An Israeli soccer fan who was the target of a horrifying anti-Semitic attack in Amsterdam told on Friday how he was chased through the city along with Jewish women and children and left with broken teeth and a black eye. Ta.
“It was a pogrom. If there had been an internet in 1938, Kristallnacht would have been like this,” a shaken victim told Israeli media outlet Haaretz.
An Israeli Defense Forces officer who was in town for a Thursday night soccer match told the Post that his friend was beaten senselessly by a group of 15 thugs until his friend, covered in blood, screamed “Free Palestine!” He said that he was attacked.
The Israeli-American tech worker added, “These attacks resurfaced on October 7th.”
“It felt like everything was pre-planned,” said the man, who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity.
“The police were nowhere to be seen.”
After a soccer match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and AFC Ajax, five Israelis were hospitalized after a large group of hate-filled thugs attacked and chased as many Jews as they could identify.
At least 62 people were arrested for taking part in the attack.
“I saw them ramming into cars, kicking the ground, and fans being hit,” another witness told Haaretz.
The 40-year-old man said he and his friends were walking from Central Station to their hotel when they passed four men who hurled anti-Semitic slurs at them.
One of his friends separated from the group while trying to go to another hotel, and a car swerved towards him, forcing him to jump out at the last minute, narrowly missing his life.
“This is not soccer hooligans. This is a pre-planned attack by Muslims against Israelis and Jews,” the man said.
The group Stop Antisemitism Now posted a screenshot of a message allegedly circulated by the attack’s organizers planning horrific violence against X.
“Part 2 Jew Hunt They Won’t Go to Casinos Anymore,” reads the vile message.
“How dare you sabotage those damn Jewish players’ bus,” another hissed.
The Israeli Defense Forces soldier, who was not with his friend at the time, said his friend told him “a group of about 15 people grabbed me on the street near my hotel and started shouting, ‘Where are you from?'” ”
The soldier could not speak on the record without official permission, but it was clear from his friend’s blue and yellow shirt that he was a supporter of Maccabi Tel Aviv, and the violent mob was meaningless. He said he continued to hit him.
“Before he could answer, they strangled him, beat him, and held him down. As he lay bleeding on the floor, they held him until he screamed, ‘Free Palestine!’ I didn’t leave. ” said the officer.
The man managed to escape when a group of Israelis came to help.
An IDF soldier said another friend was robbed and had all his belongings taken.
David Yurman, an Israeli copywriter who was in the city at the time, told the Post that the violence was typical of what is so tragically true for Jews today.
“When you live in Israel, you get used to it,” he said.
Yaman, 28, said he decided to turn his hotel room into a shelter for Israelis to escape the violent chaos outside.
He received ten other Israelis in his room and slept on the floor.
His four friends also did the same in their rooms.
“My friend ran for his life down an alley as a group of 15 people chased him. He managed to connect with another victim who was bleeding from the head and the two managed to hide in his apartment. “We were able to do that,” Yaman said.
“I learned a lot about my grandfathers and what they went through in the Holocaust. It’s similar to what I learned in school.”
“They were hiding people in hotels so they wouldn’t kill them because they were Jewish,” he said, his voice breaking with anger.
Another tech employee, a 30-year-old developer, told the Post that local police should have been prepared because the violence had actually started the night before.
“My friend was beaten up outside the casino the night before,” he said.
The man, who also requested anonymity, said he wasn’t scared because there had only been a few attacks across Amsterdam the night before, and the rough-and-tumble soccer fans expected police to be there the next day. The pinnacle of things.
But after Maccabi Tel Aviv’s crushing 5-0 loss to Dutch team Ajax, the man quickly realized that the second night “was going to be worse than the first night,” he said. said.
“I saw a lot of attacks. I saw a lot of people trying to attack, but I also saw a lot of fans trying to protect themselves,” said an Israeli soccer fan.
He said the perpetrators would fight their victims in groups of 15 to 1 or even 20 to 1.
The soccer fan said he decided to form a rescue team with his friends and roam the city looking for lonely Israelis in need of help.
The foursome were found hiding in a locked restaurant as armed thugs tried to break in and threw rocks at the windows.
He and his companions scared the group away and took the Israelis back to their hotel.
“Amsterdam police didn’t really try to help us,” he said, attributing police inaction to a combination of anti-Semitism and “fear” of the city’s immigrant Muslims.
“When you saw the Jews being attacked, you did nothing and told the Jews to go where I told them to go until I decided it was okay for them to leave. “There is something wrong with doing nothing for Muslims,” he said. Said.
“Everyone told us that we needed to go back to Israel, that we needed to leave Amsterdam and go somewhere else in Europe, but we did nothing.”
Israeli photographer Ami Schumann recalled having to walk through the sickening scene surrounded by a police escort as she tried to get her son back to the hotel unharmed.
“We saw violence, we saw people with black eyes with deep cuts under their eyes,” he told The Times of Israel.
“They didn’t differentiate between women, children, men and old people,” said Tomer Taliesin, a Maccabi fan.
“They attacked everyone they considered to be Israelites.”
