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Israel Urges Soccer Fans Not to Attend Upcoming Paris Game After Antisemitic Attacks in Amsterdam
Pro-Palestinian protesters face Dutch police while taking part in a non-authorized protest in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Anthony Deutsch
Israel has urged its citizens not to attend the Israeli national soccer team’s upcoming match in Paris this week, in light of the violent antisemitic attacks against Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam last week.
“In the past few days, there have been calls among pro-Palestinian/terrorist-supporter groups to harm Israelis and Jews, under the pretense of demonstrations and protests, taking advantage of mass gatherings (sports and cultural events) to maximize the damage and the media coverage,” Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) said in a public alert issued on Sunday. It additionally noted that “preparations to harm Israelis have been identified in several European cities,” including Brussels, “major cities” in the United Kingdom, Amsterdam, and Paris, where a UEFA Nations League match between Israel and France is set to take place in the city on Thursday at the stadium, Stade de France.
“Given the dynamics of these incidents: independent parties who group online, their broad presence in various countries around the world, actual attempts to hold demonstrations and protests (some of them violent), and concerns that supporters of terrorism/lone wolf attackers will try to blend into these riots with the goal of carrying out an attack — The National Security Council recommends that Israelis abroad … In the coming week, categorically avoid attending Israeli sports/cultural events abroad, and specifically the Israeli teams’ upcoming match in Paris,” the NSC statement read.
The NSC also recommended that Israelis traveling abroad should stay away from all demonstrations and protests, avoid identifying in public as Israeli or Jewish, and check ahead of time if their travel destination can be “problematic” because of demonstrations, riots, crime, or “population of immigrants from countries that are hostile to Israel.”
Late Thursday night and in the early hours of Friday morning last week, hundreds of Israeli soccer fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were attacked by anti-Israel and antisemitic gangs in Amsterdam following a match between the Israeli team and their Dutch rivals Ajax. The NSC said a “pro-Palestinian mob” led the violence “in what appeared to be a coordinated attack.” Israeli officials said 10 citizens were injured in the violence.
More than 60 suspects were arrested in connection to the attacks, and Amsterdam prosecutors said that four of the suspects, including two minors, remained jailed Saturday and would be arraigned this week, The Associated Press reported. Maccabi Tel Aviv fans returned home to Israel over the weekend following the violence in Amsterdam, and among them were over 170 witnesses of the attacks and more than 230 victims, Israel police said.
Dutch officials and leaders from around the world, including US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, condemned the violence as antisemitic and many of them described the attacks as a “pogrom.”
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof announced on Sunday that he canceled his trip to Azerbaijan for the United Nations Climate Change Conference so that he can stay in the Netherlands to deal with the aftermath of the attacks. He has since talked about the incident with representatives of Amsterdam’s Jewish community, Israel’s new Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, and on Tuesday he will hold talks with Jewish and social organizations about combating antisemitism.
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau confirmed on Friday that the France-Israel match will take place in Paris as planned, despite pressure from pro-Palestinian activists to cancel the game. French President Emmanuel Macron will attend the game and 4,000 police officers will be deployed around Stade de France for Thursday’s match to ensure security in and around the stadium, according to French news broadcaster BFM TV.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
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