\u201cHamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas,\u201d sang a section of the home supporters of FC Utrecht towards the fans visiting from Amsterdam, a city historic in part for its Jewish community. \u201cMy father was in the commandos, my mother was in the SS, together they burned Jews, because Jews burn the best!\u201d<\/p>\n
The chant was caught on video and quickly circulated among Dutch media. FC Utrecht issued an apology as Jewish organizations demanded action by soccer authorities.<\/p>\n
Anti-Semitism in European soccer appears to be getting worse. According to Kick It Out, a British organization originally devoted to combating racism, anti-Semitic incidents are up in the English Premier League. A Kick It Out study released last month revealed that there were 59 reported instances of anti-Semitism during the first half of this season. That was more than during the entire previous season. Anti-Semitism made up a third of the total instances of abuse, and was second in frequency only to racism.<\/p>\n
One of this season\u2019s worst episodes came when fans of the London club West Ham were caught on camera chanting \u201cI\u2019ve got a foreskin, how about you? F\u2014\u2014 Jew\u201d on their way to play Tottenham Hotspur, a team with a historically strong Jewish following. <\/p>\n
Other recent incidents have included fans \u2014 and in several instances players \u2014 making Nazi-like salutes.<\/p>\n
In a recent game between Bosnia and Austria. Bosnian fans took to the streets of Vienna in what was originally a pro-Palestine demonstration, but eventually disintegrated into chants of \u201cKill, kill the Jews\u201d \u2014 also caught on video.<\/p>\n
But Ronny Naftaniel, Chairman of the Dutch Jewish Humanitarian Fund, sought to draw a line between the chants \u2014 as insulting as they are \u2014 and anti-Semitism. Whether it\u2019s West Ham vs. Tottenham or Utrecht vs. Ajax Amsterdam, he said such insults have more to do with local rivalries than true bigotry. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s indeed very shocking what happened at the game between FC Utrecht and Ajax,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that happens twice or three times a year during games. And it looks as if no one is able to fight it. Of course, it has some deeper roots which go back to the fact that Ajax supporters, they expose themselves as Jews. They walk with flags with the Star of David and they call themselves \u2018The Jews.\u2019 So the problem is that then their adversaries act as if Ajax are the Jews and come up with the most insulting slogans.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us Jews, we are disgusted,\u201d he said. \u201cBut those people who do those slogans are not Nazis. They are not most of them fundamentalists whatsoever. They are supporters, hard core supporters, of those clubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf these were hard core anti-Semites, it would be easier to combat it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s part of the football culture, and that is very tough to fight against.\u201d<\/p>\n
Supporters of the local team, ADO Den Haag, used to chant \u201cHamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas\u201d whenever Ajax came to town, Naftaniel said. They even made a sickening sound, as if gas were slowly leaking into the stadium.<\/p>\n
Source: Washington Post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cHamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas,\u201d sang a section of the home supporters of FC Utrecht towards the fans visiting from Amsterdam, a city historic in part for its Jewish community. \u201cMy father was in the commandos, my mother was in the SS, together they burned Jews, because Jews burn the best!\u201d The chant was … Continue reading “Nazi chants at Dutch soccer game”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[1330,902,654,476,5094],"class_list":["post-18405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-amsterdam","tag-anti-semitism","tag-football","tag-soccer","tag-utrecht"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18406,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18405\/revisions\/18406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}