Inquiries say social media fueled violence after a Maccabi-Ajax soccer match
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Social media posts coupled with a lack of official information fueled the violence that followed a Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer match in Amsterdam last year, two inquiries into the events said in reports Monday.
Dozens were arrested and five people were treated in hospital in a series of violent overnight incidents following a November match between the Dutch team Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
'The events have left their mark on the city and led to fear, anger and sadness,' Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema wrote in a letter to the city council presenting one of the reports.
Ahead of the game, pro-Palestinian demonstrators were banned by local authorities from gathering outside the stadium, and video showed a large crowd of Israeli fans chanting anti-Arab slogans on their way to the game. Afterward, youths on scooters and on foot crisscrossed the city in search of Israeli fans, punching and kicking them and then fleeing quickly to evade police.
The Rotterdam-based Institute for Safety and Crisis Management, tasked by the Amsterdam government to investigate the response to the violence, said the lack of official communication from the city allowed rumors on social media to flourish.
It noted that there was little to no official communication during the early hours of Nov. 8, in part because the situation was so unclear.
In a separate report, the inspectorate for the Justice Ministry concluded that the police were prepared for large-scale demonstrations, not the 'flash attacks' perpetrated across the city and sparked by social media.
'Calls and images spread rapidly, reinforce existing tensions and can lead to group formation and confrontations on the street within a short period of time,' the 57-page report found.
Both reports cautioned that even with improved communication, the authorities still could not have fully controlled the rapidly spreading violence.
The Justice Ministry's report noted that 'incidents, such as the removal of a Palestinian flag by Maccabi supporters, were shared, interpreted and magnified within minutes.'
More than a dozen people have been charged in connection with the violence and several have already been convicted. Over the weekend, the public prosecution service announced it had dropped investigations into several Maccabi supporters because the city's tram company GVB had deleted footage which could have been used as evidence.
The company replaced recording equipment at two metro stations in Amsterdam after the attacks and footage from the night was lost.
On Sunday, tens of thousands of demonstrators in the Netherlands donned red clothing and marched through The Hague, demanding that the Dutch government do more to oppose Israel's policies in Gaza. Dutch public support for the Israeli military campaign has dropped in recent months.
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an hour ago
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But such boards, which are numerous in Minnesota, are not particularly high-profile and generally feature a bipartisan cast of characters. Others suggested Hortman had been targeted because she in May spearheaded a compromise with Republicans under which undocumented adults would no longer be eligible for a state health care program. Hortman last week tearfully recounted voting for that compromise. But the other lawmaker victim this weekend, Hoffman, didn't vote for it. Still others pointed to flyers for the anti-Trump 'No Kings' protests this weekend that were allegedly found in Boelter's car, as if he supported those protests. Protest organizers canceled their events out of fear the protesters could be targeted. Despite the tenuousness of the evidence linking the attack to left-wing politics – and the more-compelling evidence suggesting the opposite – many prominent right-wing figures have quickly cast Boelter as an angry left-winger. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah repeatedly suggested Boelter is not just a leftist but a 'Marxist' and linked him to Walz in an X post: 'Nightmare on Waltz Street.' Lee also wrote: 'This is what happens when Marxists don't get their way.' Musk, apparently unchastened by the Paul Pelosi situation, also promoted a post linking the shooter to the left, writing, 'The far left is murderously violent.' Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio added in his own X post about the flyers: 'The degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent, and intolerant is both stunning and terrifying.' Donald Trump Jr. on Monday wagered that that shooter 'went after someone that didn't just blindly follow Democrat radical leftist dogma.' He added: 'It's scary stuff, but it seems to all be coming from the left.' Influencers went even further, with some of the most prominent and recognizable ones suggesting without any evidence that Walz was somehow involved in the attack. 'Did Tim Walz have her executed to send a message?,' asked right-wing figure Mike Cernovich on X. While these claims have been much more prevalent and firm on the right, Republicans weren't the only ones leaping to conclusions. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said Sunday that the shooter 'appears to be a hate-filled right winger' and urged his side not to dance around 'MAGA's legitimization of political violence.' As noted, there is more evidence for this view than the inverse, but we still don't know a lot. Murphy has previously cautioned his side about the political perils of being too apolitical soon after school shootings, arguing it cedes the debate and allows people to move on from tragedy without addressing the problem. To be clear, these Republican lawmakers and conservative influencers aren't just suggestively raising questions – as their ilk often did with Paul Pelosi's attackers – they're suggesting this is a settled issue. The situation carries echoes of not just the Pelosi attack, but also other recent major acts of political violence in which the right, especially, has leapt to blame others using incomplete or bogus information. After the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, Republicans including Trump suggested a link to Democrats' rhetoric, despite the still-opaque picture of Thomas Matthew Crooks' politics and motivations. Some congressional Republicans suggested law enforcement deliberately jeopardized Trump – something that would be a massive scandal – without evidence. Many noted Crooks had once donated a small amount to a Democratic-leaning group, but that group has been criticized for misleading fundraising appeals. And Crooks later registered as a Republican and, according to CBS News, unsubscribed from the group's email list. After the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, many on the right leapt to claim the attacks were somehow the result of provocateurs or even FBI agents. (Lee himself tweeted about a claim that one rioter was flashing a badge, when in actuality it appeared to be a vape.) There remains no evidence for these theories. A report by the Justice Department's inspector general last year found no undercover FBI employees were present on January 6 and that none of the FBI's confidential human sources present had been 'directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.' There's a real question here about how much of this leaping to conclusions is about prominent people getting caught up in fast-spreading misinformation, or whether there's a deliberate political strategy. Sharing such misinformation is a great way to win engagement and followers – and it also muddies the waters. Should we one day learn Boelter was indeed a MAGA supporter who targeted Democrats for political reasons, the seeds of doubt about that conclusion will have been planted and fertilized on the right at a crucial, very early stage. And the price of that is that incidents of political violence could serve to radicalize yet more people against their opponents – and often, the illusion of those opponents' violent tendencies. And there is evidence that Americans are viewing these incidents more through the lens of politics. When then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona, was shot in 2011, 71% of people in an NBC News poll said the attack was mostly about a 'disturbed person' rather than political 'rhetoric.' That number dropped to 46% for the shooting of Republican congressmen at a baseball practice in 2017, to 40% for the attack on Paul Pelosi, then to 37% after the Trump assassination attempt. Each of these circumstances were different. But the total picture is one of a country that instantly searches for political answers. And at this moment, one side of the aisle is particularly anxious to provide them – no matter how true they are.
