It's Time we Talk About the Terrifying Truth of What Happened in Amsterdam

We've all missed the real story

Photo by Izuddin Helmi Adnan on Unsplash

There has been a lot of awareness and outrage about the events of Amsterdam last weekend.

In short, a bunch of racist Israeli, Maccabi Tel Aviv fans went to Amsterdam to play a football match. Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are notorious for their racism and violence. Richard Medhurst has done an excellent investigation into them here.

Whilst in the city, the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans spent several nights ramapaging through the city, attacking Dutch citizens - particularly those who looked ‘Muslim’ or Arab - commited criminal damage by pulling down Palestinian flags from homes, attacked a taxi driver and destroyed his vehicle, and prowled around with metal pipes, chains and wooden planks. They also sang racist, genocidal songs including, ‘Let the IDF win, f*ck the Arabs’ and ‘There are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left.’ Despite this, Amsterdam police did little to intervene. Footage shows police cars driving past as Israeli fans continued their rampage. There is also footage showing when the police were present, they largely held back and watched.

In response to the nights of violence they had been subjected to, the citizens of Amsterdam retaliated, making it clear that such violence was not welcome. In response to this, the Amsterdam police intervened, arresting at least 52 Dutch citizens.

The story was then twisted both by the mainstream media, and Western leaders, to potray the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans as innocent victims of anti-Semitism, some outrageously and absurdly going so far as to call it a ‘pogrom’ against Jews. In actual fact, in response to the violence by the Maccabi fans, Dutch Jews cancelled their Kristallnact remembrance event, criticising the Israeli fans for their violence towards the Dutch citizens of Amsterdam, and stating that they could not guarantee the minimum safety for their attendees with “a heavy presence of Zionist Israelis in the city with the intent of continuing acts of violence.” Extraordinarily, even the BBC admits that the the Dutch citizens reaction was measured, by quoting an Amsterdam city report that conceded that the Maccabi fans were met with ‘small groups’ of ‘rioters’.

There has been uproar at the way the story has been twisted and the false narrative that the Israeli fans were the victims of ‘anti-Semitism’ by the media. Sky News in particular gave an astonishing masterclass in media manipulation and in story framing. After publishing a pretty accurate account of the events, they deleted that version, then reposted a version which aimed to frame the events as anti-Semitic. Not happy with that version, they deleted it and uploaded a third and final version which falls totally within the anti-Semitism narrative. For instance, in the first video they accurately identify a group of prowling thugs in black hoodies as Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. In the final version they simply identiy them as people in ‘black hoodies’ leaving it to the viewer to think that these individuals may be Dutch citizens, rather than the racist Maccabi thugs that they were. Here is the original version of the Sky News report. Here is Owen Jones’s excellent commentary on the saga. Jonathan Cook writes an excellent article about the implications here.

There has also been uproar at the way that Western leaders also tried to portray this incident as an anti-Semitic event and completely ignoring the violence the citizens of Amsterdam were subjected to. Here are just a few:

Ursula von der Leyen’s tweet was particularly abonimable as she completely ignored the recorded and documented anti-Arab, genocidal and anti-Muslim and Islamophobic chants of the Israeli Maccabi fans while claiming that Europe is ‘determined to fight all forms of hatred.’ Not anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred, clearly. For the EU they are fair game and the genocide against them is fine.

It goes without saying, not a single person went after Jewish people. There has not been a single piece of evidence of anti-Semitism, and nothing at all against the Dutch Jews of Amsterdam. The citizens of Amsterdam only retaliated against racist Israelis who had subjected their city and communities to violence.

It also goes without saying that among the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were IDF soldiers, including those currently engaged in the genocide in Gaza.

These were the two elements of the story that have been amplified and spread, bringing even greater awareness to the depravity of Western politicians in their support for this genocide and the complicity of mainstream media.

But that isn't the main story.

The most terrifying part of the story is not the actions of Western leaders and their propagandists, something we already all know. No, the most terrifying part is the actions of the Dutch police, or rather, their inaction.

We have seen how Israel is allowed to act with absolute impunity in their violence in the Middle East, how in that region they are even free to murder American and British citizens. We have seen how they are not subject to any international law.

But this is the first time that we have seen European authorities, on European sovereign land being subject to Israeli violence and condoned by state authorities. As the footage shows, the police largely allowed the Maccabi fans to act with impunity, hanging back, watching from the sidelines and even driving by as they continued rampaging, (something the original Sky News broadcast picked up). In stark contrast, when their own citizens responded, the police went in heavy, made mass arrests and the Mayor, Femke Halsema disingenuously lied and claimed anti-Semitic attacks on the streets of Amsterdam. The true reason for her statements of course, was to ban Pro-Palestinian protests in the city organised and attended by Dutch citizens, which she did for three days, giving further cover to Israel’s genocide and continuing Europe’s authoritarian oppression against anyone who speaks out against it.

Let me make it clear: a sovereign European state allowed citizens from a foreign state to attack their own citizens, and then arrested their own citizens for responding to the violence against them.

We must ask ourselves, how compromised are our leaders here in Europe, if they allow Israeli citizens to act violently and with impunity towards their own citizens in their own country? Further, how compromised are they when they fail in their duties to act to protect their citizens, and when their citizens take matters into their own hands to protect themselves, they mobilise against their own citizens instead? Not only that, but against the facts that their own city council members and police testified to - that Israeli Maccabi hooligans instigated the violence - they chose to smear and lie about their own citizens instead?

It is not just the violence of the Middle East that Israel sought to bring onto the streets of Europe, including sending Mossad agents with the Maccabi fans. No, they sought also to continue their violence with complete impunity, and the Netherlands let them.

This is completely unprecedented. A foreign power has so much sway over a European capital, that its citizens can rampage through it, destroy the property of private citizens and act with violence, and they are protected by that European state who instead will arrest its own citizens for responding.

Why are our leaders allowing this? Craig Murray says it loud and clear:

…their politicians, including very directly Biden and Starmer, are so compromised by Zionist-lobby money that there appears to be no escape, short of popular revolt in the West.

The West is bound to Israel by the simple, unalloyed mechanism of cash paid to politicians. That is the truth.

Declassified UK has reported tirelessly on pro-Israeli funding of the UK’s current government. AIPAC doesn’t even hide that their backing helped candidates win in elections and the masses amount of money spent on Republican and Democrat politicians. They boast about it.

Israel acts with impunity not only in the Middle East, but on the streets of Europe because our leaders are so compromised by Zionism, that our own State sovereign interests have become completely subordinate to that of the Zionist State of Israel.

And that is the terrifying truth.