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Israeli news crew in Amsterdam rescued from antisemitic crowd

Channel 11 reporters escaped to a nearby mall and called the police, who took them to safety in a van.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

An Israeli news crew was rescued by police from an antisemitic crowd in Amsterdam Saturday after attempting to report on the lynch mob who beat dozens of Israeli soccer fans after a match ended Thursday night.

Channel 11 reporter Michal Reshef and cameraman Michael Rizhov were standing in the central, Dam Square to cover the violence perpetrated by hundreds of anti-Israel rioters against Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters after the game their squad had lost to the Dutch AJAX team.

As Reshef was talking into the mike, a group of youth surrounded them and started shouting anti-Israel slurs. They decided to pack up their equipment and walk away, but some followed them, they said, so they entered a nearby mall and called the police.

“We found ourselves in an unpleasant situation,” Reshef said from the store they were hiding in. “Protestors starting screaming at us ‘Free Palestine’ before the report, the police pushed them away from there…. They waited for us in an alley. We’re now in a very nice store where they agreed to host us until the police will come to get us out of here.”

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They asked for an escort to take them back to their hotel, and the authorities sent men and a van to bring them to safety.

On Thursday night, hundreds spread across the streets near the stadium to hunt down people dressed in the Maccabi colors or who looked Jewish.

Videos posted to social media showed whole groups chasing and attacking individuals on foot as well as ramming them in cars and scooters, and even attempting to break into hotels where fans were staying.

Although dozens were bruised and battered, only five people were reported as needing hospital treatment before being released.

Israeli intelligence had warned the Amsterdam police a few days earlier that there was a “high possibility” that the fans were in danger, as pro-Palestinian groups had not kept it a secret that they were planning something against the Israeli presence in the Dutch capital.

In the event, while some officers, as well as ordinary Dutchmen, including local Jews, helped Israelis escape, many of those who had to run for their lives said there were few policemen to be seen on the streets.

One victim, Tzvi Kedar, told Kan Radio that the police refused to escort him and his friend from a bar they had been invited into by a woman who told them it was unsafe outside. They walked alone and were set upon by several men who “confronted us with metal rods, bottles, and knuckledusters.”

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“We were two against twenty,” he recounted, “taking blows on the street like dogs. My friend lost consciousness, and I was bleeding.”

After the assault, the ambulance he called refused to come, he said, and when they got to the hospital by taxi, “there was no empathy towards us; they were indifferent and did not ask us what happened.”

Police Commissioner Peter Holla maintained in a press conference Friday that the authorities had been “prepared” for possible violence, having called in 800 officers from around the country well in advance, and that he was “still shocked by what happened.”

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema and the police chief said that “they take full responsibility for what happened,” although Holla also tried to blame the victims by saying that “there were incidents on both sides,” with Israelis “destroying a taxi” and burning a Palestinian flag in Dam Square the previous day.

He admitted that they knew that Muslim groups and taxi drivers had started to organize for attacks on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans on Thursday before the game, but defended his men, saying, “I would like to point out here that it is very difficult for the police to act against these flash moments spread throughout the city.”

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Holla expressed his “sympathy and support for the injured and all supporters who have felt or still feel unsafe” and vowed to “track down those involved.”

Only four out of 62 arrested so far were even detained through Saturday for allegedly committing violent acts, with the vast majority only fined for creating a public disturbance and ten charged with minor offenses such as vandalism and released.