doggybag "I'll take justifying racism for $500, Alex...."
In Amsterdam, we saw this in the frightening invocation of a “Jew hunt” in a chat coordinating an attack, and the use of a Dutch racial slur translating as “cancer Jew”; in the instances where people deemed to look Jewish were stopped and asked about their nationality, or allegedly forced to say “Free Palestine” in order to escape assault. This is not happening because criticism of Israel and anti-Jewish hatred are one and the same. Rather, it is because antisemitism, as scholars such as Prof David Feldman of Birkbeck, University of London have argued, can be likened to a reservoir that runs deep across European societies: a readily available language of prejudice that is drawn on in moments of provocation, crisis, or tension. The better we understand this as a social force, the more effectively we are able to counter it.
Israeli fans behaved appallingly. I and many others were too slow to recognise that. But the above reeks of justification and blaming the other. It is, if you'll pardon my Dutch, unmitigated 'onzin'.....
