Israeli football fans were attacked in Amsterdam on Thursday evening and three supporters are listed as missing this morning. It is reported that the assailants yelled ‘Free Palestine’ as they kicked and punched the Jewish supporters.
According to the Israeli foreign ministry, a group of masked men, some of whom were draped in Palestine flags, ambushed the Israelis after their Europa League match against Ajax. A dozen supporters were injured and three are still unaccounted for on Friday morning.
The fear in France is that next Thursday won’t be so passive when the Israeli team are in town
The Times of Israel reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has despatched two planes to Amsterdam to bring back the Israeli supporters who made the trip to Holland. A statement from Netanyahu’s office urged the Dutch authorities ‘to act decisively and swiftly against the rioters, and to ensure the wellbeing of our citizens’. It is claimed that the ambush was well-organised and eye witnesses said some of the attackers spoke Arabic.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, described the attack as ‘a pogrom’, and the Dutch MP Geert Wilders posted a message on social media, saying: ‘Looks like a Jew hunt in the streets of Amsterdam…Ashamed that this can happen in the Netherlands.’
The attack in Amsterdam came a day after supporters of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) unveiled a giant banner emblazoned with the words ‘Free Palestine’ before their side’s Champions League match against Atletico Madrid. Alongside the words was the image of what appeared to be a Hamas fighter, his face masked by a keffiyeh.
Also on the banner, which measured 50 metres by 20 metres, was a tank, a child wrapped in a Lebanon flag and a controversial map of the region. Underneath was the message ‘War on the pitch but peace in the world’. During the match, another banner was unfurled on which was written ‘Does a child’s life in Gaza mean less than another?’
Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of the French Jewish institutions, described the banner as ‘scandalous’, adding: ‘A map where the state of Israel no longer exists [and] a masked Palestinian fighter. This is not a message of peace but a call to hatred’.
The banner was also condemned by France’s Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, who called it ‘unacceptable’. He has summoned the heads of the French football federation and the director general of the Qatari-owned PSG for an explanation. Describing the banner as being of a ‘political nature’, a government spokesman said that ‘given its size, its installation cannot have escaped the club’s vigilance’.
Retailleau has said he will wait to hear what PSG have to say about the banner before deciding whether to take the matter further. He refused to rule out punishing the club.
But while the French government consider the banner was a political gesture, European football’s governing body do not. UEFA, which has a ban on ‘provocative’ or ‘insulting’ political messages in stadiums, issued a statement on Thursday, stating that ‘there will … be no disciplinary case because the banner that was unfurled cannot be in this case considered provocative or insulting.’
In September this year, UEFA banned Barcelona from selling tickets to fans for one Champions League match after fans displayed a banner with the words ‘Flick Heil’; it was meant as a tribute to their new German coach, Hansi Flick. In imposing the ban, UEFA said Barcelona had been guilty of ‘racism and/or other discriminatory conduct’.
The PSG banner was unfurled at what is known as the Auteuil Kop end of the stadium. The Auteuil Kop supporters tend to come from the immigrant suburbs of Paris, and there is no love lost between them and the PSG fans who frequent the other end of the stadium, known as the Boulogne Kop, some of whom have affiliations with the far-right. In 2010, violence erupted between the two sets of supporters, resulting in the death of a fan.
The violence in Amsterdam and the provocation in PSG will further trouble the French authorities as they prepare to host Israel in an international fixture next Thursday. The match will take place at the Stade de France, in the notoriously volatile Seine-Saint-Denis district. Chaos and disorder erupted at this venue in May 2022 during the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid. The interior minister at the time, Gerald Darmanin, tried to pin the blame on English fans, but the police reports and the TV pictures revealed a different demographic was to blame.
Last week, around 25 pro-Palestine supporters stormed the offices of the French Football Federation in central Paris to protest against the visit of the Israel team. It was a relatively passive demonstration, but the fear in France is that next Thursday won’t be so passive when the Israeli team are in town.
Earlier this month, Bruno Retailleau confirmed that the match would go ahead, contrary to the Belgians who in September moved their match against Israel to Hungary to avoid any trouble. Nonetheless, said Retailleau, he admitted that it would be necessary to ‘adapt the security arrangements because there will be risks’.
These arrangements will dounbtless be tightened after events in Amsterdam. Shortly after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, President Emmanuel Macron declared that ‘we are all French, we must not import this conflict’. Unfortunately, many people in France, and elsewhere across Europe, don’t share that view. They have imported the conflict and it is the continent’s Jews who are suffering.
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