Maybe Not a Pogrom?
Published at 17:20 on 8 November 2024
This is getting circulated amongst pro-Israel social media circles as a modern-day pogrom, an example of why Jews need a state of their own (and by implication why any criticism of anything Israel does is unacceptable).
But read the whole article, and you find this passage:
It was unclear what set off Thursday’s violence or how long after the game it began. Some Amsterdam locals said the Israeli fans had spent the previous two days instigating.
Two videos shot Wednesday showed Israeli fans climbing walls to pull Palestinian flags down from second-story windows; in one of the clips, scores of Israelis gathered below cheered as the flag was burned on the street. Maccabi hooligans also sang an anti-Arab chant Thursday as they entered the stadium.
Other footage seemed to show Israelis engaging in violence themselves. One dashboard camera clip posted Wednesday night by a Dutch taxi driver appeared to show a Maccabi fan smashing a taxi with an iron chain. Another video — it was unclear whether it was shot Wednesday or Thursday — appeared to show about 50 Israeli fans doing the chasing.
There was also disagreement online about what was happening in some of the videos. One was widely shared on Jewish social media accounts as evidence of a mob attack against Israelis, but the woman who recorded the video said it showed Maccabi supporters ganging up on a Dutch man.
And if anyone tries to accuse me of antisemitism or justifying violence against Jews by inventing some fictitious context here, I will just note that the article I have cited is in the Forward, a Jewish newspaper.
It may well just be that “brawl between rival gangs of soccer hooligans” is a far more accurate summary of what happened here than “pogrom.”