Amsterdam football club Ajax’s 5-0 victory over Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv team this week should have been a moment of civic pride.
Instead, the city faced international condemnation over what authorities called an outbreak of antisemitic “hit and run” violence against Maccabi fans after the game on Thursday night.
Videos on social media appeared to show Arabic-speaking men chasing and assaulting at least two men, demanding that one say “Free Palestine”. Five people were taken to hospital and 62 were detained.
Police said there had also been earlier clashes between Israeli fans and pro-Palestinian protesters and the fans had vandalised a taxi and burnt a Palestinian flag. Other videos showed Maccabi fans chanting anti-Arab slogans as they entered a metro station.
Ajax has long been associated with the city’s Jewish community. It is the Netherlands’ biggest football club and the club of Amsterdam East, which includes the city’s Jewish quarter. In a statement on X it said it was “horrified to learn what happened”.
The incident came amid heightened tensions in European cities over the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, as pro-Palestinian protests have spread.
The full picture of what happened in Amsterdam on Wednesday and Thursday night is still unclear and being investigated by the authorities. The police said the city would remain under heightened security over the weekend.
Some Amsterdam residents and councillors said the city, renowned for its open culture, had become more tense amid a deep shift to the right in Dutch politics, the growing popularity of firebrand Geert Wilders’ Freedom party and its victory in elections last year.
At the same time, pro-Palestinian protests have added to the pressure on Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema, a Green. The opening of a Holocaust museum in March by Israeli president Isaac Herzog was overshadowed by egg throwing protesters. In May, protesters occupied parts of the campus at the University of Amsterdam before sometimes violent clashes with police.
Wilders’ party holds 37 of the 150 seats in the Dutch lower house as part of a shaky four-way coalition and has relentlessly pushed for a ban on asylum seekers.
He has campaigned for the closure of mosques and banning of the Koran and lives in a safe house after numerous Islamist death threats. “Islam is a disgusting, reprehensible, violent and hateful religion,” he said just before his party took office in July.
Posting on X after this week’s disturbances, Wilders, who is a staunch supporter of Israel and spent time on a Kibbutz in Israel in his youth, blamed “multicultural scum” for the violence and said “criminal Muslims” should be deported.
Last month, the government announced plans to curtail residency rights for refugees as part of its “toughest asylum policy ever”.
Even opposition liberal politicians have started to echo Wilders’ hardline stance for fear of losing more voters to the far right.
Rob Jetten, leader of the liberal D66 party, told the Financial Times last month that failed asylum seekers should be sent home. “It’s a small group, but they cause a lot of trouble and we know from which countries they mainly come from,” he said, citing Morocco and other unnamed African nations.
Sheher Khan, an Amsterdam city councillor for the pro-Muslim Denk party, said that the national government’s anti-immigrant line was causing a “radicalisation in society”.
“A lot of anger is brewing . . . and it came to an explosion [on Thursday]. But this is a direct result of that selective human rights policy [of the government]”, he said.
On Friday small rival groups of demonstrators holding Israeli and Palestinian flags stood outside Amsterdam City Hall; passing residents begged them to be peaceful.
Jonathan Sterhefeld, a 20-year-old Jewish Ajax fan who was among the protesters, said the city felt less safe. “If you think it’s a genocide [in Gaza] it’s your opinion, but don’t attack me for my passport,” he said.
On Friday, Maccabi fans were taken to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport in buses with a police escort. Arriving in Tel Aviv on Friday evening, they were filmed shouting anti-Palestinian chants, according to videos posted on X.
Even before Thursday night, some countries had raised security concerns linked to travelling Israeli football fans.
Belgium has opted to host its national game against Israel this month in Hungary after officials in Brussels said they feared a “disproportionate risk” to fans’ safety, given the strong pro-Palestinian feeling among the Belgian capital’s immigrant communities.
A Europa League Maccabi Tel Aviv match against Turkey’s Besiktas football team will also be played at a neutral venue.
In response to Thursday’s violence, Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar travelled to Amsterdam to meet Wilders and Dutch justice minister David van Weel.
After visiting the city’s Modern Orthodox Synagogue in Amstelveen on Friday evening, Sa’ar told the Financial Times that it had been “a terrible night”.
“The Jewish community [in Amsterdam] is strong . . . [They] will prevail,” he said.
Carla Kabamba, an independent Amsterdam city councillor, said the events of Thursday night showed that the city had “changed a lot”.
“Amsterdam is a leftist, progressive city which normally has space for a lot of different people, including the people who are against each other right now,” she said. “The radicalisation is there on both sides.”