Anti-semitic pogroms in Europe in 2024

[Allo V Psycho]

I guess it’s open season on catholics in Glasgow now right? That’s how this works isn’t it?

I'm a Glaswegian, and live close enough to Celtic Park to hear this happening, but I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this?

Well the response to Jew hunts earlier in this thread seems to have been "But the Maccabi fans provoked it, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ".

So presumably going after Catholics in Glasgow as a result of their behaviour at that match is fine too.

No it is never fine, and yes, it is a thing that happens, including sectarian violence, which has in the past included murder. That a consequence of something is likely to happen doesn't mean it is a good thing, or an approved thing.

I think humans have a tendency to tribalism, and once tribalism is established, then humans, especially young men, have a tendency to violence and provocation. In some circumstances, the tribal dividing lines may seem obvious, like skin colour, but in the absence of this, humans will just find some way to 'other' some section of society. In this case it is a division between two Christian sects: elsewhere it might be between Sunni and Shia, and so on, endlessly.

In Glasgow members of both groups provoke each other endlessly, knowing that it will exacerbate tensions, so the provocation is not guilt free. The green brigade will wave banners and sing songs about the British empire to provoke a reaction from the proddies. The Orange Order will deliberately route a march past a Catholic church, and play and sing offensive tunes about the pope to provoke the papes. Each side is hoping to provoke a disproportionately violent response from the other side, then they will blame them for the violence.

Neither the provocation or the reaction are good things, but there is a degree of inevitability about them. Neither side has a monopoly of virtue or vice: many, perhaps most, sensible adults in each community regard the sectarianism with dismay.

I do not pretend to know what happened in the Netherlands in any detail. I spent some time at the weekend reading about the history and etymology of pogroms following your OP, and whether what happened there would qualify as a pogrom or not still seems hard for me to decide, since I don't know with any confidence the nature and scale of the events that transpired.

[Grumble]

This is your reminder that when I talk about trouble between football fans I’m not actually minimising anything.

Well actually you are. It wasn’t primarily Ajax fans involved in the attacks and they didn’t seem to care about whether the Jews they were attacking were Maccabi fans or not.

And listen, I get that you don’t like the use of the word pogrom. I guess it’s only really a pogrom if it comes from the Pogrome region. I guess this was just a sparkling Jew hunt instead.

You don’t seem to think trouble between football fans is serious. I do.

[Tristan]

This is your reminder that when I talk about trouble between football fans I’m not actually minimising anything.

Well actually you are. It wasn’t primarily Ajax fans involved in the attacks and they didn’t seem to care about whether the Jews they were attacking were Maccabi fans or not.

And listen, I get that you don’t like the use of the word pogrom. I guess it’s only really a pogrom if it comes from the Pogrome region. I guess this was just a sparkling Jew hunt instead.

You don’t seem to think trouble between football fans is serious. I do.

You keep saying "between" football fans. What involvement did Ajax fans have in this?

[bjn]

The Maccabit fans assaulted a Somali taxi driver and destroyed property around Amsterdam. Down playing that as football fans high spirits is a tad on the nose. If a bunch of visiting Somali football fans did the equivalent and were chanting "Death to the Jews!", assaulting Jewish taxi drivers and burning jewish symbols, would you be calling it a pogrom?

FWIW, apart from those defending themselves and their friends from racist assaults by Maccabi supporting thugs, anyone inflicting violence on Maccabi fans is reprehensible, and anyone looking for jews to bash is as reprehensible as the Maccabi fans bashing a Somali for being a muslim.

But apparently Isrealis can only ever be sinned against and can never actually sin.

[Tristan]

The Maccabit fans assaulted a Somali taxi driver and destroyed property around Amsterdam. Down playing that as football fans high spirits is a tad on the nose.

If anyone has downplayed as football fan high spirits then it’s certainly not me. Though others in this thread have certainly been referring to this just as “trouble between football fans”.

Anyway, I’ve yet to see any evidence of trouble “between” fans. Ajax fans haven’t been mentioned as far as I can see in any reporting.

I said earlier and I repeat now, what Maccabi fans did should absolutely be condemned.

The scale of what happened the following day, which others have tried to minimise, was on another level. It was a Jew hunt and it was preplanned.

[Grumble]

High spirits? I wouldn’t class hunting people across a city and committing violent assault as high spirits. It kicked off at a football match. Football has a long and serious history of being associated with violence.

[Tristan]

Again, I’m not the one who brought “high spirits” into this discussion.

[bob sterman]

Whether or not this started as "trouble between football fans" - the visiting fans have long since left and violence is continuing...

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/12/euro ... index.html

[Tristan]

Whether or not this started as "trouble between football fans" - the visiting fans have long since left and violence is continuing...

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/12/euro ... index.html

I’m sure someone else from this thread will be along in a moment to make excuses for it.

[raven]

If it was 'just' between football fans it would be less worrying. Less worrying, but still terrible -- because football violence tends to occur around match time and it's more predictable and limited.

This kind of thing has more potential to spiral out of control, I think. The Maccabi fans afaics targetted anyone with a Palestinian flag, and with the taxi driver perhaps either someone who looked Muslim or someone who stood up to them. That is not targetting rival fans, it's targetting people you've identified as the 'other side'. Indiscriminantly, it seems like. This is not a good thing.

Neither is harrassing and attacking people in the street because you've identified them as Jewish. Which is a reminder of a lot of terrible things in European history. And makes Jewish communities, with good reason, afraid.

I try to be sensitve to that fear. If you're not Jewish, which I'm not, you don't live with antisemitism in the same way as white people don't live with racism and it's easy to forget it exists and how bad it is. But when I was a teenager I got a tiny taste of it that I've never forgotten: some snot-nosed 11 year old who had probably never met anyone Jewish called me 'a f.cking Jew' in passing. Presumably because I was clever and had a big nose, idk? Antisemitism is very much out there still.

So, of course, are a lot of other flavours of bigotry. People are very tribal.

[Iron Magpie]

Has nobody seen the full video from the independent Dutch journalist that followed the Tel-Aviv fans around the city?

Maybe they have and is why this thread has gone quiet......

[bjn]

I have.

[Tristan]

Has nobody seen the full video from the independent Dutch journalist that followed the Tel-Aviv fans around the city?

Maybe they have and is why this thread has gone quiet......

Which one?

[Tristan]

After the whole debacle with Maccabi Tel-Aviv fans being banned by West Mids Police, various politicians criticising this, and then the club themselves declining to send fans we get this article in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... a-park-ban

I've got to say I am highly sceptical of that article and to me it smells like someone of WMP trying to cover themselves ahead of a row.

Maccabi Tel-Aviv fans are by no means saints and I'm aware of history of their fans behaviour. They're also far from the only club to have a contingent of sh.tty fans.

This from the article stood out for me though: "They had randomly picked Muslims in Amsterdam to attack. That led to reprisal violence with some Dutch Jews attacked."

That's such a misrepresentation of the violence that followed. There's no mention in the article of the coordination of that violence. The WhatsApp and Telegram groups calling for a "Jew hunt" and the scale of the violence.

I'd be shocked in the risk assessement from WMP doesn't include reference to any of that, yet it's oddly missing from the article, in what I suspect is a deliberate attempt to frame the report in a particular way.

The other thing that makes he highly suspicious of the article is that I don't believe Starmer or others in government would have come out as strongly against the ban without reading the risk assessment. If the risk assessment was truly as characterised by the Guardian article (or their source) I doubt their opposition to it would have been as vehement.

Something doesn't add up.

[TopBadger]

Something doesn't add up.

The thing that didn't add up for me is why, after WMP recommended a perfectly reasonable and rational action (banning away fans) based on intelligence and historical problems seen at other fixtures, did Starmer and Co get involved to seek to overturn it?

It seems madness to me to suggest that after what happened at Ajax, that WMP should be expected to invite the same upon themselves willingly.

As far as i can tell, banning Maccabi fans isn't, and wasn't, antisemitic.

[Tristan]

Something doesn't add up.

The thing that didn't add up for me is why, after WMP recommended a perfectly reasonable and rational action (banning away fans) based on intelligence and historical problems seen at other fixtures, did Starmer and Co get involved to seek to overturn it?

It seems madness to me to suggest that after what happened at Ajax, that WMP should be expected to invite the same upon themselves willingly.

As far as i can tell, banning Maccabi fans isn't, and wasn't, antisemitic.

Well it depends on what the intelligence said and the reason for the ban. We still don't know this and I don't trust the Guardian reporting or their source given the obvious gaps in their framing.

If a large part of the issue is they didn't feel they could protect Maccabi fans FROM anti-semitic violence (such as was seen in Amsterdam) then anti-semitism does play a part.

[headshot]

Another factor is that Aston Villa’s ground is in one of the most heavily Southern Asian populated areas of Birmingham. Obviously this will be a mix of many cultures, but a significant proportion will be Muslim.

It seems like inviting these fans, with their history of violence, to this area in particular was part of the decision-making process.

[Tristan]

Or, as is equally likely (given what we saw last year in Amsterdam), the police were worried about locals kicking off against the Maccabi fans.

[headshot]

Or, as is equally likely (given what we saw last year in Amsterdam), the police were worried about locals kicking off against the Maccabi fans.

I suspect it’s a bit of both. Maccabi fans certainly can’t claim to be innocent bystanders, can they?

[headshot]

Double post.

[Tristan]

Or, as is equally likely (given what we saw last year in Amsterdam), the police were worried about locals kicking off against the Maccabi fans.

I suspect it’s a bit of both. Maccabi fans certainly can’t claim to be innocent bystanders, can they?

There are many football clubs with sh.tty fans. This isn’t uncommon.

There’s been so much apologism for or attempts to explain away the violence against them last year that you just wouldn’t get in other contexts.

With all the St George's crosses that have been going up I wonder how people would have reacted in the following scenario:
- A group of Asian guys goes around a town taking down some of the St George's crosses and burning them, offensively chanting as they do
- A white cabbie shouts back at them and has his cab attacked
- The local racists start some whatsapp groups and talk about going "P*ki bashing"
- The local racists, helped by local white cabbies, start going around town finding muslims and Asians to beat up
- They conduct multiple hit and run attacks across town and send some of the Asians to hospital.

Would we get as many people saying "well, they started it by being obnoxious, taking down the flags, chanting and attacking a cab"?