Thanks for tagging me! The student unions did a great job honestly. I think they were under a lot of pressure and there was a chance the protest would be deemed illegal and police would get violent. I’m glad that didn’t happen. Also there was a lot of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. A small light compared to the news of extreme police violence from yesterday’s protest against genocide in Amsterdam.
Student unions decided to take over the organisation and are calling for people to come anyways. But with the risks involved there will be less people. Small actions are also planned all over the country but because the cancellation by workers unions was so last minute everything will be pretty chaotic. Tonight the police were very aggressively beating up anti genocide protesters again so that will cause outrage as well tomorrow so it will be an interesting day.
Student unions tried to pressure the mayor to tell them exactly why she and the police think there’s a risk of violence but they won’t give any other details than what was written in my original post. This is why they decided to ignore the risk and protest anyways.
This also shows how spineless the unions are for agreeing to cancel the protest instead of challenging the mayor and police. The budget cut of 1 billion per year will be devastating for the whole higher education sector and the vote for that plan is in less than 2 weeks, meaning that the cancellation of this protest will likely make it much more likely that the plan will pass without much opposition.
A large protest against budget cuts in higher education in The Netherlands that was planned for tomorrow in Utrecht has been cancelled due to (paraphrasing:) ‘threats of violence by pro Palestine protesters who planned to hijack the protest.’
This can not be seen without the context of the unrest in Amsterdam last week. Dutch media and politicians have been trying really hard this past week to paint anti genocide protesters in a very bad light, and this situation is no different. Several pro Palestine organisations have stated that they stand wholeheartedly behind the protests against the budget cuts and were joining to show their support. People are speculating that this support is being framed as hijacking now by the mayor of Utrecht and the police.
This is so cool, I hope I remember to join tomorrow morning
Police hasn’t arrested anyone related to Thursday night attacks on hooligans (all arestees were protesters), they have a team looking at footage and witness accounts first now. I’m a bit afraid this guy will get arrested but I don’t know how much proof there is against him. Police did say that they might try to charge for terrorism as well as and antisemitism which would be wild if they succeeded.
Maccabi hooligans in Tel Aviv airport
They’re singing the same song as in Amsterdam and now I finally have a good source on the translation:
Let the IDF win and fuck the arabs
Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there.
Video evidence makes it relatively easy to refute the media lies. I’m a bit burnt out right now but maybe I’ll make an effort post later that include events + videos for context. You can look up cestmocro on Instagram, they have a good summary of the events with videos.
Yes that rethoric is big in NL as wel currently, especially by our extreme right government. They’re inciting hate towards Moroccans and the coming weeks we’ll see the results of that through lots of racism and targeted attacks.
The atmosphere in the city has been very grim already this whole week due to the racism by Maccabi and Ajax supporters, and lots of Moroccans already didn’t feel safe in the city due to that.
I made a list compiling the events from a few sources including cestmocro and plant.eenolijfboom on instagram:
- Weekend of 2/11 and 3/11: Flyers are spread around football stadium calling for israhelli boycott in football. A pro Palestine protester wearing a keffiyeh gets beaten up by Ajax supporter and ends up in hospital.
- Monday 4/11: There’s a call from a pro Palestine group to protest in front of the stadium during the game on Thursday.
- Wednesday 6/11 afternoon: Mayor of Amsterdam forbids the protest in front of stadium and also forbids protests on some other locations like the Dam square. Protest is allowed on a location 1km from stadium. Protest organisers are warning protesters to not go on the streets alone while wearing keffiyeh or other Palestinian symbols due to previous attacks.
- Wednesday evening: Maccabi supporters tear down Palestinian flags and burn at least one. They also yell racist chants and display banners and stickers glorifying the IOF and genocide. A taxi driver is beaten up by maccabi supporters and his car is destroyed. In a local taxi drivers group there is a call to mobilise in response.
- Thursday 7/11 afternoon: Maccabi supporters are in the city chanting fuck you Palestine on Dam square resulting in some fights between pro Palestine protesters and Maccabi supporters. Police arrest some pro Palestine protesters because protesting was not allowed in that area. Other protesters are brought by the police to the assigned location where they are allowed to protest. Protesters aren’t happy with this because they are not in hearing distance of the football game they were protesting against, so in small groups they leave to protest elsewhere. Maccabi supporters on their way to the game are filmed chanting islamophobic phrases. Sources give different translations for the chants, but it’s something along the lines of fuck arabs and Israhelli army will win. According to BDS NL it’s part of a longer song that includes ‘there are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left’.
- Thursday during game: Maccabi supporters yell through minute of silence for victims of Spanish floods.
- Thursday evening after game: Maccabi hooligans move to city center, do normal hooligan shit but there’s a lot of tension between them and locals for obvious reasons. Lots of taxis are driving near the hooligans honking because of the taxi driver that was beaten up the evening before. Police is surrounding the hooligans while they move through the city center to protect them from locals including the taxis. The pro Palestine protesters are also still in the city in smaller groups sometimes attempting to come near the hooligans but police is holding them back. Police is trying to get the hooligans into busses to bring them to their hotel but a lot of the hooligans escape to roam through the city in smaller groups. This is where they get confronted by pro Palestine protesters who then showed them how welcome they are in Amsterdam. Several Maccabi hooligans get beaten up and get swimming lessons. 5 Maccabi supporters end up in hospital, 20-30 are wounded and 63 protesters are arrested. The police is using the videos to arrest more protesters.
Edit: added some more details on Thursday evening from the video linked.
Some additional notes from myself on how media is reacting:
Note how the police only ever acted to arrest/remove pro Palestine protesters and did not act when protestors were attacked, flags were destroyed, or racist chants were yelled by Maccabi supporters. They’re also calling the protesters ‘rioters’ in their official reports to media and didn’t use a single bad word like ‘hooligan’ or ‘rioter’ for the Maccabi supporters. The one sidedness of the mayor and police is very apparent and people are angry. Amnesty NL is calling the events unacceptable (going with the narrative of the police) and losing credibility as are almost all ‘left’ political parties.
All large Dutch new outlets yesterday were only reporting on the poor IOF nazis getting beaten up with no word about all the events that came before. This obviously angered people even more and now media are slowly publishing ‘recap’ articles are that mention at least some of the racism and provocation but still go fully with police narrative.
Antizionist jewish organisations that are speaking out about the hypocrisy are getting completely ignored by media outlets while zionist jews will get exclusive interviews about how afraid they were for weeks to come.
view more: next ›
Beetle
joined 1 month ago
Literally me rn