Late Thursday night, hundreds of supporters of the Israeli soccer club Maccabi Tel Aviv were chased, attacked and beaten on the streets of downtown Amsterdam in what appears to have been pre-planned, following the Israeli team’s UEFA Europa League soccer match against Dutch team Ajax.
More than 2,500 Israeli fans had flown to the Netherlands for the game. In the weeks leading up to the game, Dutch anti-Israel BDS organisers tried and failed to have the match canceled. In anticipation of radical anti-Israel and antisemitic activity, authorities banned anti-Israel rallies from the area near the stadium. Security measures around the stadium were said to have been significantly increased, but even before the game started, dozens of arrests were made. Though Dutch authorities were on hand to halt any planned attacks on Israelis at the stadium, when the Israeli contingent made its way downtown following the game, a large group of them were ambushed by dozens of masked assailants who were waiting for their unsuspecting victims.
A dozen or so Israelis were assaulted by violent Muslim mobs in the streets. In video clips of the ambushes shared by the attackers on social media, assailants could be seen striking their victims with sticks and fists, continuing to kick them even after they had fallen to the ground and, in a particular video, seemed to be unconscious.
Rabbi Akiva and Taiby Camissar, who direct Chabad-Lubavitch for Hebrew-speakers in Amsterdam, had been preparing to host hundreds of Maccabi fans for a large Shabbat experience. With registrations for the Shabbat meals exceeding their capacity, the Camissars organised for the secondary Chabad center in the south of the city to welcome a segment of the visitors. By Friday morning, the Camissars were looking into expanding capacity further as fans were looking to connect with fellow Jews over Shabbat. At around 2:00 a.m. local time, Rabbi Camissar began receiving messages from community members alerting him to the attacks. Then the calls from Israeli travellers and their concerned families in Israel started pouring in. Taxis could not be used, since the drivers were allied with the attackers. Instead, Camissar immediately began coordinating with community members coordinating who had cars to go downtown, rescue Israelis, and bring them to their hotels or directly to the airport, where two flights had been dispatched by Israel to bring them home.
As soon as Rabbi Yanki Jacobs—director of Chabad on Campus and Chabad of Amsterdam South—heard about the attack, he sped downtown towards the fray. He helped search for those separated from their groups during the attack, drove several people to the hospital, and made sure others made it to safety.
“It was incredible to see that every Jewish person, who heard about what was going on, took responsibility for one another,” Jacobs told Chabad.org, noting that the attack occurred just 24 hours after the city marked the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht with a public event to honor the solemn day. He remained in the city center until the wee hours of the morning.
Chabad in the city prepared hundreds of breakfast and lunch bags for their Israeli guests, and many volunteers from the community took the day off from work to drop off care packages and drive the Israelis to wherever they needed to go. One individual drove hours from Germany to make himself available to help in any way he could.
Rabbi Dovi Pinkovitch, who, together with his wife, Chaya, assists the Camissars at the Chabad Amsterdam Tourists and Israeli Center, estimated that Chabad rabbis were in touch with over 2,000 people from early Friday until Shabbat began. Jacobs said that the first hours of the night-time attack were filled with confusion, but by the morning the Maccabi team had organised a safe zone where fans can gather and drivers to care for and remove its fans.
“They can try to intimidate us, but they won’t shake us with violence or silence us with fear,” Jacobs said. “Our community, and the entire Jewish people, are strong and resilient and we will continue to do as we do each time we’re confronted with darkness: Increase in the light of Torah and mitzvot.”
To that end, Rabbi Camissar sees the Shabbat dinners playing an important role for all the visiting fans, “It will be a really special Shabbat where we could come together as one big family to inspire and strengthen one another,” the rabbi said. “It’s certainly going to be a beautiful Shabbat that all who attend will never forget. This unity and Jewish pride is how they will remember their experience in Amsterdam”
