Israeli football fan describes being attacked in Amsterdam

[Pelican Press 0]

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******** football fan describes being attacked in Amsterdam

EPA

An ******** football fan has described being attacked by several men in overnight ********* that Amsterdam police say involved youths on scooters carrying out “hit-and-run” attacks that were hard to prevent.

Adi Reuben, a 24yr-old Maccabi Tel Aviv fan who was visiting Amsterdam for the club’s Europa League match with Ajax, told the BBC he was kicked on the floor by a group of young men who confronted him when he was walking to his hotel.

He said more than 10 men came up to him and his friends and asked them where they were from.

“They shouted ‘*******, *******, IDF, IDF’,” Mr Reuben said, referring to the ******** military.

“They started to mess with me and I realised I had to run, but it was dark and I didn’t know where to go. I fell to the floor and ten people were kicking me. They were shouting ‘Palestine’.

“They were kicking me on the floor for about a minute, then they walked off, they weren’t afraid of anything.

“I realised I had full blood on my nose and my nose was broken and it is very painful.”

Mr Reuben said he could not see properly for about 30 minutes after the *******. But he said he decided against going to hospital in Amsterdam because he had heard that taxi drivers were involved in the *********.

Instead he said he was flying to ******* on Friday afternoon on a flight organised by the ******** government and would get medical treatment there.

“This was a specific ******* that was organised beforehand,” he added.

Pnina, another Maccabi Tel Aviv supporter, also told Dutch media organisation NOS that the ********* against Israelis appeared pre-planned.

“It seems like it was organised. There was a lot of people. They jumped on us… We hid in the hotels until it was safe to go outside,” she said.

Esther Voet, editor-in-chief of a Dutch ******* weekly newspaper, lives in the city centre and says she offered her home to shelter several ******** fans, after she saw footage of the *********.

“I told them this is a ******* home and you are safe here,” she told ******** public broadcaster Kann. “People were really scared. I never thought I would go through this in Amsterdam.”

Dutch police said ******** fans had suffered “serious abuses” during “hit-and-run” attacks many of which were carried out by young men on scooters.

Dozens arrested after post-match ********* in Amsterdam

Amsterdam police chief Peter Holla said it had proved difficult to prevent such attacks even though police had been present in the city centre in numbers. The force eventually decided to bring Maccabi supporters together and protect them before transporting them out of the area in buses, he said.

Five people were injured but had left hospital and between 20 and 30 more had been lightly hurt, he said.

The attacks overnight into Friday followed some tensions between Maccabi fans and people in Amsterdam over previous days, officials said.

On Wednesday Maccabi fans attacked a taxi and burned a ************ flag, police chief Holla said. Taxi drivers then headed towards a location where about 400 Maccabi fans had gathered but police were able to take them out of the area. There were further clashes in Dam Square overnight into Thursday but police were mostly able to keep the groups separate.

On Thursday evening before the match police accompanied pro-************ demonstrators and mostly managed to keep them separate from football fans – but were then unable to prevent attacks later in the evening.

“We are looking back on 36 hours that really shocked me. Supporters from ******* have been attacked and some abused in a terrible way,” Holla said.

“I’m particularly shocked by fact that we’ve had one of largest police actions and we were not able to control or prevent this *********.”

Reuters

There had been tensions between Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and some people in Amsterdam ahead of Thursday night’s *********

Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema said the “war in the Middle East has threatened the peace in our city” and there had been a “terrible outburst of antisemitism”.

She said Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were not considered to pose a threat of ********* and there was no animosity between them and fans of Dutch club Ajax.

“I do understand that this reminds us of pogroms and that this happened in Amsterdam is reprehensible. Not only people got injured last night but the history of our city has been deeply damaged, the ******* culture has been threatened,” she said.

Some Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have previously been involved in ******* incidents in *******, including cursing at the team’s ************ and ***** players and reportedly applying pressure on the team to oust them.

Fans of the team have also previously attacked protesters demonstrating against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Asked about video footage appearing to show Maccabi fans in Amsterdam chanting offensive slogans, Mayor Halsema said: “What happened last night has nothing to do with protest. There is no excuse for what happened.”

Additional reporting Shaina Oppenheimer in Jerusalem

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