Note: A “pogrom” is a violent riot meant to harm, intimidate and expel oppressed minority groups. The word entered English through Russian and Yiddish and referred mainly to anti-Jewish riots in the old Russian Empire stoked by the Czarist regime. Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) was one of the most infamous pogroms. It was carried out in Germany by the Nazis in 1938. The name referred to the shards of glass littering the streets after fascist mobs smashed the windows of Jewish synagogues, shops, and other buildings. The Klan’s decades of terrorism following the U.S. Civil War provide many more examples.
Recent weeks have seen the mainstream press alight with reports that a rash of “antisemitic attacks” had gripped the city of Amsterdam. According to CNN, Fox News, and CBS, “Israeli” soccer fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team were targeted by a violent antisemitic mob simply for being Jewish. Thousands of “Israeli” soccer fans and fascist thugs had traveled to Amsterdam in the week preceding M. Tel Aviv’s Nov. 5 match with Dutch soccer club Ajax.
This narrative is not just patently false and misleading. It is strategic in its attempt to position all pro-Palestine protests as antisemitic. This narrative is particularly pernicious considering the events that preceded the clashes in the street between Zionists and pro-Palestine activists.
This is not to say that there were no physical and violent confrontations between pro-Palestine protesters and M. Tel Aviv soccer fans. There certainly were. However, the violence was not borne from anti-Jewish hatred but from self-defense against a genocidal regime and that regime’s fascist mobs.
In the days leading up to the Nov. 5 match, the M. Tel Aviv fans made the city of Amsterdam their own fascist oyster. On the day before the match, a mob of Zionists in town for the match burned a Palestinian flag in Dam Square. These impromptu fascist demonstrations broke out across central Amsterdam. Video footage showed M. Tel Aviv fans setting off flares and chanting, “Let the [Israeli army] win” and “F**k the Arabs.”
The Zionist mobs also attacked houses displaying Palestinian flags on the day before and the day of the match. On the day of the match, the Zionist soccer fans marched to the stadium chanting similar anti-Arab slogans as the day prior. This fascist mob had an escort to the stadium from the Dutch federal police.
And to be clear, these Zionist pogrom demonstrations weren’t necessarily spontaneous. Ahead of the match in Amsterdam, the Zionist mouthpiece Jerusalem Post reported that Mossad agents would accompany M. Tel Aviv to the match. The Zionist entity knew it would have to protect its fascist masses and be prepared to cry antisemitism the second that the people of Amsterdam inevitably fought back against the fascist invasion of the city.
After the match itself, the fascist mobs began to make their way back to central Amsterdam. It was at this point that pro-Palestinian groups began to attack the fascists themselves. Some used scooters, and some simply confronted the Zionist thugs in the street.
Not so strangely enough, the mainstream media was absolutely silent as Zionist mobs vandalized Arab businesses, chanted “Kill the Arabs,” and attacked a Palestinian taxi driver. The second that the people of Amsterdam stood up to these fascist thugs, the media became awash with stories of rabid antisemitism in Amsterdam. Netanyahu sent in the occupation’s air force to “evacuate” the Zionist soccer fans. Amsterdam’s mayor described the event as an anti-Jewish pogrom.
A pogrom did occur in Amsterdam, but it wasn’t anti-Jewish. It was an anti-Palestinian and, more broadly, anti-Arab pogrom perpetrated by fascists whose Judaism is weaponized in the imperialist press. Frankly, the M. Tel Aviv Zionists are far closer in practice and politics to the sort of fascists who marched through London’s Jewish neighborhood in the famous 1936 “Battle of Cable Street” than they are to the Jewish community who experienced the terrors of Kristallnacht and Tsarist pogroms.
As long as the U.S. imperialist genocide of Palestine continues via its Zionist satellite, Zionists should expect to be confronted wherever they travel en masse to spread their terror.
Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist.
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