Israeli Soccer Fans Injured in Amsterdam Attacks That Authorities Call Antisemitic

Dutch officials said that people had attacked Israeli fans as tensions flared around a soccer match.

The authorities in Amsterdam on Friday were investigating bursts of violence tied to a soccer game between a Dutch club and an Israeli team, which Israeli and Dutch officials described as antisemitic attacks.

The police in Amsterdam said that 62 people had been arrested in connection with attacks in the city, which unfolded over several tense hours in multiple locations as people gathered in support of the Israeli team and others protested its arrival. Dutch officials said that attackers, some riding scooters, assaulted Israelis, and the Israeli Embassy in the Netherlands said that some had been kicked or beaten.

Most of those arrested were later released, the Amsterdam authorities said, and five Israelis who had been hospitalized with injuries were discharged. Some others sustained light injuries, they said. The Israeli airline El Al sent planes to bring Israeli citizens home from Amsterdam.

Street disturbances had been building since Wednesday night and early Thursday, hours before a soccer match between an Israeli club, Maccabi Tel Aviv, and the Dutch club Ajax. The game went on without incident, but violence erupted in several parts of the city before and after.

The Amsterdam authorities said at a news conference that people had attacked Israeli fans and chanted anti-Israeli slogans, and that they were investigating whether the attacks were coordinated. They also said that some supporters of the Israeli team had taken a Palestinian flag down from a building. Videos posted to social media and verified by The New York Times show men taking down a Palestinian flag while others nearby hurled anti-Arab chants.

While the exact sequence of events remained unclear, the violence appeared to be the product of two combustible forces in Europe: the unrest that often accompanies gatherings of hard-core soccer fans and tensions over the yearlong Israeli military offensive in Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that he had spoken with Dick Schoof, his Dutch counterpart. Mr. Schoof said in a statement early Friday that there had been antisemitic attacks on Israelis in Amsterdam, calling them “completely unacceptable.”

Gideon Saar, Israel’s newly appointed foreign minister, said he would travel to the Netherlands on Friday to meet with his Dutch counterpart as well as with Israelis and members of the Jewish community.

Videos circulating on social media and a video distributed by The Associated Press provide a glimpse of the tensions in the hours leading up to the violence. In the A.P. clip, dozens of men wearing scarves with the colors of Maccabi are seen gathering on Thursday at Amsterdam’s central Dam Square, where flares are being lit amid a heavy police presence.

Other video footage verified by The Times shows a group of men trying to take down a Palestinian flag from a building on Rokin, a street in central Amsterdam. One man is heard saying in Hebrew, “The people of Israel live,” while others shout anti-Palestinian chants using expletives. The earliest versions of the videos appeared on social media in the early hours of Thursday.

Video footage from Thursday night that The Times verified shows a large group of men wearing similar Maccabi paraphernalia being escorted by the police at Amsterdam’s Centraal train station. Riding down escalators, they are heard using expletives in an anti-Arab chant in Hebrew.

The Israeli Embassy in the Netherlands said that hundreds of Maccabi fans, who were in Amsterdam to see their team play against Ajax, were attacked on Thursday evening into early Friday.

“Mobs chanted anti-Israel slogans and proudly shared videos of their violent acts on social media — kicking, beating, even running over Israeli citizens,” the embassy said on social media.

As the attacks went on, Israel warned its citizens in Amsterdam to stay off the streets and remain in their hotel rooms. Maccabi Tel Aviv warned people not to show Israeli or Jewish symbols outside, and to fly back to Israel as soon as they could.

“Our main goal is the safe and quick return of the fans to Israel,” the team wrote on social media.

Videos on social media showed violent clashes on the city’s streets. One video verified by Reuters captured a crowd of more than a dozen men appearing to attack someone near the city center early Friday. The crowd dispersed when emergency sirens could be heard.

Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, wrote on social media that the images and videos of the violence were of the sort that “we had hoped never to see again.”

Geert Wilders, the head of the biggest party in the Dutch Parliament and known for anti-Muslim vitriol, wrote on social media that he was “ashamed that this can happen in the Netherlands.” Using incendiary language in both English and Dutch, he demanded that “criminal Muslims” be deported, and attacked the government for not doing enough to protect the Israeli fans.

The Dutch police said that some of the unrest took place at or near the Johan Cruyff Arena, where the soccer game was played.

Hundreds of Maccabi supporters had gathered in Amsterdam’s center early Thursday afternoon, where the atmosphere was initially tense but gradually became calmer, the police said in the statement. Ten people were arrested there before the game, the police said, mostly on charges of disrupting public order.

At another square called Anton de Komplein, which is near the stadium, people protesting the arrival of Maccabi Tel Aviv clashed with the police after trying to make their way to the stadium. Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, had earlier prohibited the protest from happening at the stadium and ordered it to take place at that square.

About 30 people were arrested in that confrontation on charges of disrupting public order and setting off fireworks at the police, the police said.

Europe has experienced an increase in antisemitic incidents in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza. On Thursday, a broad coalition of German lawmakers passed a resolution calling on the government to do more to criminalize and otherwise punish antisemitic acts.

Reporting was contributed by Qasim Nauman, Nadav Gavrielov, Claire Moses, Nader Ibrahim, Aritz Parra, Christopher F. Schuetze Lynsey Chutel and Aaron Boxerman.

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