Police arrested several people on Sunday for participating in a demonstration in central Amsterdam that was banned after violence against fans of an Israeli football club, a local broadcaster reported.
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema banned all demonstrations last weekend in the wake of the grim scenes of youths on scooters and on foot attacking Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters on Thursday and Friday in what was widely condemned as a violent outburst of anti-Semitism in the Dutch capital.
The Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands said that 2,000 Israelis have been brought home from Amsterdam on special flights in recent days. The attacks left five Israeli football fans hospitalized as anger prevailed the war in Gaza.
Before the match against Ajax, Maccabi fans held a pro-Israel demonstration in the center of Amsterdam, where they chanted anti-Arab slogans on the way to the stadium. There were also reports of Maccabi fans starting a fight.
Video shows a group of fans chanting “Let the Israeli army win” and “**** the Arabs” while dressed in gear to support their team, CBS News senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reported. More footage shows the Palestinian flag being torn down from the second floor of a building in the area where fans had gathered, by a person who had climbed onto the canopy on the building’s lower floor to reach it.
In the aftermath of the violent attacks on Israeli football fans that followed, a man who had traveled to the Netherlands for the Maccabi match told CBS News: “It was very scary. I saw people being beaten up.”
RTL News/AP
Video on local broadcaster AT5 showed police arresting a man who took part in a small demonstration on central Dam Square on Sunday. The demonstrators shouted slogans such as ‘Free, free Palestine’. AT5 reported that about twenty people were detained.
The municipality of Amsterdam said on
The organizers of the protest went to court on Sunday morning to obtain an injunction to allow the demonstration, but a judge upheld the ban imposed by the municipality.
During the hearing, senior Amsterdam police officer Olivier Dutilh said there were renewed incidents overnight where people were suspected of being Jewish, with some being thrown out of taxis and others being asked to show their passports to verify their nationality. to confirm.
Mike Corder/AP
Police launched a major investigation on Friday after gangs of youths carried out ‘hit and run’ attacks on fans, apparently inspired by calls on social media to attack Jewish people. Five people were treated in hospitals and more than sixty suspects were arrested.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar rushed to the Netherlands on Friday and offered Israel’s help in the police investigation. He met with Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof on Saturday and said in a statement that the attacks and demands to show passports are “reminiscent of dark periods in history.”
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the anti-Semitic attacks “not only pose a threat to Israel, but they endanger the entire world.”
“We will never allow the horrors of history to repeat themselves. We will never give in – neither to anti-Semitism nor to terrorism,” he said.
