What happened to Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in Amsterdam? A complete timelines

In the run-up to Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Europa League match against Ajax last Thursday, tensions began to rise in Amsterdam.

Throughout the city, posters were put up calling for the game to be cancelled and for Israel to be expelled from Uefa, European football’s governing body.

Sheher Khan, a member of the Dutch capital’s council, asked the city’s mayor, Femke Halsema, to ban the Israeli team from coming. “If you invite a club from Israel, it will lead to demonstrations and confrontation, inevitably,” he later told the New York Times.

On November 5, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that Mossad agents would accompany Israeli fans to Amsterdam because they feared that violence might erupt.

Wednesday

Before the game, city authorities began to clamp down on what they believed to be potential sources of trouble.

Several areas of Amsterdam, including the central station, the Johan Cruijff Arena, at which the game was due to be held, and the subway between the two, were designated as "safety risk areas" to allow the police to stop and search individuals within them between 1pm and midnight, the Dutch newspaper NL Times reported.

Week 4 Palestine, a group of local anti-Israel activists, were told by authorities that they had to move a protest planned to take place outside the stadium to a street about 15 minutes walk away.

F-Side, the hooligan group that supports Ajax, said they would not tolerate the demonstration and would "intervene where necessary" to prevent it.

“Violent confrontations are a realistic prospect,” Halsema told AT5, a local television station, after he announced the decision.

Announcing their protest’s move to a new location, Week 4 Palestine and several other anti-Israel groups wrote on Instagram: “We will make the world a narrow place for the occupat!on!! Even if we are oppressed or restricted, we will continue to stand up. This is a direct clash with our enemy (IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] and Mossad) [sic].”

As around 3,000 Maccabi Tel Aviv fans began to gather in Amsterdam, some started to cause trouble. Multiple videos shared on social media show men climbing the facade of houses in the centre of the city and ripping down Palestinian flags.

A large crowd of supporters were filmed chanting “Let the IDF win. F**k the Arabs!” as they went down an escalator.

A man identifying himself as a Dutch taxi driver shared dashcam footage of what he claimed to be a “Maccabi Hooligan” hitting the bonnet of a cab with what appeared to be a crowbar. 

Via his lawyer, he later claimed that an Israeli man dressed in black had tried to drag him from his car to attack him.

Peter Holla, Amsterdam’s police chief, said that Maccabi supporters had “destroyed” one cab. RTL Nederland reported that one taxi driver was assaulted.

Wednesday evening

At around 10pm, another match between Dutch team AZ Alkmaar and Turkish side Fenerbahçe finished, sending thousands of additional fans into Amsterdam. By the evening, hundreds of Maccabi fans had gathered in Holland Casino in the centre of the city. Shachar Bitton, a 30-year-old Maccabi supporter, told the Wall Street Journal that he was inside when he saw two friends with bloodied faces approach the blackjack table.

Two hundred men, many speaking Arabic, were waiting outside to attack any Israelis who left, he claimed. According to Amsterdam’s police force, an online appeal had been sent out for taxi drivers to mobilise at the casino to confront the roughly 400 Maccabi fans inside.

At about 1.30am, Bitton said, the crowd outside had swelled, but local police refused to escort Maccabi fans to their hotels. At 3am he left the venue in a group of around 40 other Israelis.

For more than an hour, the men walked in silence while men following on bikes filmed them while cursing and shouted "Free Palestine".

“Don’t do anything. Don’t even look, don’t even stare. We don’t want to start anything,” Bitton said he told his friends. “We immediately knew that if they’re going to film, they might be sending some others to wait for us.”

Amsterdam's police force later wrote on X that authorities had "prevented a confrontation" between taxi drivers and a "group of visitors" who came from the casino. Accross the night, 10 people were detained, mostly on charges of disrupting public order.

On WhatsApp, locals were already organising further violence to take place the next day. In a group chat seen by the Telegraph with several Palestinian flags in its name, a message in Dutch attacked the Israeli fans as “cancer dogs”.

"TOMMORROW AFTER THE GAME AT NIGHT PART 2 OF THE JEW HUNT,” wrote one member. “They won't go to the casino tomorrow."

Thursday

On the day of the match, Maccabi supporters were again filmed chanting anti-Arab slogans in the centre of Amsterdam. In one video verified by Reuters men can be seen shouting, "f**k you Palestine," in the city's Dam Square.

Two arrests were made, the police said, following clashes when some Palestine supporters made their way to the square. Elsewhere, Ajax supporters were blocked from confronting the relocated anti-Israel demonstration.

As Maccabi fans walked to the game they chanted, “Why is there no school in Gaza? There are no children left there.”

The game

At the stadium, before the game began, a minute of silence to commemorate victims of flooding in Spain was then disrupted by Maccabi fans whistling and chanting.

Sagiv Barazani, a 24-year-old Israeli, told the Wall Street Journal he and many others did not understand that it was taking place because it had been announced in Dutch.

Thursday evening

After the match ended peacefully, sporadic attacks against Maccabi fans took place across Amsterdam.

Video footage circulated on social media showed Israelis being chased down and beaten by small groups of men, often driving scooters. Other Israelis had fireworks shot at them.

In one clip, an attacker can be seen telling a victim in English: "That's Palestine. That's Gaza, mother-fucker… now you know how it feels."

In another, an Israeli on the ground pleads for mercy while he is kicked by a man shouting, "for the children". His attackers accuse him of wanting to kill kids and demand he says, "free Palestine," before the video ends.

In another video, a group of Maccabi fans can be seen charging at and attacking another group of men. Amsterdam-based photographer Annet de Graaf told AD, a Dutch publication, that she saw Maccabi fans attacking locals outside the main station.

Parool, a newspaper, said one woman had claimed a group of Israelis had kicked her front door and chanted in Hebrew because she had a pro-Palestine poster in her window.

Amid the chaos, Israelis living in Amsterdam began rescuing Maccabi fans. Ben Myers, a British-Israeli, told the Telegraph it had been a "mini Dunkirk" operation.

“There were definitely people being pushed into canals,” he said. “They [the police] must have known it was going to kick off. One of the biggest gripes was the lack of police action. A lot of Israelis were saying they didn’t see police for hours.”

Aftermath

According to the Israeli embassy, hundreds of Maccabi fans were attacked in total. Sixty-two people were arrested before and during the match, mostly for public order offences, with authorities now attempting to identify perpetrators of Thursday night’s violence.

On Monday night the violence continued. Rioters dressed in black and armed with fireworks set fire to a tram while shouting, "cancer Jews". According to De Telegraaf, masked men roaming the street shouted, "free Palestine".