Israel think tank director acknowledges Amsterdam violence was not anti-Semitism, but anti-Zionism

An Israeli professor and director of a prominent Israeli think tank has acknowledged that the demonstrations and violence in the Dutch capital, Amsterdam, last week were not anti-Semitic but anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist.

Last week, fights broke out on the streets of the Netherlands capital, Amsterdam, instigated by fans of the Israeli football team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, when they chanted anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian slurs, pulled down Palestinian flags off properties and attacked locals attempting to prevent them.

The incident resulted in the beating up of many of the Israeli fans and aggressors, leading to accusations and media reports of widespread anti-Semitic ‘pogrom’-style attacks against Jews.

In a media interview, Dr Maya Sion-Tzidkiyahu – the director of the Israel-Europe Relations Program at the Israeli think tank, Mitvim, and a lecturer at Hebrew University’s European Forum and Tel Aviv University’s European Union Studies Program – stated that the demonstrators opposing the Israeli fans “were not looking for Jews; their attacks were directed against Israelis. It may be that some of them are indeed anti-Semitic, but what happened here is actually anti-Zionism or anti-Israelism.”

While clarifying that there “is no justification for violence”, the counter-rioters “specifically sought revenge on the one who tore up the Palestinian flags and called for the death of the Arabs. The actions of those in Amsterdam are the result of anti-Israeli sentiment. There is a very sharp new anti-Semitism, but in Amsterdam, it was mainly anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist.”

MEMO Monitoring: Does this video disprove the media narrative on Amsterdam violence?

Sion-Tzidkiyahu reasoned that “as Israelis, we must understand how we are seen in Europe”. Referring to the immediate sympathy towards Israelis following Hamas’s attack on Israeli-held territory on 7 October last year, she acknowledged that “a month into the war, the number of civilian casualties in Gaza caused a very large anti-Israeli wave. It is very easy to dismiss everything with the word ‘anti-Semitism.’”

The professor warned that, as long as the Israeli government and its allies in Europe and the West continue to claim that opposition to Israel and its war crimes is anti-Semitism, Tel Aviv “endangers the fate of European Jews with anti-Semitism that really originates from anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism”.

She further admitted that “even if this time the attacks were anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism, as Israelis, we must understand that Israel’s actions in Gaza challenge and even endanger European Jews and the continuation of Jewish life in Europe due to the rise of anti-Semitic attacks against them.”

READ: Why should Europe be concerned about the events in Amsterdam?