Last week, violence at a soccer match in Amsterdam between fans of the Dutch team Ajax and the Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv inspired dozens of headlines about “antisemitic squads” attacking supporters just because they’re Jewish. However, like many of the peace protests at college campuses in the U.S. several months ago, the mainstream media is willfully ignoring some very important facts that change the story entirely.

So is Europe really on its way to a repeat of the Holocaust?

Not exactly.

Social media has been showing what really happened, and it turns out that many of the Israeli fans who were attacked had provoked their attackers. In fact, many of the violent cases seen were reactions to aggression on the part of the Israeli fans.

Even The Guardian admitted that the first incidents actually came the day before the match, when Maccabi fans ripped a Palestinian flag off of a building and burned it, vandalized a taxi, and yelled phrases like “F— you, Palestine.”

One Palestinian poster living in the city wrote: “Last night a group of Israeli hooligans stood under my window. Screaming, banging on the door, fireworks. For the first time in my life, I was really scared in my own home.”

Moreover, several verified videos across social media platforms showed Maccabi supporters setting off fireworks and flares and chanting phrases such as “Let the IDF win; we will f— the Arabs.” They were also heard saying things like “There are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left.”

In a further demonstration of their provocative behavior, some Maccabi fans could be heard jeering while a minute of silence was held for the victims of devastating floods in Valencia, Spain.

Ajax went on to beat Maccabi 5-0 in the match, and there were numerous attacks on Maccabi supporters after the match. False reports soon circulated that Maccabi fans had been taken hostage or gone missing.

Footage also revealed Maccabi fans chanting anti-Palestine slogans after the match, setting off fireworks, and stealing wooden planks and scaffold tubes from a construction site to use as weapons; some could also be seen swinging belts through the streets. Later, people were seen setting an empty tram on fire and smashing its windows.

Amsterdam eventually declared a partial state of emergency, which allowed police to carry out stop-and-search operations on a random basis. This led some Israelis to claim that the violence “brings back memories of pogroms.”

Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema said: “Jewish culture has been deeply threatened. This is an outburst of antisemitism that I hope to never see again.”

The Israeli government sent planes to the Netherlands to bring its fans home in what many consider an extreme overreaction and ploy for attention so they can garner support for their very unpopular war in Gaza by perpetuating the idea that people around the world want to kill them solely for being Jewish.

Politician confirms Israeli fans started the drama

However, Amsterdam councilman Jazie Veldhuyzen confirmed that Maccabi fans set the drama in motion, stating: “They began attacking houses of people in Amsterdam with Palestinian flags, so that’s actually where the violence started. As a reaction, Amsterdammers mobilized themselves and countered the attacks that started on Wednesday by the Maccabi hooligans.”

It’s not surprising that Israel and its supporters, including the U.S., jumped on this violence and played it up, but the truth is that there are always subsets of soccer fans who seem to lose all sense of reason when they get together – and like many other incidents, they turn to racist provocations. It turns out this incident is much closer to run-of-the-mill soccer hooligan behavior than a sign of the return of Nazism.

Sources for this article include:

FreeWestMedia.com

TheGuardian.com

Reuters.com