After the UEFA Europa League match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax in Amsterdam, a group of unidentified attackers targeted Israeli fans. They chased the fans across the city, beat them, rammed their cars into them, and stormed into the hotels where they were staying. More than 25 people were injured, some seriously.
The Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) wishes to recovery of the victims and strongly condemns the actions of the instigators and participants in the riots and attacks on Israeli football fans. EAJC leaders call on the Dutch authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into the incident. It is essential to uncover the true motives of the perpetrators, identify the organizers, and pursue them to the full extent of the law. We thank the Kingdom’s authorities for their public display of solidarity with Israel and its citizens, but at the same time, we urge them to take all necessary steps to prevent similar incidents in the future.
There is no doubt that the events in Amsterdam were a planned violent act with a purely anti-Semitic nature.
The President of the EAJC, Dr. Michael Mirilashvili, noticed:
“The horrific terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, triggered a wave of blatant anti-Semitism across the globe. The scale of this age-old disease (hatred of Jews, which is now taking on new forms) has once again taken us by surprise. The events in Amsterdam are a consequence of the strategy to amplify anti-Semitism in the public information space, particularly on social media and in the media. We have repeatedly emphasized that the spread of anti-Semitic ideas inevitably leads to severe consequences, not only for Jews but for the entire free world. It is well known that anti-Semitism marks the beginning of the deepest decay of any society, no matter how enlightened it may be. We call on the Dutch authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident and take all possible preventive measures.”
The EAJC CEO, Dr. Chaim Ben Yakov pointed out the numerous false reports on social media aimed at spreading misinformation about the incident, attempting to frame it as “a fight among football fans”:
“We are all aware of the wave of anti-Semitic sentiment sweeping through Europe. The question was not ‘Will such an incident ever occur?’ but ‘When will it happen, and where?’ Without a doubt, what we faced in Amsterdam was an extreme manifestation of anti-Semitism, not football hooliganism. Israelis were hunted down on the streets of Amsterdam, well beyond the sports venues,” Ben Yakov said.
He also highlighted the danger of drawing historical comparisons to the events in Amsterdam: “The associations being made today are often inaccurate. When comparing what happened to events like Kristallnacht or the Kishinev pogrom, we must be extremely cautious, because there is one fundamental difference between those events and today—now we have a strong and independent Jewish state, where every Jew can come. And where each of us can feel protected and take responsibility for the fate of our people into our own hands, considering the objective challenges of life in an independent state surrounded by enemies.”
