Jews are reeling from the Amsterdam attacks as unrest continues
JTA) — Late on Thursday night, Esther Voet heard explosions from her home in the center of Amsterdam.
Voet, who is the editor in chief of a Dutch Jewish weekly newspaper, quickly learned that she was hearing heavy fireworks — set off in anger, not celebration. Panicked messages began pouring into her phone from a group chat of Jews across the country who described street beatings. Then came calls from parents who said their children had left a soccer match between the Dutch team Ajax and the Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv that night.
“Parents started to phone, saying, ‘Oh my God, my son is being chased, he’s being attacked,’” Voet told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
At least five people were hospitalized in the assaults after the game, and police reported that 20 to 30 more sustained minor injuries. The police arrested 62 people prior to and during the soccer game on Thursday — before the wave of assaults occurred in the late hours after the game.
About 40 of those people were suspected of disturbing the peace, and subsequently fined and released. Others were suspected of insult, vandalism, possession of illegal fireworks, resisting police and other minor offenses.
Four people who remain in custody, including two minors, were suspected of “public violence” on Thursday. A 26-year-old man was arrested on Friday on suspicion of assault after the police recognized him from footage of the attacks. Meanwhile, Israel sent planes to fly its citizens home.
Tensions in Amsterdam remained high on Sunday: Dutch police moved in and detained dozens of people after hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters defied a three-day ban on demonstrations in the city. The demonstrators, who gathered in the capital’s Dam Square, chanted “Free Palestine” and “Amsterdam says no to genocide.” Police have since extended the ban to Thursday.
Now, the local Jewish community is shaken from attacks that Dutch, Israeli, European and U.S. leaders have denounced as antisemitic, with some calling them a “pogrom” or making direct comparisons to the Holocaust. And police are still struggling to contain the fallout from a clash they say they saw coming, and that has provoked debate in the Netherlands and beyond.
“The Jewish community is a very small club,” Voet tweeted the day after the attacks, estimating the community’s size at a maximum of 45,000. “And we don’t always agree with each other, but when it really has to be, we can move mountains in a very short time.”
She added, “We had to learn that because governments (I won’t mention any names) have proven to be unreliable more than once.”
The Dutch Union of Jewish Students called the incident “a painful reminder of the challenges faced by our Jewish and Israeli community in Amsterdam.”
Police officers clear people away from Dam Square during a pro-Palestinian protest in Amsterdam on Nov. 10, 2024. (Robin van Lonkhuijsen / ANP / AFP)
Tensions were clearly on the horizon ahead of the Ajax-Maccabi match. Amsterdam police chief Peter Holla said the force had been preparing for weeks to control expected disturbances surrounding the match, sending 800 officers on duty.
“Because of an announced pro-Palestine demonstration, combined with the commemoration [of Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi pogrom in Germany and Austria], we anticipated risks to public order,” Holla said in a statement. “We prepared the maximum.”
That level of preparation initially appeared to give police a better grip on the tensions. According to police, on Wednesday, after groups of Israelis began arriving in the city, Maccabi fans burned a Palestinian flag on Dam Square and vandalized a taxi. Calls to mobilize taxi drivers against Israelis circulated online and multiple drivers headed to the Holland Casino, where 400 Israeli fans were gathered, but the police prevented major confrontations, according to Holla. Police reported several clashes between rival fans but no major rioting.
But that day many of the following night’s attackers, whose identities have not yet been confirmed, reportedly began planning to assault the Israeli fans, communicating via WhatsApp and Telegram. Messages from a group chat called Buurthuis, associated with the attackers and reported by The Telegraph, describe a “Jew hunt” and call the targets “cancer dogs,” a harsh epithet in the Netherlands. The Telegraph redacted the names of the group members and did not specify which platform they were on.
On Thursday afternoon, when a large number of Maccabi fans gathered at Dam Square, rival groups appeared and fights broke out along with heavy fireworks. The police generally kept the groups apart. Early in the evening, pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered in Anton de Komplein, a square where they were allowed to protest, while police escorted an estimated 1,000 Maccabi fans from Dam Square to the Johan Cruyff Arena for the match. The police continued to attempt to keep groups of opponents separated as the demonstration broke up and protesters went in search of confrontations.
The unrest boiled further as Maccabi supporters were captured chanting anti-Arab, expletive-laden chants on their way to the match, including a song with the words, “Let the IDF win, f— the Arabs.” During the soccer game, the team’s supporters whistled loudly during a minute of silence for more than 200 people killed in Spain’s recent floods.
Then, on Thursday night, chants and skirmishes escalated sharply into large-scale physical violence, as gangs tracked down and assaulted hundreds of Maccabi fans leaving the match.
Groups of Maccabi supporters were targeted in hit-and-run attacks over several hours. Videos shared widely on social media, mainly taken by the attackers, showed people fleeing, being beaten and in one case being rammed by a car. One video shared by Stand With Us Netherlands showed a man unsuccessfully trying to avert blows by yelling, “I’m not Jewish.”
Some fans told the BBC that they were ordered to show their passports before being beaten. Two Jewish British men said they intervened in an assault to help an Israeli man to his feet, telling the attackers they were British, but they were still punched for “helping the Jew.”
Israeli eyewitness accounts say the gangs were largely made up of Arabs, and media noted that a large number of Turkish fans were in Amsterdam, where a local team was also playing a team from Turkey.