Violence in Amsterdam Anti-Semitism or Anti-Zionism?

The clashes took place outside the Johan Cruyff Arena on Thursday night, the city’s main arena and Ajax Amsterdam’s home stadium, as well as in other areas. Ajax won the match 5-0 after leading 3-0 at halftime.

The incident resulted in the beating up of many of the Israeli fans and aggressors, leading to accusations and media reports of widespread anti-Semitic ‘pogrom'-style attacks against Jews.

The Palestine Football Association (PFA) has issued a statement saying it was “gravely concerned by the sequence of violent events in Amsterdam” after the clash, but what was the root of the violence?

An Israeli college professor Maya Sion-Tzidkiyahu acknowledged that the unrest in the Dutch capital, Amsterdam, last week was not anti-Semitic but anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist.

Sion-Tzidkiyahu, who is also the director of the Israel-Europe Relations Program at Mitvim Israeli think tank notes that the demonstrators" “were not looking for Jews; their attacks were directed against Israelis. It may be that some of them are indeed anti-Semitic, but what happened here is actually anti-Zionism or anti-Israelism.”

Following its decades-long occupation of Palestine, the Israeli regime launched an all-out war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, which has so far resulted in the massacre of more than 43,700 Palestinian people; added to the massacre is the destruction of the infrastructure and famine created in Gaza due to the Israeli war.

“As Israelis, we must understand how we are seen in Europe. … A month into the war, the number of civilian casualties in Gaza caused a very large anti-Israeli wave. It is very easy to dismiss everything with the word 'anti-Semitism'."

She warned that as long as the Israeli regime and its allies in Europe continue to claim any protest to the Israeli regime and its war crimes in Gaza is considered anti-Semitism, Tel Aviv just endangers the fate of European Jews with anti-Semitism that really originates from "anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism”.

“Even if this time the attacks were anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism, as Israelis, we must understand that Israel’s actions in Gaza challenge and even endanger European Jews and the continuation of Jewish life in Europe due to the rise of anti-Semitic attacks against them," the Israeli thinker pointed out.