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Israeli football fans and the violence in Amsterdam: what we know (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 4 days ago by CityPop@lemmy.today to c/world@quokk.au

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The first incidents were reported on Wednesday evening, the day before the match. Police say Maccabi fans tore a Palestinian flag down from the facade of a building and burned it, shouted “fuck you, Palestine”, and vandalised a taxi.

After a radio callout a number of taxi drivers converged on a casino on the nearby Max Euweplein, where about 400 Israeli supporters had gathered. Police dispersed the taxi drivers and escorted supporters out of the casino.

Verified social media videos show Maccabi fans setting off flares and fireworks, chanting in Hebrew “olé, olé, let the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] win, we will fuck the Arabs”, and declaring that there were “no children” left in Gaza.

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[–] abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us 1 points 3 days ago

That's wrong. That's basically hate speech.

From the article though it's not clear that the Maccabi fans used physical violence against anyone.

By contrast, from the article,

there were numerous attacks, described by Halsema as “hit and run”, on Maccabi supporters across the city centre.

Footage showed masked youths on scooters and ebikes seeking out, chasing down and beating victims – mostly in Maccabi colours – until about 4am.

Five people were hospitalised and 20 to 30 slightly injured.

Undoubtably this is why the authorities ended up making arrests on both groups,

About 800 police made a total of 62 arrests before, during and after the match, mostly for public order offences. The city hall report released on Monday said 10 Israelis had been among those detained.

Finally,

“We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during the second world war,” Willem-Alexander said, “and last night we failed again”. The US president, Joe Biden, called the violence “despicable” and an echo of “dark moments in history”.

It's good that the leaders are aware of and want to avoid the mistakes of the Holocaust, or anything even vaguely resembling it. However, there should have also been a call against the earlier hate speech - Arabs and Muslims are also worthy and deserving of respect and protection.

Reading between the lines, the violence against the fans (which is still wrong - if nothing else, how do they know that the particular fan they tracked down was one of the ones shouting the disagreeable slogans earlier rather than one of the folks who signed onto https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/28/israel/_intl/_law ) seems to have been a response to the earlier hate speech and demonstrations.

So if the authorities had the authority and done their job to prevent the former, then the later attacks might not have happened.