transcript:
Murderous solipsism. Israeli football fans go on a rampage im Amsterdam, tearing down Palestinian flags and shouting racist slogans. Why? Because the very presence of anything Palestinian is a threat to the integrity of the solipsistic bubble we inhabit even when abroad.
Then, of course, we are surprised. How is it that when we do such things we suffer the consequences? How is it that we are attacked? How is it that the Dutch police doesn't recognize that we are on a mission for peace, that we are good while they must be bad?
Events last night in Amsterdam are presented as a "pogrom" here in Israel. We do not occupy the same plane of existence as the rest of you. Our actions have no implications. We can never be the cause of anything. Everything happens to us. Only we are real. Murderous solipsism.
Every article I've found has presented the Israel fans as innocent victims here, but then I read this paragraph in the middle of A CBS Report
So, as Mr. Goldberg says above, before the game Maccabi fans marched through Amsterdam attacking anything Palestinian and chanting "Death to Arabs", and then later after the game these same fans were attacked throughout the city, and yet the whole incident is being portrayed in the press as a spontaneous antisemitic convulsion.
Obvsl this situation is fairly confused right now. On Bluesky, I'm seeing some commentators I trust talk about the attacks being wider than just Maccabi fans, so it's possible there WAS a larger antisemitic element to this but, as of 9:22 CST, This Article from the Associated Press on the issue said there wasn't yet evidence of that
HOWEVER, there's also talk about discussions on Telegram(widely used by fascist and hate groups) of "Jew Hunting" coming out of the Mayor's office. Now, I'm not acquainted with Dutch politics, but after some prelim reading I feel like the Mayor, Famke Halsema, is a dedicated lefist with a strong sense of personal integrity, so I feel like she wouldn't make that up. So the rhetoric was there, even if we don't yet know if it turned into action.
This Article in The Forward(an independent leftist Jewish newwspaper) is, so far, the clearest and most sensible to me. I won't quote much of it, I'd rec reading it it isn't long, but I want to highlight two parts, this quote from a local community organizer:
And this 2nd quote from him ending the article:
My take, at this time, is that this seems to be a case of two groups of hooligans hooliganing at each other, which was intensified by current political events(including the disparity in how anti-genocide activism is violently suppressed by the very local cops escorting Maccabi fans around, protecting them as they cheer genocide and insult the local population).
