Tag: outer

When inner goes outer

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For many years now several Israeli football clubs have been nests of racism, hatred, bigotry and links to some quite horrific mafias. Not that this problem only happens in Israel: some clubs in England, in Italy, in Germany, in Colombia, are also famous for the viciousness of the insults hurled at various groups of people (in Colombia, some notorious cases involve the use of nazi symbols, to the point that there were discussions of what nazi regalia and language could mean in a country where notions of racial “purity” seem so remote).

I first heard about the specific problem in Israel from a mathematician friend of mine, who warned me how areas around the Jerusalem Central Market (the shuk, a place I love for the quality of its food) are infested with Beitar Yerushalayim fans, and with an extremely problematic mafia around it, La Familia.

Being generally very distant from football (really, the game does not interest me at all, and I tend to regard everything connected to it with a mixture of distaste and distance), that did not concern me much. But at some point some chain of coincidences led me to pay attention to what was happening to that team.

The team Beitar Yerushalayim represents and condenses all the most odious situations that happen in Israel: nationalism mixed with racism, anti-Arab expressions mixed with mobilization of right-wing thugs. This video from 2016 by The Guardian has a good description: https://youtu.be/GJOV_cN-JP8?si=dfj-yJOGNQtPyMfI.

I didn’t pay too much attention to Maccabi Tel Aviv until today. Yet another team of that little FIFA game of corruption and fanning of the worst expressions, in Europe and in Israel and in parts of Latin America.

And then the Amsterdam events happened. Giving a name to the horrific events there defies my mind. It has been called the Amsterdam pogrom, and it has been compared by mainstream media to Anna Frank’s symbol of deportation from Amsterdam of thousands of Dutch Jews during WWII, most of whom did not survive.

Gideon Levy in Haaretz (a reliably critical voice) calls it a pogrom yet immediately compares it to the Hawara pogrom of about a year ago, a pogrom of Palestinians perpetrated by Jews, with the acquiescence of part of the authorities in Israel. His piece is worth reading: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-11-10/ty-article-opinion/.premium/from-amsterdam-to-the-hawara-pogroms-are-wrong/00000193-128f-d304-a3db-16ff60fb0000

As far as I can gather, the events unfolded this way:

  • Fans from the Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv traveled to Amsterdam to watch a game.
  • The typical football aggressiveness developed, around the time of the game. As happens in many cities of Europe and the United States (and Latin America), there were Palestinian flags displayed on many windows, on many residences.
  • The Israeli fans (or at least an aggressive enough group) started chanting racist songs, trying to tear down Palestinian flags from residences and store windows. Their chants included blood curdling phrases such as “no schools in Palestine since there are no children left” or the (too sad to think, too horrific to hear) “death to Arabs”.
  • There was the usual reaction of people in Amsterdam. The reaction for sure involved a mixture of anti-semitism with very natural rage with the events of more than a year of bombing Gaza, more than a year of seeing virtually no actions connected with rescuing the hostages, more than a year of a brutal build-up. This piece tells in much more detail the story: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1855427545262399585.html
  • As if all the previous situations (caused partly by FIFA, partly by the worldwide acceptance of racist and aggressive football fandom, partly by the attack on Israel on October 7 and partly by the brutality of Israel’s response, and by the utter despair and invisibility of any end) were not horrific enough, the Dutch government, the Western media, decided to play the Holocaust card in connection with the events. They have systematically suppressed almost all reference to the root of the (also very bad) action against the Israelis. As Gideon Levy says, “Not that there isn’t antisemitism: Of course there is, and it must be fought, but the attempt to pin everything on it is ridiculous and mendacious. An anti-Israeli wind blew in Amsterdam Thursday, and that’s what ignited the pogrom. The North African immigrants, the Arabs and the Dutch people who rioted saw the horrors in Gaza over the past year. They are not willing to remain silent about them. For them, the victims are their brothers and their compatriots. And who can remain indifferent when your people are slaughtered so cruelly? Every Moroccan waiter in every remote Dutch town has seen much more of Gaza than the experts on Arab affairs in Israel. No decent person could remain indifferent to the images from Gaza. The rioters in Amsterdam committed egregious violence and deserve condemnation and punishment. Nothing can justify a pogrom, neither in Amsterdam nor in Hawara. But the Amsterdam riots also have a context, and Israel is unwilling to address it. It would rather send a bodyguard with every Israeli soccer fan who travels to Europe from now on than to ask why it is that they hate us so much and how this hatred can be quelled. After all, it did not erupt like this before the war in Gaza.“

Of course, all this unanimity in the response by the press plays perfectly into Netanyahu (and Trump)’s book. The fact that almost only in Israeli mainstream media one may find voices criticizing the hypocrisy of Western media is amazing. Of course, many independent media in the West have done a good job of presenting the situation in a different light, but they have been as usual obliterated in their visibility. The whole situation became a PR opportunity for Netanyahu’s government, with their sending of El Al planes to “rescue” the fans, their messages referring to Kristallnacht 86 years ago, their shameless use of the memory of Anne Frank and of millions who were assassinated by the Nazis in the camps in connection with the Amsterdam events of this week.