The End of Pluralism in the Middle East
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 6, 2024
Craig Murray
The fall of Aleppo surprised even the residents of Aleppo…
A truly seismic change in the Middle East appears to be happening very fast. At its heart is a devil’s bargain – Turkey and the Gulf States accept the annihilation of the Palestinian nation and creation of a Greater Israel, in return for the annihilation of the Shia minorities of Syria and Lebanon and the imposition of Salafism across the Eastern Arab world.
This also spells the end for Lebanon and Syria’s Christian communities, as witness the tearing down of all Christmas decorations, the smashing of all alcohol and the forced imposition of the veil on women in Aleppo now.
Yesterday US Warthog air-to-ground jets attacked and severely depleted reinforcements which were, at the invitation of the Syrian government, en route to Syria from Iraq. Constant, daily Israeli airstrikes on Syria’s military infrastructure for months have been a major factor in the demoralisation and reduced capacity of the Syrian government’s Syrian Arab Army, which has simply evaporated in Aleppo and Hama.
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It is very difficult to see the tide turning in Syria. The Russians now have either to massively reinforce their Syrian bases with ground troops or to evacuate them. Faced with the exigencies of Ukraine, they may do the latter, and it is reported that the Russian navy has already set sail from Tartus.
The speed of collapse of Syria has taken everybody by surprise. If the situation does not stabilise, Damascus could be besieged and ISIS back on the hills above the Bekaa valley within a week, given the speed of their advance and the short distances involved.
A renewed Israeli attack on Southern Lebanon to coincide with a Salafist invasion of the Bekaa Valley would then seem inevitable, as the Israelis would obviously wish their border with their new Taliban-style Greater Syrian neighbour to be as far North as possible. It could be a race for Beirut, unless the Americans have already organised who gets it.
It is no coincidence that the attack on Syria started the day of the Lebanon/Israel ceasefire. The jihadist forces do not want to be seen to be fighting alongside Israel, even though they are fighting forces which have been relentlessly bombed by Israel, and in the case of Hezbollah are exhausted from fighting Israel.
The Times of Israel has no compunction about saying the quiet part out loud, unlike the British media:
In fact Israeli media is giving a lot more truth about the Syrian rebel forces than British and American media just now. This is another article from the Times of Israel:
While HTS officially seceded from Al Qaeda in 2016, it remains a Salafi jihadi organization designated as a terror organization in the US, the EU and other countries, with tens of thousands of fighters.
Its sudden surge raises concerns that a potential takeover of Syria could transform it into an Islamist, Taliban-like regime – with repercussions for Israel at its south-western border. Others, however, see the offensive as a positive development for Israel and a further blow to the Iranian axis in the region.
Contrast this to the UK media, which from the Telegraph and Express to the Guardian has promoted the official narrative that not just the same organisations, but the same people responsible for mass torture and executions of non-Sunnis, including Western journalists, are now cuddly liberals.
Nowhere is this more obvious than the case of Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, sometimes spelt Al-Julani or Al-Golani, who is now being boosted throughout western media as a moderate leader. He was the deputy leader of ISIS, and the CIA actually has a $10 million bounty on his head! Yes, that is the same CIA which is funding and equipping him and giving him air support.
Supporters of the Syrian rebels still attempt to deny that they have Israeli and US support – despite the fact that almost a decade ago there was open Congressional testimony in the USA that, to that point, over half a billion dollars had been spent on assistance to Syrian rebel forces, and the Israelis have openly been providing medical and other services to the jihadists and effective air support.
One interesting consequence of this joint NATO/Israel support for the jihadist groups in Syria is a further perversion of domestic rule of law. To take the UK as an example, under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act it is illegal to state an opinion that supports, or may lead somebody else to support, a proscribed organisation.
The abuse of this provision by British police to persecute Palestinian supporters for allegedly encouraging support for proscribed organisations Hamas and Hezbollah is notorious, with even tangential alleged references leading to arrest. Sarah Wilkinson, Richard Medhurst, Asa Winstanley, Richard Barnard and myself are all notable victims, and the persecution has been greatly intensified by Keir Starmer.
Yet Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) is also a proscribed group in the UK. But both British mainstream media and British Muslim outlets have been openly promoting and praising HTS for a week – frankly much more openly than I have ever witnessed anyone in the UK support Hamas and Hezbollah – and not a single person has been arrested or even warned by UK police.
That in itself is the strongest of indications that western security services are fully behind the current attack on Syria.
For the record, I think it is an appalling law, and nobody should be prosecuted for expressing an opinion either way. But the politically biased application of the law is undeniable.
When the entire corporate and state media in the West puts out a unified narrative that Syrians are overjoyed to be released by HTS from the tyranny of the Assad regime – and says nothing whatsoever of the accompanying torture and execution of Shias, and destruction of Christmas decorations and icons – it ought to be obvious to everybody where this is coming from.
Yet – and this is another UK domestic repercussion – a very substantial number of Muslims in the UK support HTS and the Syrian rebels, because of the funding pumped into UK mosques from Saudi and Emirate Salafist sources. This is allied to the UK security service influence also wielded through the mosques, both by sponsorship programmes and “think tanks” benefiting approved religious leaders, and by the execrable coercive Prevent programme.
UK Muslim outlets that have been ostensibly pro-Palestinian – like Middle East Eye and 5 Pillars – enthusiastically back Israel’s Syrian allies in ensuring the destruction of resistance to the genocide of the Palestinians. Al Jazeera alternates between items detailing dreadful massacre in Palestine, and items extolling the Syrian rebels bringing Israel-allied rule to Syria.
Among the mechanisms they employ to reconcile this is a refusal to acknowledge the vital role of Syria in enabling the supply of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah. Which supply the jihadists have now cut off, to the absolute delight of Israel, and in conjunction with both Israeli and US air strikes.
In the final analysis, for many Sunni Muslims both in the Middle East and in the West, the pull seems to be stronger of sectarian hatred of the Shia and the imposition of Salafism, than preventing the ultimate destruction of the Palestinian nation.
I am not a Muslim. My Muslim friends happen to be almost entirely Sunni. I personally regard the continuing division over the leadership of the religion over a millennium ago as deeply unhelpful and a source of unnecessary continued hate.
But as a historian I do know that the western colonial powers have consciously and explicitly used the Sunni/Shia split for centuries to divide and rule. In the 1830’s, Alexander Burnes was writing reports on how to use the division in Sind between Shia rulers and Sunni populations to aid British colonial expansion.
On 12 May 1838, in his letter from Simla setting out his decision to launch the first British invasion of Afghanistan, British Governor General Lord Auckland included plans to exploit Shia/Sunni division in both Sind and Afghanistan to aid the British military attack.
The colonial powers have been doing it for centuries, Muslim communities keep falling for it, and the British and Americans are doing it right now to further their remodelling of the Middle East.
Simply put, many Sunni Muslims have been brainwashed into hating Shia Muslims more than they hate those currently committing genocide of an overwhelmingly Sunni population in Gaza.
I refer to the UK because I witnessed this first hand during the election campaign in Blackburn. But the same is true all over the Muslim world. Not one Sunni Muslim-led state has lifted a single finger to prevent the genocide of the Palestinians.
Their leadership is using anti-Shia sectarianism to maintain popular support for a de facto alliance with Israel against the only groups – Iran, Houthi and Hezbollah – which actually did attempt to give the Palestinians practical support in resistance. And against the Syrian government which facilitated supply.
The unspoken but very real bargain is this. The Sunni powers will accept the wiping out of the entire Palestinian nation and formation of Greater Israel, in return for the annihilation of the Shia communities in Syria and Lebanon by Israel and forces backed by NATO (including Turkey).
There are, of course, contradictions in this grand alliance. The United States’ Kurdish allies in Iraq are unlikely to be happy with Turkey’s destruction of Kurdish groups in Syria, which is what Erdoğan gains from Turkey’s very active military role in toppling Syria – in addition to extending Turkish control of oilfields.
The Iran-friendly Iraqi government will have further difficulty with reconciling US continuing occupation of swathes of its country, as they realise they are the next target.
The Lebanese army is under control of the USA, and Hezbollah must have been greatly weakened to have agreed the disastrous ceasefire with Israel. Christian fascist militias traditionally allied to Israel are increasingly visible in parts of Beirut, though whether they would be stupid enough to make common cause with jihadists from the North may be open to question. But should Syria fall entirely to jihadist rule – which may happen fast – I do not rule out Lebanon following very quickly indeed, and being integrated into a Salafist Greater Syria.
How the Palestinians of Jordan would react to this disastrous turn of events, it is hard to be sure. The British puppet Hashemite Kingdom is the designated destination for ethnically cleansed West Bank Palestinians under the Greater Israel plan.
What this all potentially amounts to is the end of pluralism in the Levant and its replacement by supremacism. An ethno-supremacist Greater Israel and a religio-supremacist Salafist Greater Syria.
Unlike many readers, I have never been a fan of the Assad regime or blind to its human rights violations. But what it did undeniably do was maintain a pluralist state where the most amazing historical religious and community traditions – including Sunni (and many Sunni do support Assad), Shia, Alaouites, descendants of the first Christians, and speakers of Aramaic, the language of Jesus – were all able to co-exist.
The same is true of Lebanon.
What we are witnessing is the destruction of that and imposition of a Saudi-style rule. All the little cultural things that indicate pluralism – from Christmas trees to language classes to winemaking to women going unveiled – have just been destroyed in Aleppo and could be destroyed from Damascus to Beirut.
I do not pretend that there are not genuine liberal democrats among the opposition to Assad. But they have negligible military significance, and the idea that they would be influential in a new government is delusion.
In Israel, which pretended to be a pluralist state, the mask is off. The Muslim call to prayer has just been banned. Arab minority members of the Knesset have been suspended for criticising Netanyahu and genocide. More walls and gates are built every day, not just in unlawfully occupied territories but in the “state of Israel” itself, to enforce apartheid.
I confess I once had the impression that Hezbollah was itself a religio-supremacist organisation; the dress and style of its leadership look theocratic. Then I came here and visited places like Tyre, which has been under Hezbollah elected local government for decades, and found that swimwear and alcohol are allowed on the beach and the veil is optional, while there are completely unmolested Christian communities there.
I will never now see Gaza, but wonder if I might have been similarly surprised by Hamas rule.
It is the United States which is promoting the cause of religious extremism and of the end, all over the Middle East, of a societal pluralism similar to Western norms. That is of course a direct consequence of the United States being allied to both the two religio-supremacist centres of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
It is the USA which is destroying pluralism, and it is Iran and its allies which defend pluralism. I would not have seen this clearly had I not come here. But once seen, it is blindingly obvious.
Beirut 6 December 2024
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... ddle-east/
Textbook Case of Asymmetric Warfare: How Lebanon’s Resistance Defied Israeli Dominance
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 6, 2024
Mohamad Hasan Sweidan
Hezbollah’s ability to stretch Israeli forces across multiple fronts, disrupt strategic timelines, and endure overwhelming power disparities showcases how asymmetric warfare is ultimately about resilience – shifting a powerful opponent’s offensive into a costly, prolonged struggle.
In his book How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict, Ivan Arreguín-Toft presents a compelling perspective on how conflicts unfold when there is a significant power imbalance. Toft argues that in asymmetric warfare, the more powerful side often ends up being defeated, not because they are outright beaten, but because they fail to achieve a decisive victory.
Conversely, weaker parties win by enduring, persevering, refusing defeat, and maintaining sustained resistance. This explains how resistance movements interpret their confrontations with powerful adversaries – as seen in the Israeli war on Lebanon, where the outcome of a ceasefire, without realizing the stated objectives, left many in Israel disillusioned despite military superiority.
The Lebanese front: A force that transformed the conflict
Militarily, Hezbollah’s involvement forced Israel to split its focus between Gaza and the northern border of occupied Palestine. This divide stretched Israeli forces thin, hindering their progress and complicating their strategy.
Hezbollah’s actions indicated that, for over a year, Israel faced a two-front battle – diverting troops and resources from Gaza to secure its northern regions. As acknowledged by The Times of Israel in August, Israel’s shortage of manpower was evident, “The IDF is suffering manpower shortages caused by the hostilities on the northern border and the ongoing war in Gaza.”
This two-front struggle also stalled several planned Israeli ground operations in Gaza. The heightened tension on the northern border gave Palestinian resistance movements the time they needed to regroup and disrupt Israel’s military timetable. An example of this was Israel’s delay of a major ground offensive in Gaza until the US reinforced their air defenses in the area – a move attributed to fears of escalation from Lebanon.
Economic and psychological impact on Israel
The war on the Lebanese front led to severe economic losses for Israel. Israeli newspaper Walla reported in August that Hezbollah’s attacks set off fires that destroyed approximately 180 dunams (around 44.5 acres) of land, including 7,500 dunams (around 1,853 acres) in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights and 4,600 dunams (around 1,137 acres) in the Upper Galilee. Extensive devastation was seen in agricultural fields and forests, contributing to environmental and economic losses. Agriculture, a key sector in Israel’s economy, was heavily affected; over 1,000 dunams (around 247 acres) of cultivated land were damaged, including avocado, pear, apple, olive, and grape plantations. The departure of Thai and Palestinian workers due to the lack of safety and security in the area further exacerbated irrigation and pest control issues, as well as overall agricultural productivity.
Israel suffered from another huge blow – mass emigration – that came as a result of the Lebanese resistance’s attacks on the north. Around 62,480 settlers in Israel’s north fled or were evacuated – with many choosing not to return, citing safety concerns.
Moreover, as of August 2024, 4,378 claims for property damage had been filed in the north, and losses in tourism reached NIS 1.15 billion (around $320,998,164) in direct revenues, with indirect losses at over NIS 2.64 billion (around $736,900,135). Agricultural and poultry production, which represents 70 percent of Israel’s chicken supply, was significantly jeopardized, raising concerns over local food security.
The resistance heavily engaged in psychological warfare against the occupation state, planting an undeniable sense of insecurity and fear among the settlers and disrupting daily life across the north.
Psychological warfare waged by Hezbollah also sought to influence the awareness of Israeli leaders and civilians about the risks of confronting the Axis of Resistance forces beyond Palestine.
Hezbollah employed hybrid warfare, integrating military and non-military strategies, including cognitive warfare, to shape Israeli perceptions. This approach involves introducing and promoting narratives about the Israeli occupation that align with the resistance movement’s objectives while strengthening its social media presence to amplify these views.
Hezbollah also highlighted internal issues within Israel through multilingual broadcasts, videos, and media campaigns that underscore Israel’s vulnerabilities.
Additionally, it periodically showcases its military advancements and directly addresses the Israeli public to foster uncertainty about their security and the country’s future. These diverse tactics aim to influence the morale and perceptions of the Israeli population.
From resistance to repelling aggression
Despite these notable achievements, the war between Israel and Lebanon did not lead to the end of the war on Gaza. However, the occupation army was made to pay a hefty price, strategically undermining its broader objectives. As John Mearsheimer argues in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, objectives in warfare are dynamic, often shifting when external pressures collide with internal challenges. Israel’s campaign, which began offensively, became increasingly defensive as the focus diverted from achieving outright victory to ensuring survival.
The Lebanese front’s objective developed, too – from supporting Gaza to directly countering Israeli aggression against Lebanon. Israel initially sought to eliminate Hezbollah and establish a buffer zone along the Lebanese border, aiming to reassure northern settlers of their safety. However, these goals remained out of reach; rather than demonstrating overwhelming dominance, Israel found itself embroiled in a familiar quagmire.
Hezbollah performed an average of 23 military operations per day on Israel since the start of the war, targeting military outposts, barracks, and bases – even reaching deep into occupied Palestinian territories. This displays the resistance movement’s enhanced capabilities.
Moreover, Israel’s ground invasion of south Lebanon, which was launched in early October, caused a lot of setbacks for the occupation forces: over 130 Israeli soldiers were killed, and 59 Merkava tanks, alongside various other military equipment, were destroyed. Despite multiple aggressive attempts to enter, Israeli forces failed to occupy any key towns in south Lebanon or to create a secure buffer zone. Hezbollah’s resilience turned what Israel had hoped would be a swift campaign into a costly ordeal, mirroring Israel’s defeat in the 2006 war.
The cost of war and the measure of victory
Modern warfare shows us that victory is not solely about inflicting the greatest losses or causing the most destruction; it is about achieving strategic goals. In conflicts like the Vietnam War or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the weaker side’s ability to endure ultimately led to victory despite overwhelming casualties and devastation. The Lebanese resistance movement demonstrated the same resilience during the July 2006 war and again now – managing to withstand Israeli attacks and preventing the occupation from meeting its strategic goals.
Wars of national liberation always come at a high cost, especially for civilians. However, this is often a prerequisite for success against a militarily superior adversary. Hezbollah’s ability to withstand Israeli pressure and sustain its operations solidified its position as a formidable opponent – proving once again that true victory lies in thwarting the enemy’s stated objectives, and not in mere survival.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... dominance/
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Hezbollah leader says group giving Lebanon ceasefire 'opportunity for success', vows to support Syria
UN officials say Israel has violated the one-week-old truce deal about 100 times
News Desk
DEC 5, 2024

(Photo Credit: Marwan Naamani/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said on 5 December that, despite dozens of Israeli violations inside Lebanon, the group is “giving an opportunity” for the ceasefire agreement to succeed.
“Israel has committed more than 60 violations of the ceasefire agreement … The Lebanese state is responsible for following up on Israeli violations, and the resistance is giving the opportunity to make the ceasefire agreement a success,” Qassem said during a televised speech on Thursday.
According to the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Israel has breached the ceasefire “approximately 100 times” since it went into effect last week. The US and France, the main guarantors of the deal, have also privately told officials in Tel Aviv they are violating the agreement.
As over one million displaced Lebanese begin to rebuild their lives following a nearly two-month-long battle with Israel, the Hezbollah chief also announced financial support mechanisms to help in the rebuilding process.
“We have distributed $57 million to 170,000 families as a gift from Hezbollah and Iran. Over the next year, we will provide $12,000 to $14,000 to those whose homes were completely destroyed,” Qassem announced.
“We will reflect on the challenges and conflicts we have endured, drawing valuable lessons for the future … The enemy wanted to crush the resistance through its aggression, so it confronted it with a battle of the brave,” the Lebanese resistance leader said.
He also confirmed Hezbollah's unwavering support for Syria, saying the group will “stand by Syria to thwart the goals of this aggression with our abilities.”
“After the failure in Gaza … after the agreement to end the aggression against Lebanon and after the failure of attempts to remove Syria [from the confrontation with Israel], they are trying to attain achievements by the destruction of Syria again through these terrorist groups,” Qassem said, referring to US and Turkish-backed extremist groups that have taken control of large swathes of western Syria.
“These groups want to topple the regime and spread chaos in Syria and shift Syria from the resistance camp to the camp that helps the Israeli enemy,” Qassem stressed, also calling on Arab countries to come to the Syrian government’s aid to defeat the “dangerous, expansionist Israeli project.”
https://thecradle.co/articles/hezbollah ... port-syria
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Pro-Palestine protest at train station in Nijmegen, Netherlands, on November 16. Source: Fjmustak, Wikimedia Commons.
How Israeli Hooligans Fueled Fascism in the Netherlands
By Chris de Ploeg, Jazie Veldhuyzen (Posted Dec 06, 2024)
On November 6 and 7, fascist goons from Maccabi Tel Aviv, an Israeli professional football club, descended on the streets of Amsterdam, chanting proudly about murdered children in Gaza while assaulting local houses, passers-by, and taxi drivers that appeared pro-Palestinian or Arab. As the police failed to protect its own citizens, some took matters into their own hands and started striking back, wounding multiple Maccabi supporters.
These events in our city have become worldwide news, portrayed by mass-murderers such as Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden as a targeted “pogrom” against Jewish people. Yet not a single local Jewish person, store, or institution was attacked. The far right has seized onto Israeli propaganda to demonize the entire migrant community in the Netherlands and the right to protest, fueling a looming descent into fascism.
It is high time to set the record straight. We, as a local party with representation in the city council of Amsterdam, have been in touch with countless local citizens and journalists, who have told us a highly different version of events from what has been reported by the Western mainstream press. Much of this has been caught on camera and spread online from the start, but largely ignored by major Western media. It was independent YouTube journalists such as Left Laser, Bender, and Sallaheddine who broke the first major factual reports of what happened in Amsterdam. What follows is a reconstruction.
Maccabi Ultras Are Fascist Goons
Maccabi ultras—fanatical supporters of the team—are not random hooligans. Considering the obligatory military draft in Israel, practically all of them are soldiers or ex-soldiers, many of them coming straight from duty in Gaza or Lebanon, where they have been complicit in genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Hailing from an apartheid society, where pogroms against Palestinians are a daily reality, they are used to terrorizing Palestinians, Arabs, and political opponents with impunity.
In 2020, for example, Maccabi ultras attacked anti-Netanyahu demonstrators with batons and broken glass, wounding several of them. The club gained a reputation as “Israel’s most racist soccer club,” even before the ultras managed to cleanse its team of all Arab players by constantly intimidating and insulting them with racist slurs.
The Maccabi ultras take their fascist mentality with them when visiting other cities, from Malta to Athens. In March of this year in Greece, for instance, the Maccabi ultras beat an Egyptian man into hospitalization for holding a Palestinian flag.
The last time Maccabi goons visited Amsterdam, in 2016, they proudly sang their “rape song,” which includes lyrics about drinking the blood of the “whores of the Arabs,” raping their women, and hanging communists in squares. In the run-up to the football match this November, the ultras proudly reposted the video recording of that shameful episode in Amsterdam on their YouTube channel. An ominous warning.
Most citizens in Amsterdam are of a migrant background, many of them from the Middle Eastern and North African region. The city also has a strong movement in solidarity with Palestine, with demonstrations happening literally every single day at the central station. Clearly, trouble was coming. This is why Amsterdam citizens warned that the football match should be canceled—a request that we, as a local political party, amplified in the city council. Indeed, just next door, the Israeli national team was not allowed to visit Belgium last September for fear of violence. Yet, in Amsterdam, despite our warnings in the city council about the nature of this club and its racism, nothing was done. How is that possible?
How the Union of European Football Associations and the Dutch State White-Washed Maccabi Tel Aviv
The mayor of Amsterdam claims that Maccabi is not a high-risk club, based on assessments her administration had received from the local police in Tel Aviv, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), and the Dutch security services (NCTV). However, her sources all have a deeply biased and racist history. Let us take a look, in particular, at the UEFA and Dutch NCTV.
For over a decade, the UEFA has consistently rejected demands to suspend or expel the Israel Football Association (IFA), despite numerous requests to do so by the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) and the Red Card Israeli Racism campaign. Mouin Rabbani sums up the numerous arguments to sanction Israel:
That Israel is an institutionally racist state and should be treated no differently than apartheid South Africa (suspended by FIFA in 1961) and Rhodesia (suspended in 1970); that the IFA includes clubs based in illegal settlements in the illegally-occupied Palestinian territories; that the IFA discriminates against Palestinian clubs; that IFA teams discriminate against Palestinian players; that Israel in 2019 prevented the PFA cup final from taking place when it prohibited the Khadamaat Rafah team traveling from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank to play against Balata FC; that Israel has killed and maimed Palestinian players; that Israeli clubs systematically tolerate racist and genocidal conduct by supporters; and a variety of other grounds, most recently that Israel is perpetrating genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that has resulted in the killing of numerous Palestinian players, officials, and staff.
Indeed, in Gaza alone, over three hundred Palestinian football players have been murdered by the Israeli army since October 7.
The UEFA has defended their stance standing up for the Israeli league by claiming that they do not want to be involved with politics. Yet, they showed their true face by banning Russian teams overnight in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, even though Israel has been exterminating Gaza’s children at a rate nearly 450 times higher than Russia in Ukraine. Clearly, the UEFA cannot be considered an impartial source.
The reality of the Dutch NCTV is perhaps even worse, with a specific history of inciting racism against Muslims in Amsterdam. Most recently, in September, a Dutch court ruled that the NCTV had wrongly painted an Amsterdam Islamic school as extremist. The Amsterdam municipality had used the slanderous reports of the NCTV to try to close the school.
In that sense, it is no surprise that the local Amsterdam administration once again falls back on racist sources such as the NCTV to justify their dangerous policies that threaten their own citizens, especially those of migrant backgrounds. Indeed, the rot runs deep within the entire municipality, where a huge scandal has recently erupted about the systemic abuse of employees, who were “large-scale victims of racism, bullying, and abuse of power.”
Maccabi Fascists Terrorize Citizens in Amsterdam, Supported by Police
Already the day before the football match, on November 6, Maccabi ultras were roaming the streets of Amsterdam in search of pro-Palestinian citizens to terrorize. The ultras attacked multiple houses with Palestinian flags or posters, tearing them down, smashing their windows, and threatening the inhabitants.
For example, dozens of Maccabi fascists gathered in front of Villa Mokum on Wednesday night, a squat where various Palestinian flags are hanging. Videos show them throwing stones at the windows, climbing the building, and tearing off the flags.
“They were kicking our doors and trying to get into our house,” said a 23-year-old resident of the building to the local Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool. “They were giving us the middle finger and making beheading gestures, saying ‘we’re going to kill you and we will come back.’”
At one of the home raids by the Maccabi hooligans, a local taxi driver spoke out and the fascist goons attempted to beat him up. He got away uninjured, though with smashed windows and dents in his car. As even the mayor confirmed in her letter to the council, the Maccabi fascists then took off their belts and started smashing various other taxis in the vicinity.
In response to the Israeli violence, Amsterdam citizens struck back. Used to sniping Palestinian children from a distance, the Israeli fascists immediately cowered in fear. In an iconic video, one of the Maccabi hooligans jumped into a canal to flee, and agreed to shout “Free Palestine” to make his pursuers leave. Most of the hooligans were driven into a local casino, where they had to hide from a collective of taxi drivers, until the police came to save them. Yet there were no reported injuries that night.
Taxi drivers in Amsterdam are notorious for being well-organized and loyal, sticking up for one another. It is no surprise, then, that they immediately organized to defend themselves and sent a clear signal to the hooligans that they are not to be messed with. Later interviews also made clear that they wanted to protect Amsterdam citizens more generally from the fascist violence of Maccabi supporters.
On that first day, November 6, we saw a pattern that would repeat itself the next day. In the video footage, we can see how a police car drives by as Israeli thugs attack a house. Similarly, when the first taxi driver that was assaulted went straight to the police, the police simply told him off, even though his windows were clearly smashed.
The impunity with which the Israeli fascists were able to assault pro-Palestinian citizens was a major cause for concern within activist circles and migrant communities. We know from organizers of autonomous, pro-Palestinian community centers such as De Vrankrijk that they felt compelled to organize nightly reconnaissance teams and barricade doors to prepare for possible attacks by the Maccabi fascists. Chats and social media groups of human rights activists warned not to wear keffiyehs or other pro-Palestinian symbols in the city center, in fear of violence.
On November 7, Maccabi ultras clearly considered themselves untouchable. They again paraded through the streets of Amsterdam, intimidating passers-by and loudly chanting genocidal songs. “Let the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] win to fuck the Arabs,” was cheered loudly in clear daylight, part of a longer song that claims “there are no children in Gaza, because there are no children left.”
Indeed, the IDF has wiped out some 500 schools and 17,000 children in Gaza in a systematic campaign of mass murder, still ignoring the much larger death toll from the Israeli manufactured famine. According to UN figures, 70 percent of the murdered victims are women and children, with those aged 5 to 9 being the single biggest victim group. Again, the police stood by and did nothing, even though incitement to genocide is a criminal offense.
Passers-by wearing a keffiyeh or Palestine button were insulted, spat on, and had bottles thrown at them. Many that were assaulted have testified that the police did nothing, told them to leave, and blamed them for being near the hooligans.
When the Maccabi ultras finally came to the match, they loudly disturbed a minute of silence that was held for flood victims in Spain due to the country’s critical stance toward Israel.
When they left the stadium, they went to the city center on a warpath, armed with chains, sticks, and stones, seemingly ready to make good on their death threats from the night before. Bizarrely, they were escorted by police while carrying these weapons, even though the entire area was designated as high-risk by the mayor.
This time, however, the tables were turned
No “Pogrom” Against Jewish People
After the first attacks by Maccabi hooligans, various Dutch citizens seem to have organized themselves to prepare for retaliatory hit-and-run attacks, moving quickly on scooters to avoid being caught. This resulted in dozens of mostly light injuries against Maccabi hooligans, including five that briefly visited a local hospital.
According to the mayor’s office, the perpetrators were organizing themselves in Telegram groups where the term Jew hunt was repeatedly used. Nevertheless, most of these sources, nor the size or relevance of the Telegram groups, have not been made public. Regardless, this language was seized upon by pro-genocide politicians across the world to proclaim that what transpired on November 7 was a “pogrom” against Jewish people.
Even if we accept the police’s claims, the inflated language about a “pogrom” is clearly inaccurate. First, pogroms are associated with systemic state-sanctioned violence against minorities. Yet, the Maccabi fascists were the ones who were given free reign by the police, not the other way around.
Second, as even the most right-wing major newspaper in the Netherlands was forced to admit: “There are no indications yet that Jewish Amsterdammers or synagogues, for example, were also targeted. The authorities believe that a distinction was made between Israeli fans and Jews in general.” The perpetrators were mainly “after Maccabi supporters because there were supposedly Israeli ex-soldiers and Mossad agents among them.”
If the alleged Telegram messages about a “Jew hunt” turn out to be authentic, there seems to have been a clear conflation of terms between Zionists and Jewish people, even though they were clearly targeting the former, not the latter. A conflation of terms that Zionists themselves have, of course, been trying to create for decades, including every major political party in the Netherlands. Half of the people arrested for violent offenses on November 7 were minors, making ignorance a likely cause for the conflation.
Yet another possible cause for the conflation is the old tradition of Amsterdam Ajax supporters calling themselves “super Jews,” which has led their opponents to use anti-Jewish language, even if they don’t mean actual Jewish people. There are plenty of videos of mostly white football choirs literally singing about “Jew hunts” or how “the Jews are going to die.” Interestingly, in 2017, the Dutch national broadcaster publicly apologized to FC Utrecht supporters for having painted them as antisemitic for this reason.
Indeed, football is the main reason that antisemitism numbers spiked in 2023 according to figures from the Dutch public prosecutor. “The striking increase in the discrimination grounds of antisemitism cannot be related to facts related to the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, 2023,” the prosecutor claims. “The strikingly high influx at this Public Prosecutor’s Office is related to various football matches that were played in Rotterdam or by Feyenoord.”
Although the hit-and-run attacks were aimed at Maccabi hooligans, not at Ajax supporters, the Amsterdam club itself has a reputation of being pro-Israel and some of its supporters had assaulted a Palestinian man just days before the match. It is entirely possible that the football lingo got mixed up in the Telegram chats. Indeed, not a single local Jewish person, store, or institution was targeted. Clearly, there was not an actual “Jew hunt.” And definitely not a state-sanctioned one.
Amsterdam Police Only Targets “Antifascists” and Racialized Minorities
There has been a lot of criticism about the relatively small amount of police present around the Maccabi hooligans on November 6 and 7. However, this does not mean that a small police force was present in Amsterdam those days. In fact, there was a huge special mobilization from neighboring regions, including riot police, arrest units, horses, dogs, reconnaissance units, football units, and the “peace” unit. The problem is that they were used against the wrong people.
Anti-genocide protesters were planning to hold a demonstration at the Amsterdam stadium against the presence of Maccabi Tel Aviv, in favor of a sports boycott against genocide, colonialism, and apartheid, as was done in the case of Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia.
In violation of their constitutional rights, the demonstrators were told to go to the Anton de Kom Square, which is neither visible nor audible from the stadium. Regardless, the demonstrators complied with the orders from the mayor and the police. Despite their obedience, the anti-genocide demonstrators were confronted by a massive police force, including riot police and horses.
Although ten hooligans were briefly arrested, not a single Israeli was prosecuted. All of them were protected by the police, escorted to their hotels, and allowed to return to Israel, mirroring the culture of impunity in their home country. We have spoken to a taxi driver who attempted to file charges against Maccabi hooligans, but was literally refused by the police for days. Other taxi drivers are afraid of speaking out at all, in fear of being ethnically profiled and targeted.
Mossad agents accompanied the Israeli hooligans, in direct violation of Dutch sovereignty, which would have never allowed Iranian, Russian, or Chinese agents to enter the Netherlands, let alone to accompany foreign fascist and openly genocidal gangs. Now, the Dutch authorities are collaborating with the Israeli government to “research” the so-called “pogroms,” a government whose entire cabinet should be tried in the Hague for genocide.
On November 9, the Jewish anti-Zionist organization Erev Rav felt compelled to cancel their antifascist Kristallnacht commemoration at the Jewish resistance memorial in Amsterdam. They had asked the police for special protection against the Maccabi fascists, who have a history of attacking antiwar leftists, including Jewish ones, yet the police simply responded that they were more worried about “pro-Palestinian activists and antifascists.” Astounded, the spokesperson of Erev Rav replied: “Of course there would be antifascists. We are antifascists. And we expect the police to be antifascist themselves.”
Yet the Amsterdam police is clearly not antifascist. In fact, antifascist stickers are even shown as examples of “leftist extremism” in police training. It is no surprise then, that it was the pro-Palestinian antifascists who were surrounded by police.
The double standards of the Dutch state and police are no coincidence. Institutional racism in the Dutch police and criminal justice system is deeply entrenched. Figures show that racial inequalities in police killings, arrests, and imprisonment rates are significantly worse than in the United States.
The far-right Zionist Party for Freedom (PVV) has massive support within the police force, in some areas as much as 60 percent. Think of police officers who, according to several whistleblowers, call themselves “Moroccan exterminators” or who talk about “shit Africans” or “Natos” (“North African Cunts Wearing Sports Shoes”).
Like in so many countries, the Israeli laboratory of repression is directly imported into the Netherlands. The state has purchased two Israeli wiretapping systems to surveil its own citizens, the last one from Cyber Intelligence, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, in 2019.
How the Netherlands Is Turning into a Police State
The Dutch complicity in the genocide in Gaza and climate breakdown have led to increasing protests on the streets of Netherlands. The response of the state has been staggering repression. When student encampments started in May 2024 in Utrecht and Amsterdam, for example, they were both met with speed eviction, swifter than in any country in the world.
We saw the same pattern of double standards in the first encampment in Amsterdam, which was attacked by Zionists with firebombs as the police stood idly by. The encampment was subsequently illegally evicted—as the public prosecutor admitted months later—with much violence, including a student whose skull was cracked by a police baton.
Since March 2024, the ruling coalition parties have openly proclaimed their intent to restrict the right to protest. The pretext was yet another Zionist lie, surrounding the visit of the Israeli president to Amsterdam for the opening of the National Holocaust Museum. As Isaac Herzog is guilty for inciting genocide, the Jewish anti-Zionist organization Erev Rav organized a demonstration. Major Dutch parties shamefully painted the protest as antisemitic, completely ignoring the presence of Erev Rav and blatantly lied about antisemitic statements that were never uttered. This lie became the basis for a campaign to restrict constitutional rights in the Netherlands.
The mayor of Amsterdam is a former leader of the GroenLinks (GreenLeft) party, a neoliberal imperialist party, which nevertheless considers itself constitutional, liberal, and in favor of civil liberties. In the past, the mayor has pushed back against some of the most extreme far-right threats against the right to protest. Since November 7, however, all pushback has gone out of the window.
GroenLinks leader Femke Halsema’s words about a “pogrom” were crucial in facilitating far-right propaganda, as an investigation by OneWorld revealed. It is reminiscent of how the supposedly “moderate” and respected Colin Powell facilitated the invasion of Iraq in 2003 with his speech at the United Nations, a turning point for liberal media. It is often the more “respectable” leaders who are crucial in facilitating colonial propaganda.
Granted, it is positive that Halsema—due to enormous pressure from below—walked back her statement about a “pogrom” ten days later. But it was too little, too late. That she did not see the far-right and Israeli propaganda coming, as she now claims, lacks any credibility.
More serious were the actual policies Halsema pursued in the aftermath of the Maccabi attacks. Claims of a “pogrom” were seized upon to promulgate emergency laws banning all protests in the city of Amsterdam. Anti-genocide demonstrators have peacefully gone onto the streets regardless, where they were charged with horses, and a Muslim shopper was beaten into a bloody pulp, leading to severe brain damage. Several clearly recognizable journalists were also beaten or arrested.
Before any investigation had been carried out, Halsema adamantly denied the police violence. This facilitated a feeling of impunity among the police. Three days later, protesters were dumped by police in an abandoned area on the outskirts of the city—out of sight of the media—where they were brutally chased and beaten in what some have called a “coordinated protester hunt.”
The protest ban remained in effect for nearly a week in Amsterdam. Even the neighboring city of Utrecht seized on the events to effectively ban a protest by the largest Dutch union against university budget cuts, with lies about an alleged threat of violence from pro-Palestinian groups. That was another supposedly left-wing mayor, Sharon Dijksma of the Labour Party.
The budget cuts are tied to the rapidly increasing military expenditures of the Dutch state, which has even started talking about reintroducing a military draft, like in Israel. Many of the weapons will in turn be bought from Israeli arms manufacturers, which are enabling the genocide in Gaza. A militarization that is also supported by the “leftist” opposition party GroenLinks-PvdA (an alliance between GroenLinks and the Labour Party).
The looming draft, too, is a threat to freedom in the Netherlands. During the Dutch colonial war in Indonesia from 1946 to 1949, countless draft resisters were imprisoned for years and have, to this day, never received any form of compensation or rehabilitation. The colonial soldiers, by contrast, have been honored as part of the official Second World War commemorations since 1961, even before the Dutch state did the same for actual Nazi Holocaust victims.
Rising Fascism and Islamophobia, a Colonial Boomerang
The Netherlands has a long and deep history of racism, having brought apartheid to South Africa, Indonesia, Suriname, and the Dutch Antilles, among other places. Even the previous “liberal” Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, is a convicted racist for ethnic profiling and a Zionist fanatic who instructed his own staff to cover up Israeli war crimes.
Rutte’s government notoriously destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of Dutch people of color in what became known as the “benefits scandal,” which plunged innocent civilians into huge debts, leading to divorces, suicides, and the loss of child custody.
Many far-right leaders in the Netherlands, including PVV leader Geert Wilders, have backgrounds as colonizers in Indonesia, the largest majority-Muslim country in the world. The Dutch East Indies were ruled as an apartheid state and leaders like Wilders aim to “avenge their ancestors” who were defeated. They see in the Palestinian resistance the same faces of the Indonesian freedom fighters. Wilders himself had his coming of age in a Kibbutz in the West Bank, where he recognized his political soulmates in the most fanatic settlers of Israel.
After the genocide in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, the Israeli mass murder was supported by a major propaganda offensive by the Dutch government and almost all Dutch political parties, with strong racist undertones. Think, for example, of the “leftist” opposition leader Frans Timmermans, who spoke about our “culture of life” and “their” “culture of death.”
In this context, the national elections in November 2023 further worsened the situation. The far-right PVV became the largest party, led by Wilders, an ardent Zionist and racist who believes in a “Jewish state” from the river to the sea and wishes to apply the same apartheid model to the Netherlands.
Wilders was convicted by a Dutch court in 2016 for “incitement to discrimination” after he told a rally that he “would arrange” for the country to have “less, less Moroccans,” essentially calling for their deportation. His lawyer for the court case was bankrolled by US Zionists to the tune of €200,000.
The PVV is the largest of the parties in the governing coalition and served as the king-maker in coalition talks, with the prime minister having been the former head of the Dutch secret services, under whose watch Dutch Muslims were specifically targeted and spied on.
The coalition seriously considered PVV parliamentarian Gidi Markuszower as a deputy prime minister and minister of asylum and migration. A fanatic Zionist who was born and raised in Israel, Markuszower brought his fascist views with him to the Netherlands. He talks of migrants as “African beasts” and advocated in a leaked email to murder anti-Zionist “despicable Jews.”
Those views were well-known by 2024 and not a problem for the ruling coalition. The reason Markuszower was not able to become the vice prime minister was because he did not pass the security clearance by the Dutch secret service, most likely because of his continued ties to the Mossad. Nevertheless, he remains on the bench in parliament for the PVV.
Since the far-right election victory of the PVV, Islamophobia has sharply risen in the Netherlands. According to the latest figures of Meld Islamofobie, 83 percent of Dutch Muslims have been personally experienced an Islamophobic incident last year. We have seen hatecrimes against Muslims on two separate occasions just in the last two weeks, where two Muslims were nearly beaten to death by racists in their own neighborhood. This summer, another Muslim was murdered by a racist neighbor.
The Racists and Antisemites Are in the Hague
The events of November 7 have escalated things further. Outraged by the complete betrayal of almost the entire spectrum of Dutch politics and media, which protected foreign fascist hooligans rather than its own citizens, youths rioted in the streets of Amsterdam West on November 11. The specific trigger was the beating up of a Muslim woman by police force during a peaceful protest the day before, which the mayor proceeded to lie about despite extensive video evidence.
Leaders of the governing coalition parties immediately seized upon the events to demonize the Muslim community. Think for example of Farmer–Citizen Movement leader Caroline van der Plas, who claims that “the thirst to beat up Jews and even worse: to want to kill them” is deeply ingrained in “a section of the population.” She also openly called for a ban against the Instagram account Cestmocro, in direct violation of freedom of speech. Wilders called for “deporting and denaturalizing” the “scum.” The prime minister, Dick Schoof, claimed the “Jew hunt” exposed the “integration problem” in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, at the urging of the Israeli state, the House of Representatives passed a motion to place human rights organizations on terrorist lists.
During the Council of Ministers in the week after the Maccabi riots, there was allegedly talk of “cunt Moroccans,” “halal eaters,” “pus” that “can’t just be squeezed out,” and “antisemitism that is in the genes of Muslims or Moroccans.” What was actually said remains fodder for speculation, since the Council of Ministers’ discussions are secret and the cabinet refuses to disclose them. In any case, it was reason enough for the only Moroccan-Dutch minister, Nora Achahbar, to resign and leave the cabinet. If the cabinet admits to having made racist statements, it would legally make it a “criminal organization.” That, according to criminal lawyer Gerard Spong, is probably the reason Achahbar also cautiously speaks of “polarizing” language, since she would not want to take credit for the fall of the cabinet.
The demonization of Dutch Muslims as antisemites has little to do with reality or with concerns for Dutch Jewish people. The party ideologue of the PVV, currently the chair of Dutch parliament, is notorious for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and for having worn an National Socialist Movement (the party that collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War) flag to Dutch parliament. The Netherlands seems to have willfully forgotten that it was not Muslims but Christians who systematically murdered European Jews during the Second World War.
The claim that antisemitism is an Islamic problem has been a long-time talking point of the Israeli lobby, including the main lobby group in the Netherlands, the Center for Information and Documentation Israel. Esther Voet, then director of the center, claimed in 2014 that two-thirds of antisemitism came from Muslims, while the figures from the Public Prosecution Service showed that two-thirds of the perpetrators were “native” Dutch. The second-largest group of perpetrators were Dutch people with a “Western European” migrant background.
An extensive government study found that 12 percent of Dutch Muslim youth are “not so positive” about Jewish people. This is comparable to their attitude toward Kurds (12 percent), Dutch (10 percent), and even Moroccans (8 percent). Conversely, Islamophobia has been rampant, as Christian and non-religious youth are extremely negative about Muslims (around 30 percent) and Moroccans (around 40 percent).
We should see the demonization of Muslims by Dutch and Israeli politicians and government officials as an expression of increasing fascism. While Gaza has been transformed into an extermination camp and pogroms are a daily reality in the West Bank, right-wing politicians and government officials hope to bring this reality of apartheid and ethnic cleansing to the Netherlands. It is not without reason that they place themselves squarely behind Maccabi gangs who sang in the Dutch streets about hanging communists, raping their opponents, and murdering Palestinian babies.
The rhetoric of the right about the “Islamo-left” should be seen as the modern-day version of the “Judeo-Bolshevism” with which the Nazis justified their murderous actions against Jewish people. Let us also not forget that Jewish refugees were banned and expelled from the Netherlands in the 1930s with many of the same arguments that we hear about Muslims today, by literally the same newspapers such as the Telegraaf, the largest newspaper of the Netherlands. It was not without reason that the newspaper was banned after the Second World War, as it became known as an “SS hate campaign paper.”
The threat of fascism is real and wide. The genocidal apartheid state of Israel is simply the tip of the spear in a much broader and dangerous process, fueling fascist imaginaries that threaten to plunge the Western world into darkness. The liberal center, from Kamala Harris in the United States to Femke Halsema in Amsterdam, seems powerless and unwilling to truly confront them.
At the same time, we see more and more people piercing through the lies, organizing, and taking to the streets. There is tremendous anger about the genocide in Gaza, about the demonization of Dutch Muslims, and about the breakdown of the welfare state in favor of a war and police state. We will have to turn that anger into a powerful, broad, and well-organized mass movement for peace and solidarity. A movement that does not allow itself to be misled or divided by a government that does not care in the least about Dutch workers. As we say at De Vonk: may we be the spark that fires the flame of revolution. For little else will suffice.
https://mronline.org/2024/12/06/how-isr ... therlands/