The mayor of Amsterdam has taken back comments describing violence that took place following a football match between Israeli and Dutch teams earlier this month as a “pogrom”, and has said Israel “bypassed” Dutch authorities regarding the details of the events.
Mayor Femke Halsema was speaking on Sunday evening on Dutch state broadcaster NPO’s News Hour programme.
On 6 and 7 November, travelling Maccabi Tel Aviv fans stirred trouble in different parts of the Dutch capital by chanting racist anti-Arab slogans ahead of their Uefa Europa League match against Amsterdam club Ajax.
Fans were also seen removing at least two Palestinian flags from what appeared to be residential buildings the night before the match. Following such provocations, confrontations erupted between Maccabi fans and Dutch youths, before and after the match, and late into the night.
A large group of Maccabi supporters were seen arming themselves with sticks, pipes and rocks and clashing with Dutch youths. Videos posted on social media showed people attacking and chasing some of the Israeli fans.
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Haselma told News Hour that for two hours after the game, between 12.30am and 2.30am, violent incidents suddenly spread throughout the city, and were not just limited to football fans.
At around 2.30am the city “became calm”, she said.
“What you then saw is that the image we had, we were totally bypassed by Israel because at 3am Prime Minister Netanyahu, from Israel, gave a press conference about what had happened in Amsterdam while we were still gathering facts,” she said.
‘That’s not what I wanted’
In a press conference a day after the violence, Haselma said that “the events as we saw them evoke memories of pogroms”. About 75 percent of the Dutch-Jewish population was killed during the Holocaust.
Haselma was asked on Sunday whether she stood by those words.
“First, let me say that the words ‘Jew hunt’ have been used. People were going ‘Jew hunting’, they asked for passports. That night and early morning I spoke to many Jewish Amsterdammers on the phone, with a lot of emotions. And what I primarily wanted to express was the sadness and fear among Jewish Amsterdammers,” she said.
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“But I have to say that in the days after, I saw how the word ‘pogrom’ became very political and turned into propaganda.”
Haselma said that the Israeli government spoke of a “Palestinian pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam”, adding that the term pogrom was later being used by Dutch politicians “to discriminate against Moroccan Amsterdammers and Muslims”.
“Those were not my intentions. And that’s not what I wanted.”
Asked again whether she would use the word “pogrom”, Haselma said: “No, no. If I had known that it would be used this way politically and as propaganda, I don’t want anything to do with that.”
“I never made a direct comparison but said that I could understand the feelings and I wanted to express sadness. But I am not an instrument in a national and international political battle.”
Haselma’s comments were described by Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar as “utterly unacceptable”.
“Hundreds of Israeli fans who came to watch a football match were pursued and attacked, targeted by a mob asking for their passports to check if they were citizens of the Jewish state. There is no other word for this than a pogrom,” Saar said in a post on X.
He said that Israel did not first use the term pogrom to describe events, but that it was Dutch politicians, including far-right figure Geert Wilders.
Earlier this month, Nicholas McGeehan, who is a founder of FairSquare, told Middle East Eye that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans had a history of racist chanting.
“The well-documented racism and violence exhibited by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in Amsterdam mirrors the thuggery of the Israeli government in Gaza and Lebanon,” McGeehan said.
“This does not excuse the violence that was meted out to Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, but to present them as innocent victims of antisemitism is a gross misrepresentation of the facts.”
Last week, Nora Achahbar, a junior Dutch minister of Moroccan descent, resigned from the government over racist comments she said she heard from cabinet colleagues in relation to the events in Amsterdam.
The Dutch coalition, which is dominated by Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom, nearly collapsed following the resignation, but survived following an emergency meeting.
