The stupid thing here is that I could see this starting out innocently and evolving into real hate. It was only fun because I'm sure they were getting their rocks off to edge so close to offensive... till the mob tripped it all up. What you do with your friends is not what should be tolerated in a mob. You want to call a friend a Jew because he is your pal that is one thing, but this was just a bunch of literal hooligans.
Anti-Semitism is a recurrent problem in the world of soccer. Nowhere
else, however, is the origin of wide-spread anti-Semitic chants in
stadiums as bizarre as in the Netherlands.
Earlier this month, anti-Semitic slogans were the subject of a court
case brought by BAN, an organization fighting anti-Semitism, against
ADO. In March, this top league club from The Hague won a game against
Ajax from Amsterdam. During the match ADO supporters frequently chanted
“Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas” and “Horrible Cancer Jews.” At
a party after ADO’s victory, fans and two players sang in the presence
of the trainer, “We are going to chase Jews.” The judge decided that
ADO’s management would be held responsible to prevent repetition of
similar outbursts at future games and if it could not, management should
stop the match.
However, the Jews at whom ADO supporters aimed were not Jews at all.
They were the fanatic fans of Ajax who in a distant past had started to
refer to themselves as “Jews.” These supporters accompanied their team
with Israeli flags and Stars of David to the stadiums. Some fans even
had tattoos of the Star of David. There was a time that when Ajax scored
a goal, their fans would sing the Israeli song Hava Nagila.
Ajax has had a few Jewish board members and it has a small number of
non-violent Jewish supporters. They make up perhaps 1% of those present
at home games. A number of them initially viewed the nickname and its
accompanying phenomena favorably not realizing what its long-term
consequences would be.
Fanatic supporters of other soccer teams, principally from the big
cities of Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, considered the Ajax nickname
a provocation and started with the hate chants. Initially these were
anti-Semitic in nature but not in context, as they were aimed at
non-Jews. “Bomb Rotterdam” retorted the Ajax fans when they played
against local team Feyenoord there. They were referring to the murderous
bombardments of the town during the German invasion of the Netherlands
in May 1940.
Jews must be on guard
Anti-Semitic songs gradually spread in other directions. In October
2004, Referee Rene Temmink ended a game between ADO and the PSV of
Eindhoven. There had been lengthy shouts of “Hamas, Hamas, Temmink to
the Gas.” It was the first time in Europe that a top league game was
halted midway due to hate chants.
Soccer fans gradually started to sing the anti-Semitic songs elsewhere
also aiming at real Jews. Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs — chief rabbi of the
Dutch interprovincial rabbinate — said that he, together with a
non-Jewish psychologist, once entered a train full of Feyenoord
supporters. When these fans saw them, they started to chant: “Jews to
the gas.” Jacobs said that he got the feeling that the whole train of
“ordinary Dutchmen” was against them.
The Rabbi added, “The psychologist shrank from fear. It seemed to me
that signs of anxiety wouldn’t help us very much, thus I feigned that I
was indifferent to it as a sign of strength. One may consider this
incident as an act of hooliganism, yet if one of these idiots had
attacked us, many more would have probably followed him.”
Nowadays at anti-Israel demonstrations in The Netherlands, “Hamas Hamas,
Jews to the gas” is also heard, mainly shouted by Muslims. Even though
these kinds of outbursts are prohibited by law, offenders are rarely
punished. In one such demonstration in January 2009, two
parliamentarians from the left-wing Socialist party participated. They
claimed afterwards that they hadn’t heard the shouts. There are also
reports that Muslim students at various Dutch schools have sung the same
hate song to insult Jewish students.
In recent years, Dutch authorities have started to understand that this
proliferation of hate songs must be stopped. In May, Amsterdam Mayor
Eberhard van der Laan requested after Ajax became league champions that
its fans stop using the nickname “Jews.” He observed: “It is a matter of
changing this behavior, which may take 10 years.”
There is a special lesson in the development of soccer related
anti-Semitism to be learned by the small Jewish community in the
Netherlands. It has been demonstrated once again that Jews must
anticipate problems long before they spread into society at large. This
issue is yet one more illustration that Jews have to be on guard far
more than other groups in Western societies.
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld has published 20 books. Several of these address European anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism Manfred Gerstenfeld
Published: 08.30.2011
via Docs Talk
