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Last night on the streets of Amsterdam, pro-Palestinian `protesters` bludgeoned and beat Jews who were in the city to watch a football match.
Except this wasn`t a protest. It was a pogrom. A vile explosion of racist violence directed against Israeli soccer fans who had travelled to the Dutch capital for the Europa League soccer game between Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv and home team Ajax. At the time of writing 32 Israeli fans were injured, and three remain missing. Shockingly, some jumped into the city`s canals to escape the blood-thirsty thuggery. The threat was considered so great that Israel dispatched emergency flights to bring its citizens home.
How easy it would be to dismiss this as yet another violent ‘clash’ about the Gaza war. But make no mistake. This wasn`t about hand-wringing libertarians making a political point. It was the twisted expression of Islamic extremism – roaring in hatred and lusting for blood.
That it should find a place in football should make this all the more shocking. Sure the notion that sport cuts through cultural differences and reduces even the most problematic divisions to – quite literally – one level playing field is something we`d like to believe. Yet how often the myth has been debunked when fights have broken out between supporters from competing teams. Except this wasn`t even a fight between two parties keen to slug it out to prove a point. What happened in Amsterdam was Jew-hunting fueled by Jew-hatred.
So where are the likes of Lineker and all the stars of the Premier League and indeed the world of sport? Why haven’t they called out this egregious wave of violence? Are they so sure that what started in Amsterdam won’t spread to the stadiums of the UK? What is the point of the Premier League and its clubs making noble noises to fight against discrimination on and off the pitch if they say nothing now?
Not least since this anti-Israel – no, to be clear, anti-Jewish – outrage happened two days before the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht. On that appalling night in 1938, Jewish communities across the German Reich were terrorised and brutalised in a wave of Nazi-sponsored hatred. That hatred is here again, on the streets of Europe. And if it can happen in Amsterdam it can happen anywhere. Three-quarters of Holland`s Jewish population were murdered in the Holocaust
It remains unclear whether the violence in Amsterdam was an arbitrary riot or some kind of synchronised event. The city`s mayor reported how youths on scooters had criss-crossed the Dutch capital on Thursday night on the hunt for Israeli supporters in a “hit-and-run”. Meanwhile, Telegram [messaging] groups spoke of people going to hunt down Jews. The technicalities of the assault don`t matter. What matters is that when it comes to anything which connotes or connects with Israel, violent action bubbles dangerously close to the surface amongst extreme pro-Palestinian protesters. (Who in the process malign those who genuinely want peace in Gaza through using brutal techniques)
There have been attempts to mitigate the violence with the suggestion that a Palestinian flag was torn down by Israeli fans. Unnecessarily provocative, granted. But if every action has an equal reaction then this response says much about the perpetrators of the violence. For every week in London posters of October 7 hostages, who have been languishing in the hell of Gaza for over a year, are torn down by so-called protesters. The response to this is always one of sorrow and the defiant reposting of these innocent victims` images. There is never any violence because there is never any justification for criminal behaviour.
So what next? Do you want to live in a world where the innocent citizens of a sovereign nation – whose country is an ally of the UK – cannot even go to a football match on the Continent? The rule of law is being shattered. Radical extremism may start with the Jews. But it never ends there.
If the aftermath of Amsterdam doesn`t act as a warning then the restless ghosts of Kristallnacht should trouble the memory. A reminder of where hatred takes the world.
Humanity is a team game. Wherever your affiliations lie, call out what happened. Or football may come home in a way all of us will have cause to regret.