Media Amplifies “Video” Used to Excuse Amsterdam Violence — Does it Exist?

After last week’s “Jew hunt” in Amsterdam, anti-Israel activists rushed to excuse the brutal assaults. If Israelis and Jews across the city were beaten down and kicked while lying defenseless and unconscious, the focus, they insisted, should be on Jewish behavior.

To that end, an online army of apologists for antisemitism — note that the term “Jew hunt” came from the attackers themselves, as did the slur “cancer Jew” — scrambled to supplant videos of Jews being attacked with different video, of ugly chants by Israeli soccer fans visiting the Netherlands. The talking point was that there was a legitimate reason for the violence, which the victims brought upon themselves.

Call it the oldest talking point. “It is the essence of anti-Semitism, as it is the essence of all prejudice, to call its object its cause,” Leon Wieseltier noted in 2003. “But if you explain anti-Semitism as a response to Jews, and racism as a response to blacks, and misogyny as a response to women, then you have not understood it. You have reproduced it.”

In this case, the reproduction was itself reproduced. What began as a campaign of deflection and victim-blaming by online activists was joined by larger media outlets, which helped the campaign to shift attention onto the unruly Israeli fans who, in this narrative, instigated the organized violence against other Israelis.

A Jew Hunt, But…

There were subtle examples already in early coverage, presaging more concerted media attempts to shift the narrative. For example, PBS’s description of a man being brutally beaten as he pleaded “I’m not Jewish!” was immediately followed by a “but” from the reporters.

But, went PBS's counterpoint, the aggression “was not one-sided.” The segment continued: “[V]ideo from a night earlier showed Israeli soccer fans cheering as someone tears down a Palestinian flag.” The vandalism and the violence are not just put on the same plane of “aggression,” but also cast as cause and effect.

Likewise, an AP piece about the beatings immediately focused on Israeli hooliganism, insinuating it was responsible for the anti-Jewish campaign. “It was not clear how the violence began,” the piece explained already in paragraph two. “Dutch and Israeli leaders denounced the attacks as antisemitic. Video showed Israeli fans chanting anti-Arab slogans in the streets before the game.” (The article failed to describe, or even mention, video of hateful rhetoric about Jews or of vicious beatings.)

There were indeed anti-Arab slogans by some Maccabi fans, who also were involved in what an official report described as “minor skirmishes.” Widely circulated video shows a vulgar and belligerent chant by some Israeli soccer ultras, which generalized Israel’s military adversaries as “the Arabs.” Had passersby understood Hebrew, they would have understood the lyrics to say: “Allow the IDF to win, to f--- the Arabs.” Racism in soccer is not only a European phenomenon.

Miscaptioned Video Clips

But activists seeking to justify the “Jew hunt” apparently felt that that video, however ugly, wasn’t quite enough to rationalize antisemitic violence. Soon, social media was filled with miscaptioned and doctored versions of the clip, in which the words were falsely translated as “Death to the Arabs” and “Why are there no schools in Gaza? Because there are not children there?”

And once again, the social media campaign seemed to find its way to mainstream coverage.

A Nov. 9 story in the New York Times, for example, reported on video of the terrible chant about children in Gaza:

Videos from Thursday showed Israeli fans shouting anti-Arab chants on their way to the match as the police escorted them near Amsterdam’s central train station to ensure their safety amid anger over the Gaza war. One of their chants said: “Why is there no school in Gaza? There are no children left there.”

A second piece in the paper repeated the claim. The stories included no link to the purported video, and CAMERA was unable to find evidence of it on social media. Perhaps the paper had access to a clip that, somehow, managed to elude so many anti-Israel activists?

The New York Times Corrects

After CAMERA called on authors and editors to substantiate their claim, the New York Times, eventually, came clean. It didn't have the alleged video.

The paper published corrections, removed references to the video, and changed the report so that it attributed to "city officials" the allegation about the alleged chants. (The amended report doesn’t consider whether city officials, who don’t speak Hebrew, may have fallen victim to the same mistranslations that appeared to trip up Times reporters.)

Before the piece was corrected, though, the claim spread further — crafted on social media, blasted out by the New York Times, and repeated, for example, in a Globe and Mail opinion piece that links to the Times piece when condemning the purported chant. After a German journalist pointed to the New York Times and its questionable quote, his newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine, led readers to believe the quote appears on video.

And on, and on, and on it rippled. Wikipedia currently cites the New York Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine when claiming: “Israeli fans were captured on video chanting ‘Death to Arabs,’ ‘Let the IDF win’ and ‘Why is there no school in Gaza? There are no children left there.’”

The quote appeared elsewhere.  Al Jazeera mentions it repeatedly. Various arms of Turkish state media describe the supposed video. The Guardian’s Jon Henley refers to “verified social media videos” of the quote, and his paper repeated the claim a day later. The Jewish Chronicle stated as fact that the words were chanted by fans headed to the soccer match. The Media Line reported that video from Amsterdam showed of chant.

After contact from CAMERA, the author of the Media Line piece made clear he couldn’t substantiate the claim, and the piece was changed to say that chants “reportedly” included the words in question. The Jewish Chronicle, too, acknowledged it had no video, and quietly changed its piece so that the charge was attributed to an unnamed “city official” and Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Frankfurter Allgemeine informed CAMERA that it didn’t, in fact, have video. (Editors defended their language with a technicality: While the allegation appeared in a paragraph that that opened by describing video of Israelis, which itself appeared in a section that opened by describing video of Israelis, the offending sentence didn’t restate the word “video.” The reporting, they insisted, was based on eyewitness claims — though the article didn't attribute the claim, and instead reported it as fact.)

The Guardian reader's editor said she would look into the issue. (Update: In response to CAMERA's outreach, the Guardian amended two articles that had cited video of a chant about children in Gaza; the pieces now attribute the claim to unnamed city officials and Dutch media.) The Globe and Mail columnist did not reply to a call for substantiation.

Another Alleged Chant

What of the “Death to the Arabs” chant that some news outlets claimed was captured on video, and which was elsewhere cited as evidence that Jew hunts aren't necessarily antisemitic?

Here again, there’s reason to doubt the media reports.  

One early example of the allegation comes from Middle East Eye, a media outlet with ownership links to both Al Jazeera and Hamas. A video posted by the organization mistranslated a chant by Israeli fanatics, putting an incorrect subtitle placed precisely where the video and audio is conspicuously edited. It was, it seems, a ham-handed attempt to manipulate the audio to remotely resemble the Hebrew for “death to the Arabs.” (The source video cited by Middle East Eye somehow achieved an even more outlandish translation.)

On X.com, Guardian columnist Owen Jones linked to Middle East Eye’s miscaptioned clip when telling his million followers that Israeli fans chanted “Death to the Arabs.” A Rutgers law professor did the same. Similarly miscaptioned video was spread by a University of Miami lecturer and countless others.

Top-Secret Public Video

It was even earlier in the news cycle, though, that NBC insisted it has video of the chant. On its flagship morning show Today, NBC’s Meagan Fitzgerald said that “social media footage shows Israeli fans…chanting ‘death to Arabs,’” while NBCnews.com insists it could be seen in “video geolocated by NBC News.”

When asked for substantiation that might differentiate NBC’s claim from the many false translations online, editors said they stood by their reporting but, as a matter of practice, don’t release video. When reminded that the clip in question wasn’t proprietary video but rather "social media footage" of the chant, and that there is no journalistic or business reason not to link to publicly available video, they fell silent.

(A related aside: NBC’s coverage of the violence avoided describing Amsterdam’s antisemitism as a factual reality. By contrast, it had no doubt that the episode, Jew hunt and all, highlighted Islamophobia. “Amsterdam violence exposes anti-immigrant Islamophobia in the Netherlands,” a headline announced, with the article arguing the same.)

The Frankfurter Allgemeine story that reported on the supposed chant about children in Gaza also purports that fans chanted “Death to Arabs.” But again, it admitted after being challenged that it had no video evidence.

It’s impossible to prove that these ugly words weren’t chanted by anyone, anywhere. International soccer has showed us that soccer ultras are more than capable of spewing hate (not least in the Netherlands). But in light of the mistranslations and mistakes about other chants, the burden of proof is on the journalists. None have satisfied that burden.

Words Put into Mouths — And Also Erased

As the counternarrative gained momentum, some outlets did more than invent words on video. A piece by Canada’s CBC opened by referring to the term Jew hunt as a mere “accusation” that was dispelled as the fog lifted:

A week after Israeli soccer fans were attacked in the streets of Amsterdam, triggering damning accusations of a "Jew hunt" in a city with an ugly history of antisemitism, a clearer picture of what happened that night is slowly emerging.

It suggests a far more nuanced take on events than Dutch authorities had initially indicated.

But as noted above, the term Jew hunt, or Jodenjacht, wasn’t coined by accusers. It was a call to action by attackers, on messaging apps and on the streets of Amsterdam.

And now @visegrad24 has uncovered footage showing a man in his car searching for Jewish victims during the Amsterdam pogrom.

He says in Dutch that he’s going on a “jodenjacht” (Jew hunt) pic.twitter.com/eHnHqHdymn

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) November 9, 2024

A media critic for Australia’s ABC likewise pretended “Jew hunt” was an unjust slur. Worse, he suggested Israelis were the true hunters and, most outrageously, argued that there is no video of anti-Jewish violence.

The ABC Media Watch segment hinged almost entirely on a video clip that had been mislabeled by Reuters. The wire service had initially said the video showed Israeli fans being chased by a large group of Dutch citizens. The caption was corrected after the person who recorded the clip said it showed Israeli fans chasing and scuffling with a Dutch citizen. (Video shows the man entering a crowd of fans, but does not show what sparked the exchange.) Other media outlets that picked up the footage from Reuters likewise corrected.

Fair enough. But ABC’s media watcher, Paul Barry, didn’t just flag the mistake. He seized on it to intentionally misinform his audience. Referring to the array of news organizations that showed the mislabeled footage, he concluded: “And why were they all running the same vision? Because there was really nothing else.”

No footage of Israelis being attacked, he argues. And those who believe otherwise were taken in by a media conspiracy.

Barry surely knew he wasn’t telling the truth. Any dedicated journalist covering the topic would have no trouble finding footage of the attacks. And even more incriminating: to make the point that Israelis were the “hunters,” Barry quotes from a social media thread by a New York Times journalist that refers to Israelis with makeshift weapons chasing someone, a continuation of the scuffle mentioned above. But the same journalist, in the same thread thread, also makes note of footage that Barry denies exists, noting:

There’s also video evidence showing hit-and-run attacks on Maccabi fans, filmed by the attackers themselves. Also, people were aggressively asked — or even forced, chased — to show their passports to prove they’re not Israeli. There's no doubt about that.

The following footage is also believed to be from the unrest in Amsterdam. (If we learn that any of the clips are from elsewhere, we will remove them and update the article.) 

A man pleading that he isn't Jewish as a gang of attackers pummel him:

A man knocked to the ground and stomped by a gang of attackers:

An unconscious victim being viciously kicked:

More kicking:

Attackers demanding to see the passport of a man who pleads that he isn't from Israel: