Yakov Hirsch
Mondoweiss / November 30, 2024
The media’s censorship of the facts of the Amsterdam soccer hooligan violence was more than just bad reporting. It was yet another example of the ideological fiction that Jewish actions can never be blamed for the violence they cause.
The recent controversy surrounding events at an Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer match in Amsterdam reveals a troubling pattern in how antisemitism is reported in mainstream media. What began as comprehensive coverage of a complex incident quickly transformed into a simplified narrative, raising serious questions about media responsibility and ideological frameworks.
Initially, Dutch media provided detailed coverage of the events, including footage showing Maccabi Tel Aviv fans tearing down a Palestinian flag from an Amsterdam home, chanting “Let the IDF win, f*** Arabs” and “Death to Arabs,” disrupting a minute’s silence for Valencia flood victims, and attacking a local taxi driver of Moroccan descent. But soon coverage by major outlets stripped these details, presenting instead a narrative focused solely on supposed antisemitic violence against Israeli fans.
The New York Times reportedly killed their own story about the incident, and revised stories by Sky News and other major outlets removed all references to the Israeli fans’ provocative actions, presenting instead a simplified narrative of Israeli fans being attacked in what was characterized as purely antisemitic violence. Benjamin Netanyahu compared the anti-Israeli violence in Amsterdam to Kristallnacht, “an attack on Jews just for being Jews,” and this quickly became reflected in coverage by describing the violence as a “pogrom,” with references from European politicians and the worldwide media to dark events in the Jewish past, although some academics disputed this ideological framing.
This wasn’t merely selective editing – it was a complete reframing that eliminated the documented sequence of events leading up to the violent confrontations. While some might blame “the Lobby” or a Jewish conspiracy for the changes, that’s not the correct explanation. The honest answer lies in a powerful ideological framework that shapes how antisemitism is discussed in mainstream discourse: perceived antisemitism must always be presented as purely irrational, divorced from any precipitating events or context. There is not allowed to be a context for antisemitism. This framework operates as an unwritten rule in journalism – antisemitic actions cannot be shown to have any rational cause-and-effect relationship with preceding events, even when such a sequence is factually documented.
It is also essential to note: the media faced criticism not for factual inaccuracy but for violating this cardinal rule by implying causation through their sequencing of events. The changes to the story that were made were not in response to mistakes or retractions, instead, these media outlets were defending themselves from the accusation that their Amsterdam “narrative” blamed the Jews for the consequences of their actions.
This framework rests on a specific taboo: suggesting that aggression or attacks on Jewish people might have rational triggers or respond to real-world events is itself considered a form of antisemitism. The underlying logic holds that acknowledging any causation might make antisemitism appear “rational” or “understandable,” thereby legitimizing it. This explains why media outlets felt compelled to edit out factual information—not because it was false, but because it challenged this ideological requirement. As Joshua Leifer had pointed out several years ago, this is ahistorical:
‘For generations, scholars and historians have analysed and historicized the conditions that give rise to antisemitic phenomena. It is not antisemitic or victim-blaming to do so. On the contrary, understanding the triggers of antisemitic violence is the first step to stopping it.’ (January 7, 2020)
In the vital book Victimhood Discourse in Contemporary Israel, the scholar Ilan Peleg describes the phenomenon of victimhood in this way:
“The belief that the persecution is completely unrelated to the targeted in group and that it exclusively the product of actions taken by the outgroup (it is therefore assumed that the persecuted ingroup cannot impact the victimization.)”
But from the victimhood perspective, the media must portray any perceived antisemitism as existing outside history. Whether attacks against Israel, international court judgments, or student protests, the victimhood perspective holds that the “persecution” of Israel is “completely unrelated” to Israeli behaviour.
No figure has been more influential in enforcing this framework than Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, whose decades-long interventions have helped shape how American media discusses antisemitism. An illustrative incident during Operation “Protective Edge,” the Israeli-2014 Gaza war, shows Goldberg in action. In Israeli wars, anti-Israel protest, and even some actual antisemitism, naturally rises around the world. It always does when horrible images come from Gaza and Lebanon because of the Jewish state’s violence. In 2014, this led to rallies led by European leaders against antisemitism. Here is Jeffrey Goldberg’s reaction to a description of one such rally in Germany. In an article called “Does Human Rights Watch Understand the Nature of Prejudice?: A powerful advocate appears to believe that anti-Semitism is sparked in part by Jewish behaviour,” Goldberg writes:
“A few days ago, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, tweeted the following statement: “Germans rally against anti-Semitism that flared in Europe in response to Israel’s conduct in Gaza war. Merkel joins.” Roth provided a link to a New York Times article about the rally, which took place in Berlin. [italics mine]
Roth’s framing of this issue is very odd and obtuse. Anti-Semitism in Europe did not flare “in response to Israel’s conduct in Gaza,” or anywhere else. Anti-Semitic violence and invective are not responses to events in the Middle East, just as anti-Semitism does not erupt “in response” to the policies of banks owned by Jews, or in response to editorial positions taken by The New York Times. This is for the simple reason that Jews do not cause anti-Semitism.”
This is what Peleg meant by the “persecuted ingroup cannot impact the victimization.”
According to Goldberg, there is nothing Netanyahu and the state of Israel can do that would lead to a rise in antisemitism. Why? Because “Jews don’t cause antisemitism.”
So, just like Israel’s behaviour in Gaza cannot lead to hatred of the Jewish state, so too there is nothing that Israeli racist hooligan fans can do that could provoke anti-Jewish violence. And that is because “Jews don’t cause antisemitism.” According to Yair Rosenberg, Goldberg’s ideological disciple at The Atlantic, antisemites use Israel’s behaviour as an “excuse” for antisemitism. But the real motive is old-fashioned Jew-hatred.
Days after the international media furore calmed down, Amsterdam’s mayor expressed regret over the city’s initial characterization of the events, acknowledging the complexity of what transpired: “We were completely overtaken by Israel. At 3 a.m., Prime Minister Netanyahu suddenly gave a lecture about what had happened in Amsterdam, while we were still gathering the facts.” But for many, it was too late, and a narrative had been set.
The Amsterdam coverage once again exposes a dangerous and fundamentally dishonest framework that continues to distort media coverage of antisemitism. By enforcing an artificial separation between Jewish actions and anti-Jewish responses, this approach does not protect Jews – it undermines honest journalism and public understanding.
In fact, the systematic erasure of documented events in Amsterdam reveals how deeply this ideological straitjacket has corrupted media practice. This framework doesn’t just fail journalism; it fails Jews themselves by creating a false narrative that makes antisemitism harder to combat.
Real understanding requires honest examination of all factors, including uncomfortable truths. When media outlets self-censor documented facts to maintain an ideological fiction, they betray both their professional obligations and their moral responsibility to pursue truth. The Amsterdam case stands as a stark warning: until we break free from Goldberg’s suffocating framework and return to evidence-based reporting, we cannot hope to understand, let alone effectively combat, antisemitism in all its complex manifestations. The choice before us is clear – continue with comfortable fictions that serve ideology over truth or embrace honest journalism that dares to report reality in its full context, however challenging that might be.
Yakov Hirsch is the author of the Mondoweiss series ‘Hasbara Culture’ and produces the podcast, ‘The Jewish War of Ideas’
