The Monday essay: The unmasking of the West reveals an ugly face

Israeli hooliganism in Amsterdam may seem minor in the global scope of Israeli–Palestinian relations, but they are a microcosm of the larger narrative that plays out daily in Gaza.

In recent years, the narrative surrounding the behaviour of Israel has become a mixture of political rhetoric, selective outrage, and, on many occasions, blatant distortion. The recent football match in Amsterdam, where Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters turned a sporting event into a festival of violence, highlights the power that mainstream media and political figures wield in shaping public perception in favour of the state of Israel – often to align with a particular political agenda. For those who witnessed or later learned of the events as they truly unfolded, the gap between media reports and reality was glaring and unsettling, raising pressing questions about the manipulation of truth in service of political allegiances.

At the heart of this incident were Israeli supporters who arrived in Amsterdam to watch their team play Ajax in the Europa League (yes, Israel plays in a European league), ostensibly to support their team but quickly transformed the city into an arena for provocations, aggression, and racism where bystanders and residents were not simply caught in crossfire but were specifically targeted. Eyewitness accounts and independent media revealed that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans shouted racist slurs directed towards Palestine, harassed and physically assaulted people they perceived as ‘Middle Eastern’, and tore down Palestinian flags in brazen acts of provocation.

In an even more disturbing event, they disrupted a moment of silence meant to honour victims of recent floods in Spain, turning a display of respect into yet another arena for their anti-Palestinian vitriol. The next day saw more aggression on the city streets, ultimately leading to inevitable confrontations between the Israeli hooligans and Dutch locals, who retaliated in defence against the repeated provocations.

Yet, in the media, the narrative that reached international audiences was drastically different. Rather than highlighting the Maccabi fans’ violence and bigotry, reports widely focused on the backlash from the Dutch public, depicting it as an outburst of anti-Semitic violence against innocent Israeli fans. Mainstream outlets drew dramatic parallels, likening the incidents to the Kristallnacht from 1938, casting the Dutch response as an attack on Jewish identity itself, rather than a defensive reaction to aggression. This shift in focus, this reinterpretation of events, served to shield the instigators and reframe the incident within a context that evoked collective Western guilt and sympathy, minimising the violent role the Israeli supporters played.

Australian politicians were also quick to adopt this skewed narrative, with Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong condemning what she described as “anti-Semitic attacks” on the Israeli fans. There was no acknowledgment in her statement of the cause of these tensions – and certainly no recognition of the actions of Maccabi supporters that led to the confrontation – and it demonstrated an unwillingness, either out of convenience or political strategy, to question the origins of the conflict. Instead, Wong’s statement reinforced a long-standing pattern in Western politics: denouncing anti-Semitism while remaining silent on provocations and violence perpetrated by Israeli supporters and Zionist sympathisers.

While anti-Semitism must be confronted – as we must always point out – and violence unequivocally condemned, this one-sided response contributed to a narrative that holds one group immune from accountability. This is not a new pattern in matters related to Israel and Palestine, where narratives are often shaped to protect or justify Israeli actions while minimising or vilifying Palestinian responses. This selective outrage has, over time, solidified a concerning pattern in Western foreign policy and media coverage, where Israeli actions are never held to the same standards. For politicians such as Senator Wong, the optics of appearing ‘neutral’ or ‘aligned with allies’ often come at the cost of truth.