Five new arrests in Amsterdam over violence against Israeli fans

Five new arrests have been made over the violence surrounding a soccer game last week involving an Israeli team, Dutch police said Monday.

The five men are “suspected of public acts of violence against persons Thursday night,” police in the Dutch capital Amsterdam said Monday. The arrests were made over the weekend as part of the “large-scale investigation on the violence committed before and after” the game between Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv and local side Ajax, police said.

The violence has been condemned as targeted antisemitic attacks by authorities in Israel and the Netherlands, which authorities said saw small groups on foot and scooters commit hit-and-run assaults on Israeli fans.

Dutch police have also said that Maccabi fans attacked a taxi and burned a Palestinian flag prior to the game, while a video geolocated by NBC News showed Israeli fans in Amsterdam singing “Death to the Arabs” and “Let the IDF win. We will f*** the Arabs.” Another video verified by NBC News showed a brawl break out outside Amsterdam Central Station after the game, in what the photographer described as an attack by Israeli fans on local residents.

In their statement Monday, police said that two of those arrested “committed these acts before the match was played.” The suspects are men aged between 18 and 37, all of them Dutch residents, police said. Four remain under interrogation while one has been freed but remains a suspect.

Police said Tuesday said that they had arrested 68 people in total, including ten Israelis.

Five people were hospitalized and others received treatment as a result of the violence, authorities said.

With tensions high in the Dutch capital, dozens of people set a tram on fire in Amsterdam on Monday night. Video geolocated by NBC News showed a group throwing fireworks and other blunt objects at the tram, with some shouting “Cancer Jews.” Police said it was not clear who started the unrest and whether it was related to what happened last week. 

The country’s prime minister, Dick Schoof, told a news conference Monday that last week’s “attacks against Israelis and Jews were nothing short of shocking and reprehensible,” and promised to bring the perpetrators to justice.

He said prosecutors were still piecing together details of what happened.

Schoof said he was “well aware of what happened” prior to the game involving Maccabi supporters, referring to the videos and police reports that Israeli fans chanted anti-Arab slogans, pulled down a Palestinian flag and attacked a taxi. But, he said, “we think that’s of a different category and we condemn any violence as well, but that is no excuse whatsoever for what happened later on that night in the attacks on Jews in Amsterdam.”

Police chief Peter Holla said there had been incidents “on both sides” on Thursday.

Israel sent extra planes to bring the soccer fans home from Amsterdam, and has told Israeli fans not to attend cultural or sports events abroad this week.

European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, announced Monday that Maccabi Tel Aviv’s upcoming match against Turkey’s Besiktas has been moved to a neutral venue in Hungary. The match was set to take place in Istanbul later this month.

The Israeli men’s national soccer team plays France in Paris on Thursday.