Mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema discussed the attacks on Israeli soccer fans in her city and condemned the use of the word "pogrom" to describe the incident.
"I wanted mostly to express the sadness and fear among the Jewish residents of Amsterdam," she said in an interview with Dutch news network NPO in an attempt to explain the comparison she made a day after the incident between it and past pogroms. "But I must say, that during the following days, I saw how the word 'pogrom' became very political, basically for propaganda."
She claimed: "The Israeli government speaks about a 'Palestinian pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam,' as a political statement to incriminate Muslim Moroccans. I did not mean that.
"I want no connection to the way they use this term in a political manner or as propaganda," she added.
The Dutch are still trying to portray the violence against the fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club as two-sided. Mayor Halsema submitted a 12-page report about the pogrom in which she condemned the violence against the Israeli fans, but also claimed that the Maccabi fans committed provocations that led to the violent eruption.
She also claimed that ten Maccabi fans were arrested before and after the game for allegedly violating Dutch law.
Halsema submitted the report to the city council. "What happened in the past days was a poisonous cocktail of antisemitism, soccer hooliganism, and anger about the war in Palestine and Israel and in other parts of the Middle East," she wrote.
She added that "an injustice was done both to the Jews in our city and to the minority peoples who sympathize with the Palestinians. Even though a more complete picture emerged and all sorts of terrible things happened, it in no way negates that a ‘hunt for Jews’, was called for."