Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, has backtracked on her previous use of the word “pogrom” to describe violence in the city between Israeli football hooligans and local young people mostly of Moroccan and other Arab descent.
She told the Dutch television programme Nieuwsuur (News Hour) on Sunday that if she could have repeated a press conference she gave the day after the match between Dutch side Ajax and Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv, she would not use the word “pogrom” in relation to the violence ahead of and after the match.
“Boys on scooters crisscrossed the city looking for Israeli football fans. It was a hit-and-run. I understand very well that this brings back the memory of pogroms,” Halsema had said at a press conference on Friday.
The violence, however, was instigated by Israeli football fans who tore down Palestinian flags, attacked taxis operated by drivers of Moroccan origin, and chanted racist and genocidal slogans including: “There are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left”, “Let the IDF win to f**k the Arabs” and “F**k you, Palestine”.
This sparked revenge attacks by local youths of Moroccan and other Arab origin.
Israeli and Dutch politicians, including anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders, whose far-right PVV leads the Dutch governing coalition and Israeli President Isaac Herzog had also used the term “pogroms”, placing all the blame on Arab and Muslim residents of Amsterdam.
Halsema, who is from the GroenLinks (Green Left) party, said that politicians in the Netherlands had “hijacked” the word pogrom to target Moroccan and Muslim residents of Amsterdam.
“If I had known that it would be used politically in this way, also as propaganda, I don’t want anything to do with that,” she told Nieuwsuur.
She criticised right-wing members of the Dutch cabinet who said that the violence was caused by a failure of Muslims to integrate.
“What is that for and what is it based on?” Halsema said. “People feel like they are back in the days after 9/11, that they have to defend themselves. But it concerns individuals who seriously misbehaved.”
Around 62 people were arrested as a result of the violence, including at least 10 Israelis. Only four remain in custody.
Western media have been criticised for their coverage of the events, with the BBC publishing a video purporting to show Israeli fans being chased by groups of local men, when it was in fact the other way around and Sky News captioning a video of Israeli fans shouting racist chants and tearing down flags as “Israeli football fans attacked in Amsterdam”.
