(Bloomberg) -- Dutch leaders across the political spectrum united in condemning antisemitic attacks against Israeli football fans in the Netherlands.
Supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv, which played Dutch team Ajax on Thursday night, were assaulted in several areas of Amsterdam, as some “people said they were going on a Jew hunt” on Telegram groups, according to Mayor Femke Halsema.
Young people on scooters crisscrossed the city in search of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters and “hateful, antisemitic rioters and criminals attacked and beat up Jewish Israeli visitors who were guests in our city,” Halsema said. “Amsterdam looks back on a pitch-black day.”
Five fans were hospitalized as a result of the violence and as many as 30 people were injured. Authorities arrested more than 60 and 10 remain in custody.
The incidents sparked condemnation from around the world.
US President Joe Biden said in a post on X that the “Antisemitic attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam are despicable and echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with his Dutch counterpart Dick Schoof, who assured him that perpetrators of the attacks would be prosecuted.
“We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again,” King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands told Israeli President Isaac Herzog, according to the president’s office.
Dutch police said some Israeli football fans set a Palestinian flag on fire and destroyed a taxi before the match. Videos circulating online showed Israeli fans chanting anti-Arab slogans.
Halsema, a former head of the Green Left party, said the behavior of some Maccabi supporters is “no excuse” for the riots and violence. She announced a series of security measures, including preventive frisking, a ban on face-covering clothing and a temporary prohibition of demonstrations across the city.
Police had to intervene several times to protect Israeli supporters and escort them to hotels, authorities said.
The attacks “are terribly reminiscent of a classic pogrom,” said Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the US State Department’s special envoy for combating antisemitism.
“In terrible historical irony, this is happening two days before the grim anniversary of Reichspogromnacht in 1938, when Nazi-sanctioned and led pogroms against Jews erupted across the German Reich.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gidon Saar and Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, whose Freedom Party won last year’s Dutch parliamentary election, met at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam on Friday.
Wilders said he “assured him of our common interest to beat antisemitism and Jew hatred and that radical Islamic values have no place in a free society.”
Billionaire Bill Ackman cited the violence as “an appropriate tipping point” for saying he wants Pershing Square Holdings Ltd. and Universal Music Group to remove their listings from Euronext’s exchange in Amsterdam.
The war in Gaza, which began in October 2023 when Hamas militants attacked Israel, has caused anger and protests in many countries. Hamas, which the US and the European Union consider a terrorist organization, killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostage. More than 43,000 people have been killed in Israel’s assault in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
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