The Eyewitness Of The Soccer Riot Says Her Footage Was Lied About In The Media

 

“They told the opposite of what happened in that footage.”

Photographer Annet de Graaf captured the Israeli Maccabi soccer fan violence in Amsterdam. In her first interview with US media, she tells Mehdi that outlets like Sky News, the New York Times, BBC, and CNN misused her footage and twisted the narrative to frame the Maccabi fans as victims of antisemitic attacks and overlook the anti-Arab racism that fueled the clash.

I've looked up what has been said about Maccabis' supporters and it looks like this kind of racist hooliganism is typical of them. So, like I suspected, they weren't innocents being attacked on the basis of antisemitism.   You will note that Mehdi Hassan notes that there were antisemitic things shouted during the violence but, then, so were some pretty terrible things said by the Maccabi supporters about Palestinians who are being killed in the tens of thousands even as they were rioting in Amsterdam.   The insistence of the Israeli government that Israel represents all Jews around the world is certainly not irrelevant to the misconception that Jews are to blame when Israelis do things.   I think it's extremely dangerous for that false idea to be promoted by Israel's government and zionists in other countries.    As I've noted here, more than thirty years ago Jacobo Timerman noted that most of the major incidents of antisemitism around the world since the establishment of Israel have been focused on things the Israeli government has done, I think reading that was the beginning of the end of my naive veiw of Israel and zionism which I had just grown up assuming were virtuous, but that was back when the calm, well-spoken Abba Eban was the face  of Israel in the United States. 

Israel is just another country, it shouldn't get special treatment.   Israelis are just People whose soccer supporters, at least of this club, have a record of racism and obnoxious and violent behavior.  Like a number of Brit supporters and fans of American football.  They're not little angels and our media shouldn't be lying for them.   If I was in authority in a country which participates in international football, I'd be trying to ban them coming to the country along with all such clubs.