Comment by ImPostingOnHN | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ImPostingOnHN | Hacker News Reader

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> if the people attacking the Maccabi fans are taxi drivers, yes, I'd expect to see taxi drivers getting beaten up right back.

You have the causality backwards: maccabi fans started attacking taxis before the latter started retaliating.

> At the same time, another development takes place - small groups of pro-Palestinian rioters actively search for individuals they perceive as Israeli, Jewish or Maccabi supporters. At 23:55pm, the first 'flash' attacks on Maccabi supporters begin at Dam Square.

Didn't feel the need to mention the lead-up to this? Everything in the article that came before this line, maybe? Here are some excerpts:

> In the early morning of 7 November, at approximately 12:20am, the control room receives reports that a group of about 50 Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters are pulling a Palestinian flag off a building façade and obstructing traffic.

> Some of the supporters are wearing face coverings, shouting anti-Palestinian slogans, and harassing people.

> Of the group walking along the Rokin, several individuals remove their belts and use them to attack taxis. Scooter riders are also attacked with padlocks.

> The next day, around 12:15pm, the first [maccabi] supporters arrive, and the group quickly grows. They chant anti-Palestinian slogans.

> The fan walk begins around 17:30 at Dam Square. During the fan walk, supporters shout slogans in Hebrew. Afterwards, it appears that these include highly offensive, racist expressions. At the front walks a group wearing face coverings.

> Around midnight, Maccabi Tel Aviv rioters gather at Central Station and move towards the city centre. Along the way, they equip themselves with materials such as metal rods and stones. Stones are also thrown at taxis.

It sounds like maccabi rioters started it.

> Didn't feel the need to mention the lead-up to this?

It's mentioned in the GP post. I'm in no way hiding or excusing what the hooligans were up to, only noting that the GP made an extremely one-sided statement, whereas the Amsterdam police statement covers all the disorder, including confirming what the GP said.

> It sounds like maccabi rioters started it.

And if there were no opponents to them, then it would only be Maccabi hooligans being arrested. But instead they had opponents who were equally ready to riot and use violence, including against random people who the attackers simply felt were Jewish or Israeli.

I put it to you that the Maccabi hooligans were not the only thugs in Amsterdam that week.

> And if there were no opponents to them, then it would only be Maccabi hooligans being arrested. But instead they had opponents who were equally ready to riot and use violence, including against random people who the attackers simply felt were Jewish or Israeli.

If there were no maccabi fans rioting and assaulting people the attackers simply felt were Palestinian or Muslim, then it would be peace in the street. Indeed, the responding violence seems to have been a predictable result of the initiating maccabi rioter violence.

Put yourself in the same position: A lynch mob from outside your community marches through it, masked and clad in black so as to be unidentifiable. Some of their racist chants are threats against you, your community, your family, your children. Other racist chants celebrate an ongoing genocide of your family, friends, and people. They vandalize your community and attack members of it along the way. It would not be unreasonable or unprecedented for your community to respond by stomping this lynch mob into the gutters, or at least running it out of town.

As we don't live in the middle ages any more, it would be more than reasonable for the community to demand the riot police step in and arrest the provocators.

It would not be OK to plan a "jew hunt" on WhatsApp and perpetuate violence by performing a "flash mob attack" against not only against Maccabi hooligans, but also non-violent Maccabi fans, and also Jewish and Israeli people who aren't even visiting for the football. And completely random people who you just think look Jewish or Israeli.

No, that's not acceptable. That's retributive bullshit. An eye for an eye leaves us all blind.

> it would be more than reasonable for the community to demand the riot police step in and arrest the provocators.

Likewise, it would not be unreasonable or unprecedented for your community to respond by stomping this lynch mob into the gutters, or at least running it out of town.

The principle that intolerance should be tolerated is not universally held, and IMO is a bit privileged.

> And completely random people who you just think look Jewish or Israeli

That sounds like it came after the maccabi rioters started their campaign of violence against random people who they just thought looked Palestinian or Muslim.

Indiscriminate targeting of civilians is never ok under any circumstances, but unfortunately it still happens, and ethnic violence tends to beget ethnic violence.

The sibling comment answered perfectly, but I'll add that your advice sounds reasonable in a vacuum, but in reality this event happened one year after the start of genocide. The community had no reason to believe that the state would do anything, as the state allowed a genocidal country's genocide-celebrating citizens to travel to the community's city for a football match and the police didn't do anything while they were chanting death to arabs, hours before the locals took matters into their own hands.

After a year of international inaction in response to the genocide, the Amsterdam community acted quite reasonably, and to be honest quite commendably, by stomping the lynch mob into the gutter, as the sibling eloquently put.

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