Anti-Semitism, Football and History

With the passing of a famous Dutch Jewish player, some thoughts

Many years ago I ran a blog during the days of the second Iraq War. Ages ago. I have kept the archives and when I read this week that former Ajax football player Bennie Muller passed at age 85, I remembered that he featured in something I wrote back then. And I found it in my archives. It is a longer read and I have edited it a bit. It merges the stories of wartime Europe, Holocaust, hate and love for Israel and Jews, as well as a thread combining it all: football or as some say ‘soccer’. Written in 2003, here we go:

This is not really a new story, but during my trip I picked up a copy of Joods Journaal (Jewish Journal) a glossy Dutch magazine focusing on Jewish culture and current affairs in The Netherlands. In it I found a story about Ajax Amsterdam, the Dutch capital’s leading football team, its Jewish heritage and the way in which that heritage is increasingly abused and used by both the soccer club’s opponents and supporters.

For my North American audience, football is the number one sport in Europe and Ajax is one of Europe’s and probably one of the world’s most renowned and successful football teams. The kind of team that has transcended everything earthly and became a myth, like Barcelona, Manchester United, AC Milan or Real Madrid. It has also produced some of the world’s best football players like Johan Cruyff, is known for its creative way of playing the game and its phenomenal history and tradition.

As anywhere else in Europe, football in The Netherlands has been marred by violence and disturbances perpetrated by hardcore hooligans. Dutch clubs have in addition to their regular supporters their own group of hardcore fans, most of whom are not exactly known for being well behaved. Whenever a match takes place a huge police turnout is required to separate the supporters of the opposing sides, a battle between violent supporters of Ajax and Feyenoord (another major Dutch side), left one fan dead and many wounded only a few years ago. Hate has become a part of the clash of supporters and while a lot of it has a mildly condescending undertone (teams from the eastern part of the country are always qualified as “farmers”); Ajax and its supporters are the subject of anti-Semitic rants, slogans and banners. Chants vented against the players and supporters from Amsterdam center around the Second World War, genocide and the current state of affairs in Israel.

You probably wonder why. The background to Ajax’ Jewishness is probably rooted in the fact that the club is from Amsterdam – nicknamed Mokum in Yiddish, meaning “city” or “place” – the home of the majority of Dutch Jews and the center of Jewish culture in The Netherlands. The club has had two high profile Jewish chairmen, Jaap van Praag who led the club to stardom in the 1960s and 1970s and his son Michael van Praag who performed a similar feat by returning the club to its past glory by winning the Champions League in 1995. The name “van Praag” you probably noticed, translates into “from Prague” underlining the fact that Amsterdam was throughout the centuries a sanctuary for persecuted Jews from all over Europe.

Anyway, in the days before TV-rights, IPOs and merchandising revenues, professional soccer clubs were to a large extent reliant on wealthy individuals and Ajax was often helped by Jewish businessmen such as Maup Caransa and Jaap Kroonenberg who became Dutch celebrities in the process. And of course, some of its legendary stars were Jewish: before the war Eddy Hamel who was murdered in Auschwitz and in the 1960s and 1970s Sjaak Swart and Bennie Muller. More recently its physiotherapist from the golden years, Salo Muller, made news in his successful pursuit of seeking damages from the Dutch and German railways for their role in the extermination of Jews. The perception therefore existed that Ajax was a Jewish club and although the club is not based on religion or anything like it, it so happened to be branded as a Jewish entity.

Many attempts have been made over the past few years to deal with the unpleasant phenomenon of anti-Semitic expressions during soccer matches, notably by Michael van Praag as well as Dutch public prosecutors using anti-discrimination laws. It is however next to impossible to bring to justice a few thousand supporters in a stadium filled with fifty thousand people over a song about gas and Hamas. To the Van Praags it has always been devastating to enter a stadium and hear this vile rhetoric as they lost a significant number of family members during the Second World War. People like Jaap van Praag and Salo Muller had to hideout for a number of years and barely survived this dark chapter in the world’s history. What was equally disturbing to them is the response of the hardcore Ajax supporters as they had taken on the Jewishness of the club as their very identity by calling themselves Jews, carrying Israeli flags and, to the ultimate horror of Holocaust survivors, tattooing the Magen David on their arms or other body parts. In Britain, Tottenham Hotspur has a similar tradition with its supporters calling themselves ‘Yid Army’. The guys that do this are a small but fanatical group, yet they are an integral part of the Ajax culture so it has always been difficult for the club’s management to turn its back on these faithful supporters by excluding them from the club, its matches or other activities.

The net of this is that whenever Ajax plays you will see large Israeli flags and other Jewish symbols making the team incredibly popular in Israel where many appear to believe that the supporters of Ajax are well informed about the state of Israel and Zionism. Nothing could be further from the truth; very few of these soccer fans realize what they are doing or indeed have any knowledge about Israel and its history. As Michael van Praag would say, ‘they are as Jewish as I am Chinese’. So, a very distasteful part of what is otherwise a great Dutch football culture has become an integral part of Ajax’ existence as a club and its image is now intertwined with Israel and Jewish traditions in an unintended way. To Israelis this may be a great thing, but to Dutch Jews it is anything but. Here’s what former Ajax player Bennie Muller had to say about it:

"Sometimes when I'm sitting in the stadium and I hear those crazy people shouting, 'We are super-Jews' and 'Jews are champions,' it's so bad that I just walk off and go home," he says. About 200 members of Muller's extended family died in the Holocaust and he vividly remembers the day his mother was taken away. "I had two brothers and two sisters. All of us children were crying. The German said, 'Oh, let's leave them,' but the Dutch Nazis said no. My mother had 11 brothers and sisters." His mother survived, but her relatives were killed. "Older people know what happened in the war. But these fans, they don't know. I wish they would stop, but they won't. I talk a lot with Israelis here. They all seem to like it. They laugh about it. But for the Jewish people in Amsterdam it's so disgusting, it's unbelievable," says Muller.

Muller’s sentiments are echoed here, no doubt about it. But in the days of Hamas, al-Qaeda and arm-twisting Sharon into a roadmap for peace, I can imagine that many Israelis consider it to be encouraging to see a massive outpour of support for Israel in a Western European city.

The history of the relationship between Jews, Israel and The Netherlands is an interesting one with many great moments, but it is also one filled with instances of shame, sadness and deep regret. The way some Dutch treat the football team that hails from Mokum and the way in which some Mokummers respond is now a bizarre concoction of pro-Israel sentiments and anti-Semitism that is of benefit to no one.

Re-reading it now, it is quite something to note that we were already discussing Hamas and anti-Semitism back in 2003. The slogan ‘Hamas, Jews on gas’ can still be heard in Dutch football stadiums today from supporters of Ajax’ opponents.

Bennie Muller passed away on January 17, 2024 at age 85.

Photo: Sjaak Swart (left) and Bennie Muller (right), Ajax’ two most famous Jewish players. Swart is one of the few living heroes of the golden Ajax team of the 1960s and 1970s and is still active advising the club.