French president offers ‘fraternity and solidarity’ as Israel discourages wearing of ‘Jewish symbols’ abroad
Emmanuel Macron will attend the France-Israel football match at the Stade de France on Thursday in a gesture of “fraternity and solidarity” after attacks on Jewish fans in Amsterdam last week.
Thousands of extra police will be on duty for the game taking place against a backdrop of high tension caused by the conflict in Gaza.
The Elysée said the president’s presence on Thursday aimed to “show his entire and full support for the French team as he does every match” but also “send a message of fraternity and solidarity after the intolerable acts of antisemitism that followed the match in Amsterdam”.
Authorities in the Netherlands are investigating how Israeli football hooliganism, antisemitism and local distress about the war in Gaza created a tinderbox situation that exploded into violence on the streets of Amsterdam.
The city’s police chief, Peter Holla, had said there had been “incidents on both sides”, starting on Wednesday night when Maccabi Tel Aviv fans tore down a Palestinian flag from the facade of a building in the city centre, burned another and destroyed a taxi.
One video posted online showed Maccabi fans chanting “olé, olé, let the IDF win, we will fuck the Arabs”, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, said that on Thursday, “antisemitic hit-and-run squads” had attacked Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters, with calls on social media for the targeting of Jews. Footage showed men in blue and yellow Maccabi colours being beaten. One showed a man pleading with an attacker who shouts out: “You want to kill kids? … Free Palestine.”
Five people needed hospital treatment and up to 30 were injured. According to the prosecution service, there are four suspects still in custody and due before the magistrate this week.
The Dutch capital and nearby suburb of Amstelveen are in an official state of emergency.
Pro-Palestine activists were banned from gathering over the weekend amid high tensions. Organisers said in a message on Instagram that they were outraged by what they described as the “framing” of unrest around the match as antisemitic, which they said was being “weaponised to suppress Palestinian resistance”.
Amsterdam’s city council will on Tuesday hold an emergency debate on the situation.
In nearby France, the Paris police prefect, Laurent Nuñez, said the forthcoming game in Paris was “high-risk” and security would be “extremely reinforced”. He said the arrangements were highly unusual for a national team match.
Nuñez said police had not demanded a limit on the number of fans allowed inside the stadium. The French football federation said the number of tickets on sale had reached about 20,000, a quarter of the stadium’s capacity.
Even with the reduced ticket sales, between 4,000 and 5,000 police officers and gendarmes will be mobilised, compared with a maximum of 1,300 for a French national team match in a sold-out stadium. They will be deployed inside and outside the Stade de France, on public transport and in Paris. In addition, 1,600 security staff have been drafted in for the game. An elite police unit has been assigned to protect the Israeli team.
Nuñez said: “The [interior] minister has made available to me the resources of the internal security force, which will enable us to be extremely reactive and prevent any excesses, any disturbances to public order, either during the match, or in the immediate vicinity of the match, or on the route of spectators who will be going to the match.”
Separately, French authorities turned down a request from Thomas Portes, a lawmaker for the hard-left France Unbowed, to ban a pro-Israel demonstration and gala in Paris on Wednesday evening. The event, organised by an association called Israel Is Forever, is billed as a “mobilisation of French-speaking Zionist forces”.
The Dutch prime minister, Dick Schoof, was among those who condemned what he called “antisemitic violence against Israelis”. He is due to meet Jewish groups on Tuesday.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, compared the incident in Amsterdam to Kristallnacht, the state-sanctioned pogrom in Nazi Germany in 1938 in which an estimated 91 Jews were murdered.
Israel’s government has offered to help investigate the violence in Amsterdam but has also put pressure on the Netherlands to take tough action. On Monday, Israel’s foreign minister appeared to criticise what he said was a low number of arrests, all of which happened before Thursday’s match despite reports of anti-Israeli violence later that night.
“The mayor of Amsterdam informed me that they formed a special inquiry team, but I can tell that until now, the number of arrests is very low,” Gideon Saar told reporters in Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities have advised supporters not to attend the match in France and said Israelis abroad should avoid “recognisable Israeli or Jewish symbols”.
The Israeli national security council said on Sunday: “Groups that want to attack Israelis have been identified in a number of European cities” at the time of the planned match of the Israeli national team. It named Brussels, a number of British cities, Amsterdam and Paris.

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