Article by Jonathan Cook

There has never been a harder time to do political and media analysis than right now. Each day, the western establishment unmoors itself further from reality. Its priorities are so inverted, so obscene, that the most appropriate response is ridicule.

The latest example was the reaction to violent clashes in Amsterdam before and after a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local team Ajax.

The ridiculous framing from western politicians, assisted by mainstream media outlets, was that the visiting Israelis were “hunted down” in what supposedly amounted to a “pogrom” by Dutch street gangs, comprising mainly youths of Arab and Muslim heritage.

According to this official narrative, the violence on Amsterdam’s streets was further proof of a rising tide of antisemitism sweeping Europe and imported from the Middle East. More, the attacks were presented as having disturbing echoes of Europe’s Nazi past.

Outgoing US President Joe Biden claimed the Israeli fans faced “despicable” attacks that “echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted”.

Israel, of course, helpfully stoked this idea by promising “emergency flights” to “rescue” its football fans – seeking to evoke memories of its airlifts in the 1980s of Ethiopian Jews to escape famine and reports of persecution, or possibly of the 1975 airlift of US embassy staff from Saigon.

Islamophobic Bile

The western media’s coverage of these events was as strangely deferential to these genocide-inciting thugs as the Dutch police’s handling of their violence.

Had visiting British fans behaved this way in Amsterdam, the police would have made mass arrests immediately.

Similarly, had British hooligans found themselves on the receiving end of violence in such circumstances, the British media would have shown little sympathy.

The clashes would rightly have been understood as ugly tribalism, a not-unfamiliar sight at football matches.

The difference here was that the clashes unleashed by the Israeli fans’ provocations had a much larger context than simple antipathy between rival teams. It was fueled by tensions surrounding horrifying events taking place on the international stage.

There is nothing shocking or especially sinister about Dutch fans, especially those with Arab or Muslim heritage, responding with their own violence to Israeli youths – some of them presumably fresh from military service in Gaza – trying to export their own genocidal anti-Arab and anti-Muslim incitement to Amsterdam.

All the more so when the Israeli fans were amplifying the bigoted, Islamophobic bile of leading Dutch politicians.

It should have been even less surprising given the wider context: that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were celebrating in someone else’s city the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza, among Dutch citizens who don’t view Arab life as worthless or Muslims as “human animals”.

Sadly, that is exactly how the western establishment has viewed Palestinians over the past 13 months, as Israel has slaughtered them in the ever-shrinking concentration camp that is Gaza.

Paradoxically, it was left to an Israeli politician, Ofer Cassif, who belongs to the tiny Hadash party, the only joint Jewish-Arab party in the Israeli parliament, to bring some perspective.

He wrote on X: “[Israeli] fans go on a violent rampage, carry out beatings, tear up Palestinian flags in the streets as if they were an occupying force, and shout Nazi slogans in favor of the extermination of a nation [Palestinians], and then whine when the situation degenerates into complete chaos and violence returns to them like a boomerang.”

Continue reading on: The Middle East Eye

he US anti-Semitism envoy has triggered a backlash over remarks she made about the pager attacks in Lebanon last week, which have been blamed on Israel.

At a recent event held by the Israeli-American Council, a moderator commented that “after October 7, there was a feeling around the world that Israel was weaker”.

In response, US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt said: “Do you want a beeper?”

The moderator later said: “I have a few.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has demanded that the Biden administration fire Lipstadt, calling her remarks “dangerous”.

“Special Envoy Lipstadt’s callous remarks are not only disgusting, but also dangerous,” CAIR Government Affairs Department Director Robert McCaw said in a statement.

“At a time when our nation’s government claims it is working to de-escalate tensions between Israel and Lebanon, her flippant celebration of state-sponsored terrorism undermines diplomatic efforts to prevent a broader war in the region,” he said.

He said joking about the loss of innocent lives, especially children, is a disgrace and should have no place in US foreign policy discussions.

“It sends a message to the world that the US government condones or even celebrates the slaughter of Arab and Muslim civilians. This is not just immoral, it’s irresponsible,” he said.

McCaw said the Biden-Harris administration must immediately fire Lipstadt “and make clear that the United States does not support or celebrate state violence and terrorism against vulnerable populations”.

Lipstadt was confirmed by the US Senate on March 30, 2022 as the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, with the rank of ambassador, according to the State Department.

At least 37 people were killed and over 3,000 others injured in explosions of pager and radio devices across Lebanon on September 17 and 18. While the Lebanese government and Hezbollah have blamed Israel for the explosions, Tel Aviv has not denied or confirmed its involvement.

Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, which has killed over 41,400 people, mostly women and children, following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on October 7 last year.