On November 6 and 7, fans of the Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv rampaged through Amsterdam ahead of a match between their team and the Dutch football club Ajax. They assaulted local residents, attacked private property, destroyed symbols of Palestinian solidarity, and chanted racist, genocidal slogans that glorified the slaughter of children in Gaza and the death of all Arabs.While the Israeli fans were provided with a police escort, pro-Palestine demonstrations were either cancelled or relocated. On the night of November 7, following the match, local residents responded to these events by attacking Maccabi fans. Five people were briefly hospitalised but later discharged and 62 people were arrested, 10 of whom were Israeli.
A letter, released by the Amsterdam City Council and recounting the events, noted that “from 01:30 onward [on Thursday night], reports of street violence rapidly declined”. The story could have ended there. It didn’t.
Overnight, the Israeli propaganda machine went into overdrive, and by Friday morning, the world awoke to news that “anti-Semitic squads” had gone on a “Jew hunt” in Amsterdam.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog denounced the “anti-Semitic pogrom”, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that military planes would be dispatched to evacuate Israeli citizens.
A wave of disinformation unleashed from Israel was replicated unchecked by Western media and the usual cohort of Western leaders, each outdoing the other at e …
