.
I’ve watched that video - what exactly is it supposed to prove?
Yeah, there was the normal hooliganism that accompanies football games, from Ajax supporters and from Maccabi supporters. And there was ALSO a coordinated attack by a third party on Maccabi supporters, whose own organizers referred to as a Jew Hunt.
And the people talking about a Jew Hunt targetted Maccabi fans, so the excuse that a Jew Hunt is just what they call getting in fight with Ajax supporters is obviously untrue.
The gaslighting on this is unreal.