The leaders of Israel and the Netherlands have condemned “antisemitic” attacks on fans of an Israeli football team after a match in Amsterdam, while a leading Jewish group has said the Dutch capital should be “deeply ashamed”.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, cancelled plans announced early on Friday to send two rescue planes to Amsterdam, after what his office called “a horrific antisemitic incident”. Israeli citizens are instead expected to return home via commercial airlines.
“Fans who went to see a football game encountered antisemitism and were attacked with unimaginable cruelty just because of their Jewishness and Israeliness,” Israel’s security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said in a post on X.
Amsterdam police said on Friday they had launched “a major investigation into multiple violent incidents”. In a post on X police said five people had been taken to hospital and 62 arrested. They said they were unable to confirm “reports regarding a possible hostage situation and missing persons”.
Before the match police had said were on alert and monitoring several incidents, including the tearing down of a Palestinian flag from a building by unknown persons.
There were no reports of trouble during the match at the Johan Cruyff Arena, in which Ajax Amsterdam defeated Maccabi Tel Aviv 5-0. But 57 people were held after the game as pro-Palestinian protesters tried to reach the stadium, despite having been forbidden from demonstrating there.
Fans left the stadium without incident, police said, but later in the night various violent incidents targeting the Maccabi supporters were reported in Amsterdam city centre.
Residents and businesses in Amsterdam were shocked by what appeared to be organised small groups of locals chasing Israeli fans after the football match.
Theodoor van Boven, owner of the Condomerie, near Dam Square on the Warmoesstraat, said he saw gangs apparently hunting, and chasing, opposing fans. “What we saw here in the street in the evening and at night were groups of often Dutch groups who were out hunting, who were looking for Maccabi fans. They were on foot in groups, on scooters, riding round looking, and telephoning each other – it [seemed to be] organised.”
He said he heard a sound late on, looked out of his house and started videoing what he saw. “There was a group of these scum, running after a Maccabi guy, here in the Pavenbrug street,” he said. “He was running away very fast – he could really run – towards the Winston hotel. A bit later we saw one of the scum walking back with a smile on his face. You could recognise the Maccabi supporters as they were wearing yellow, although they were hiding it.”
One Maccabi fan told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that people had been stabbed and beaten in what seemed to be organised attacks. “They saw everyone in yellow [Maccabi Tel Aviv’s home-strip colour], they jumped on us,” a young woman identified only as Pnina, told the broadcaster from Schipol airport. She said her group had hidden in their hotel “until it was safe to go outside”.
Ron, another departing fan, said it had been a “terrible night” and “very scary”. He and his travelling companions, he said, had decided against calling a taxi to travel to the airport on Friday, but had asked people they knew for lifts.
Police said they were investigating reports that Amsterdam taxi drivers had played a role in the violence, but had not yet established the facts, NOS reported. A Jewish community umbrella group in the Netherlands raised the possible role of taxi drivers, suggesting there had been an app to coordinate attacks. “They moved in groups, cornering their targets,” the Central Jewish Consultation said in a statement.
The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, phoned his Dutch counterpart, Caspar Veldkamp, on Friday to ask the Dutch government to help Israeli citizens arrive safely at the airport.
The Dutch prime minister, Dick Schoof, said he was “horrified by the antisemitic attacks on Israeli civilians” that were “completely unacceptable”. He said he had spoken to Netanyahu by phone “to stress that the perpetrators will be identified and prosecuted”.
In a social media post on Friday, Geert Wilders, who leads the far-right Freedom party, the largest in the Dutch governing coalition, criticised his own government for a “lack of urgency”. He wrote: “Why is there no extra cabinet meeting? Where is the sense of urgency?”
Wilders, who is well known for his anti-Muslim positions and does not have a formal role in the government, said Dutch authorities “will be held accountable for their failure to protect” Israeli citizens.
In a tweet, Deborah Lipstadt, the US antisemitism envoy, said she was “deeply disturbed” by the attacks and called for an investigation.
Chanan Herztberger, the chair of the Central Jewish Consultation, said: “Amsterdam should be deeply ashamed, the Netherlands should be deeply ashamed.”
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The attacks, he noted, had taken place on the evening the Dutch Jewish community had commemorated Kristallnacht, the 1938 state-sanctioned pogrom and murderous rampage in Nazi Germany and controlled territories that paved the way for the Holocaust.
“Our capital was the scene of a pogrom that would not have been out of place in Nazi Germany,” Hertzberger said, referring to “the antisemitic gangs who, under the guise of anti-Zionism, have been trying to make life impossible for Jews in the Netherlands for some time”.
“The terrible scenes we witnessed last night show that there is no time to wait before taking tough measures,” he added.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said she was “outraged” by “vile attacks targeting Israeli citizens in Amsterdam”.
“I strongly condemn these unacceptable acts,” von der Leyen wrote on X. “Antisemitism has absolutely no place in Europe. And we are determined to fight all forms of hatred,” she added.
The UN called the violence “very troubling”.
Uefa, the governing body of football in Europe, said it strongly condemned “the incidents and acts of violence” and that it would “examine all official reports, gather available evidence, assess them and evaluate any further appropriate course of action”.
President Isaac Herzog was among senior Israeli politicians who said the violence recalled the attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen last year, as well as attacks on European Jews in the pogroms of previous centuries. “We see with horror this morning, the shocking images and videos that since October 7th, we had hoped never to see again: an antisemitic pogrom currently taking place against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and Israeli citizens in the heart of Amsterdam,” he wrote on X.
Israel’s largest-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, quoted Israeli fans saying the attacks appeared to have been planned.
One Amsterdam resident, Barbara Weenink, said she had found the behaviour of Israeli fans threatening. Weenink, who has demonstrated at pro-Palestine events, said she was warned not to go out with a keffiyeh on that evening. She did not see the events after the match but had seen Israeli football fans before it. “I saw the Israeli fans walking here before the match – I found it very threatening,” she said.
Amsterdam – which is also known as Mokum, the Yiddish for “safe haven” – has a football club long associated with Jewish history. Last year, 154 AZ Alkmaar fans were arrested for antisemitic chanting against Ajax on the capital’s metro. There have also been increasing concerns about rising Dutch football hooliganism, fuelled by young supporters drinking and taking drugs, and concerns about the burden on policing.
Reuters contributed to this report