In the chaotic aftermath of violence, there is a fleeting but crucial window when the prevailing narrative about what transpired remains malleable. So it was last Friday, as shocking reports emerged of street clashes and alleged antisemitic attacks between Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans and local residents in Amsterdam. The decision by Israeli officials to dispatch military planes to fly fans home and the Israeli president’s condemnation of an “antisemitic pogrom,” alongside the Dutch king’s remarks that his country had “failed” the Jewish community as during WWII, rapidly cemented a particular version of events.
Yet as more facts came to light in subsequent days, a far more nuanced picture began to take shape – one that highlights critical lessons about the dangers of knee-jerk reactions and simplistic narratives. According to sources familiar with the situation, in the days leading up to the match, hardcore Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters with a history of racist behavior had engaged in provocative acts, including tearing down and burning a Palestinian flag, vandalizing taxis, and chanting virulently anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian slogans in a city with a significant Muslim population.
The burning subtext here is Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, which has claimed over 45,000 Palestinian lives, primarily women and children, displaced most Gazans, and pummeled the besieged territory to the point of inhabitability. After a year of many Western leaders seeming more preoccupied with campus activism against the war than its apocalyptic toll, historically illiterate proclamations of an Amsterdam “pogrom” felt cut from the same cloth – minimizing or ignoring Israeli violence.
When Overcorrection Enables Exploitation
The worst manifestation was a blatant, Orwellian distortion – footage of Maccabi fans attacking locals near Amsterdam Central Station captioned as the precise opposite. This journalistic malpractice spanned outlets from The Guardian to the Wall Street Journal. Understandably, rebuttals aimed at re-centering the fans’ overt anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian racism. But in doing so, instances of antisemitism amidst the melee were frequently glossed over.
The warped initial coverage itself generated an overcorrection, funneling us into polarized camps – either it was about thuggish Israel supporters, or rampant Jew-hatred, never both. Yet a coherent antiracist lens would acknowledge that while hostility to Israel can be expressed through antisemitism, conflating the two is deeply misguided. Experts argue antisemitism is akin to a reservoir of animus running through European societies, a readily available hate to tap in times of tension.
The supposed concern about antisemitism is rerouted into using state power to strip another racialized other of citizenship. Amsterdam’s Jewish and Muslim communities are left reeling from political forces stoking division to advance an anti-migrant, Islamophobic agenda.
Most chillingly, the flattening of Amsterdam’s turmoil into a single-note story of antisemitism has emboldened the far right. The Netherlands’ Islamophobic Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, is seizing on the violence to threaten Dutch Moroccans with deportation and revoked citizenship – exposing how the far right poses as defenders of Jews while pushing vicious anti-Muslim bigotry.
Resisting Polarization, Reclaiming Complexity
If any wisdom can be salvaged from this wrenching affair, it is this – in an era of instant punditry and social media wildfires, resisting the impulse to immediately pick a side or a singular narrative is not a weakness but a strength. It creates space to gather facts, embrace complexity, perceive bad faith actors. Assuming situations can only be A or B, X or Y – rather than A and B, X entangled with Y – is a surefire path to distortion.
Those who profit from polarization will always rush to flatten, simplify and exploit – framing clashes stoked by intertwined hatreds as battles between monolithic identities, deftly erasing oppression and inequality. In Amsterdam and well beyond, we lose so much by ceding to this zero-sum terrain, by making Jews and Muslims, or other communities, feel that defending themselves requires throwing another marginalized group under the bus.
- Erasing nuance emboldens extremism on all sides
- Contextual thinking is a bulwark against manipulation
- Solidarity means confronting antisemitism and Islamophobia
- Far right concern trolling on antisemitism enables anti-migrant hate
The gut-wrenching lessons from Amsterdam’s anguish are crystallizing. Blanket assumptions inflame tensions and foment backlash. Flattening tangled strands of animus into simplistic binaries breeds only division and despair. Stitching together an inclusive social fabric demands grappling head-on with complexity – and fiercely rejecting any attempts to pit one oppressed community against another. Our futures depend on it.
The warped initial coverage itself generated an overcorrection, funneling us into polarized camps – either it was about thuggish Israel supporters, or rampant Jew-hatred, never both. Yet a coherent antiracist lens would acknowledge that while hostility to Israel can be expressed through antisemitism, conflating the two is deeply misguided. Experts argue antisemitism is akin to a reservoir of animus running through European societies, a readily available hate to tap in times of tension.
The supposed concern about antisemitism is rerouted into using state power to strip another racialized other of citizenship. Amsterdam’s Jewish and Muslim communities are left reeling from political forces stoking division to advance an anti-migrant, Islamophobic agenda.
Most chillingly, the flattening of Amsterdam’s turmoil into a single-note story of antisemitism has emboldened the far right. The Netherlands’ Islamophobic Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, is seizing on the violence to threaten Dutch Moroccans with deportation and revoked citizenship – exposing how the far right poses as defenders of Jews while pushing vicious anti-Muslim bigotry.
Resisting Polarization, Reclaiming Complexity
If any wisdom can be salvaged from this wrenching affair, it is this – in an era of instant punditry and social media wildfires, resisting the impulse to immediately pick a side or a singular narrative is not a weakness but a strength. It creates space to gather facts, embrace complexity, perceive bad faith actors. Assuming situations can only be A or B, X or Y – rather than A and B, X entangled with Y – is a surefire path to distortion.
Those who profit from polarization will always rush to flatten, simplify and exploit – framing clashes stoked by intertwined hatreds as battles between monolithic identities, deftly erasing oppression and inequality. In Amsterdam and well beyond, we lose so much by ceding to this zero-sum terrain, by making Jews and Muslims, or other communities, feel that defending themselves requires throwing another marginalized group under the bus.
- Erasing nuance emboldens extremism on all sides
- Contextual thinking is a bulwark against manipulation
- Solidarity means confronting antisemitism and Islamophobia
- Far right concern trolling on antisemitism enables anti-migrant hate
The gut-wrenching lessons from Amsterdam’s anguish are crystallizing. Blanket assumptions inflame tensions and foment backlash. Flattening tangled strands of animus into simplistic binaries breeds only division and despair. Stitching together an inclusive social fabric demands grappling head-on with complexity – and fiercely rejecting any attempts to pit one oppressed community against another. Our futures depend on it.
