(Adnkronos) – Italy’s foreign minister Antonio Tajani on Friday condemned violent attacks in Amsterdam against Israelis following a soccer match between Maccabi and Ajax, leading the Dutch capital to ban demonstrations for three days.
“Hunting down Jews does not mean defending the Palestinian people. There is no room for anti-Semitism in Europe. A shameful episode that takes us back to the dark days of Nazism,” Tajani wrote.
“Solidarity with the Israelis attacked today in Amsterdam and with all Jewish communities in the world,” Tajani underlined.
Maccabi fans were “attacked, abused and pelted with fireworks” around the city and riot police had to protect them and escort them to hotels, according to the city’s mayor Femke Halsema.
“At least five people were treated in hospital after an “explosion of anti-semitism,” Halsema said.
The overnight violence came on the eve of commemorations marking the Nazis’ pogrom against Jews across Germany in November 1938, causing widespread shock that such an outbreak of antisemitism could happen in Amsterdam.
Three-quarters of Dutch Jews were murdered in World War II.
