‘Who benefits from this?’ Soul-searching after the Amsterdam violence

Carrying white signs scrawled with messages urging unity, they took turns laying white roses at the statue of Anne Frank, steps away from the home where she, her family and four other people had hidden from Nazi persecution.

Days after Amsterdam was gripped by what officials described as “a toxic cocktail” of hooliganism, antisemitism and anger over the war in Palestine and Israel, the handful of imams and rabbis from European organisations had travelled to the city in an attempt to calm tensions.

“The roses are for every Amsterdammer, Muslim, Jew or of other faiths and origins, and also for the rioters in Amsterdam-West,” Eliezer Wolff, a rabbi from Amsterdam, told reporters. “The violent battle must be fought with love.”

It was a small act, one aimed at starting to heal the wounds left across the Dutch capital by last week’s events. One week on, the city’s Jewish and Muslim communities have spoken of grappling with fear, as questions linger about the events arising around the football match between local team Ajax and Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Local people and visitors appeared to have been involved in the unrest.

The first reports of disturbances emerged on Wednesday, as police said Maccabi fans tore down a Palestinian flag from the facade of a building and burned it, shouted “fuck you, Palestine”, attacked one taxi with their belts, and vandalised others.

Police said an online callout then led a number of taxi drivers to converge on a casino on the nearby Max Euweplein, where about 400 Israeli fans had gathered. Police dispersed the drivers and escorted supporters out of the casino.

The next day there were clashes on the central Dam Square, where a large crowd of Maccabi supporters had gathered. The fans were filmed chanting racist, anti-Arab slogans on their way to the Johan Cruyff Arena. Police escorted the 2,600 fans to the game and dispersed protesters who had defied a ban on a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside the stadium.

After the match, which Ajax won 5-0, there were numerous assaults, described by the city’s mayor, Femke Halsema, as violent “hit and run” attacks on Israeli supporters. Witness accounts and screenshots of text messages suggest some had specifically targeted Jews, asking people if they were Israeli or to show their passports.

Halsema said Maccabi supporters had ended up being “sought, hunted and attacked via antisemitic calls on social media and on the streets. But Amsterdammers were also attacked by Maccabi hooligans who chanted racist and hateful slogans in our city.”

Five people were briefly treated in hospital. Police arrested more than 60 people, including 10 who live in Israel. As residents scrambled to understand what had happened, the city noted in a report that “groups and communities in our city, uninvolved in these events, now find themselves collectively blamed”.

The events left many Jewish residents questioning their safety in the city, said Emile Schrijver, the general director of the Jewish Cultural Quarter, which includes the new National Holocaust Museum.

“There is horror and a sense of despair combined with anger – anger that the sense of freedom has gone,” he said. “I speak to people who have told their children to go to Israel, or who are afraid every day there will be antisemitic graffiti on the wall of [their] store.”

The violence also left many Muslim residents stunned, said Abdelkader Benali, a Moroccan-born writer who has lived in the Netherlands for more than four decades. “This is a tragedy,” he said. “This is a tragedy of the time we are living in.”

For much of the past year, officials across Europe have wrestled with how best to contain local tensions over the war. Last week in Amsterdam, as Maccabi fans set off fireworks, chanted “Olé, olé, let the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] win, we will fuck the Arabs” and declared there were “no children” left in Gaza, it became clear the conflict was now “among us”, Benali said.

“I think what happened last week was that there was a moment in which these emotions could not be contained any longer,” he said. “This mass of people coming from the Middle East to Holland for a football match, bringing with them a lot of politics, a lot of hate speech, a lot of violence, which led to these totally inexcusable events in which young people went on a rampage looking for people with a Jewish identity.”

The response to the events exacerbated the fears of many in a community already reeling from years of attacks by the country’s far right, he said. “There’s a big fear that this will be used to contain Muslims, to show them their place in society, or that they are second-class citizens.”

On Monday, a report released by city hall said a full independent inquiry had been launched into the violence as well as the actions of Dutch authorities, before, during and after the match.

A local Jewish anti-Zionist organisation, Erev Rav, had been among the first to criticise the response to the events. “We are deeply concerned that instead of restraining groups who caused disturbance in the city – including tearing down Palestinian flags from private residences and engaging in racist chanting – the police allowed the situation to escalate into widespread street violence,” it said in a statement.

Many reactions from around the world to the initial reports of the violence suggested it had been an unprovoked antisemitic attack on visiting Israeli fans.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, condemned a “planned antisemitic attack against Israeli citizens”, later comparing the violence to the murder of an estimated 91 Jews in Nazi Germany in 1938, describing it as “Kristallnacht … on the streets of Amsterdam”. The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, called the events “an antisemitic pogrom” – a term usually used to refer to the organised massacre of a particular group based on race or religion - and “a warning sign for any country that wishes to uphold the values of freedom”.

The Dutch king said: “We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during the second world war, and last night we failed again.” Halsema told reporters on Friday that the violence had brought back “memories of pogroms”. The US president, Joe Biden, called the violence “despicable” and an echo of “dark moments in history”.

Some seized on the events to push their own agenda. While the city’s report noted that the identity of the perpetrators must be established by a police investigation, Geert Wilders, the leader of the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant Freedom party (PVV) blamed Moroccans and Muslims, calling for those behind the attacks on Israeli visitors to be deported if they had dual nationality.

Benjamin Moser, a Jewish-American writer who has lived in the country for more than two decades, said Wilders was one of the first in the Netherlands to use the word pogrom, and that he conflated criticism of the war in Gaza with antisemitism, like many rightwing commentators.

“When something like this happens, who’s benefiting?” asked Moser. “It’s very clear that certain Dutch politicians were very happy. Wilders was very happy that this happened.”

Jaïr Stranders, a board member of the Liberal Jewish community group, said many people were experiencing pain and fear stemming from the community’s historical experience of pogroms. But the emerging picture suggested this was not the right term for what happened in Amsterdam. “When you look at the facts, this isn’t a pogrom,” he said. “A pogrom is a different kind of violence – not just in terms of scale, but in its nature, often sanctioned by those in power.”

He described it as an example of how language had been weaponised. “Netanyahu or Israeli politicians, for example, only stand to benefit from stoking fear. They want to show Jews around the world: ‘Yes, antisemitism is everywhere, but we are the only ones who can save you’,” Stranders said. “The right in other places does the same, using the term pogrom to put certain groups, such as Muslims, into a corner.”

The Muslim community, whose sense of belonging already hung precariously in the balance after Wilders’ party finished first in elections last November, was now bracing for what might come next, said Mustafa Hamurcu, the chair of IGMG Noord-Nederland, a movement focused on the integration of Muslims in Dutch society. “It’s really very painful,” he said. “We condemn all violence.”

For years his movement and others in the community sought to build bridges with different communities in the city and across the country. Now they were watching, stomachs knotted, as some pounced on these events to stir up fears, sow division and ratchet up tensions. “All that work and now they’re trying to bomb these bridges, to turn us into enemies,” he said.

“Who wins when they do this?” asked Hamurcu. “I think the winner is Wilders. And the losers and the victims are Amsterdam society – everyone, the Jews, the Muslims, Christians, everyone.”

Schrijver said that while law enforcement and education on the Holocaust were essential, moderates from all communities needed to come together and “change this toxic atmosphere” through conversation.

“There are ... moderate voices – I consider myself one of them – that continue to underline the importance of understanding what has happened before, taking all perspectives into consideration, but never making this something smaller than it was,” he said. “It was horrific.”