On Nov. 7, street attacks broke out in Amsterdam following a soccer match between local club AFC Ajax and the visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv. The ensuing violence went quickly viral, with online communities on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict sharing disturbing videos: pro-Palestine supporters were seen brutally beating and stomping Israeli fans, while harassing non-Israelis and bullying them into chanting “Free Palestine”. Maccabi supporters, meanwhile, were caught on tape chanting “Death to Arabs” and tearing down Palestinian flags from people’s homes.

With a fuzzy timetable of how events unfolded and emotions running high, The CJN’s sports podcasters, James Hirsh and Gabe Pulver, hosts of the Menschwarmers podcast, wanted to weigh in on what we know—and don’t know—about what some Jewish communities are calling a modern-day pogrom.

The following is a transcript of their conversation on the latest podcast. Click here to listen to the full episode.

Gabe Pulver: Jamie, I wasn’t sure which one of us was going to lead off the story, but I think we could split it. In other words, let’s go Dutch.

James Hirsh: So I should say that there’s limits to our reportage. We’ve been reading along with everybody else about what’s been going on in Amsterdam. Just to give some basic background on it, Maccabi Tel Aviv was playing Ajax in a Europa League group stage game in Amsterdam. Ajax actually has a reputation as being sort of the Jewish Dutch team—

GP: For Dutch Jews, this was like, the moment. This is the game. It’s a big deal for any sort of Northern European Jew. I think a lot of German fans who are Jewish, with Jewish families, support Ajax for that same reason—Estonia, Finland, in that area.

JH: That’s right. There was a large number of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters, largely from Israel, who........

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