News - World: Dutch police have detained dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters in Amsterdam in the wake of clashes between Israeli forces posing as football fans and people in the city. 

Police in riot gear moved in on the protesters on Sunday afternoon, shortly after a court upheld the protest ban.

This came as hundreds of demonstrators defied the prohibition to gather in Amsterdam’s Dam Square, chanting demands for an end to Israel’s campaign of death and destruction in Gaza and slogans such as “Free Palestine.”

Witnesses and tourists in Dam Square were said to be shocked by an aggressive police response that included manhandling peaceful protesters. 

The Amsterdam District Court earlier upheld a decision by the mayor to ban protests in the Dutch capital, three days after it was rocked by violence between Israeli fans and residents in several areas.

The violence broke out before and after a match between the Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv and the Dutch team Ajax.

According to police, the clashes started after the Israeli fans tore down Palestinian flags and shouted anti-Arab slogans.

More than 60 people, mostly pro-Palestine Moroccan youths, were arrested during the clashes in the capital, Amsterdam.

Pro-Palestinian groups and anti-Zionist organizations in the Netherlands have denounced the country’s police for making selective arrests during clashes that erupted following a football match on Thursday.

The anti-Zionist organization, called Jewish Collective or Erev Rav, condemned the police’s handling of the event. It said police arrested the Moroccan youths while Israeli fans who initiated the violence faced no consequences.

 More than two dozen people were also injured in the clashes.

Many protesters are upset about being labeled as anti-Semitic by the authorities and in the media and say they are protesting against Israeli crimes and genocidal campaigns against Palestinians and Lebanon.

A United Nations legal expert on Sunday called for Western media to be investigated over their role in “obscuring” news coverage of the clashes in the Dutch city of Amsterdam.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said that Western media has repeatedly disseminated disinformation which has served to conceal the atrocities that were being carried out by the Israelis across the globe.

“Once again, Western media should be investigated for the role they are playing in obscuring Israel’s atrocities,” the Italian international lawyer said.

During the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, human rights advocacy groups had called for barring the Israelis from all sports events over the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about the occupying regime’s barbaric crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip amid the Israelis ongoing genocidal war in the region, killing over 43,500 Palestinians.

Hundreds of Palestinian athletes have been killed since October 7, 2023, when the regime began waging the war in Gaza which has now extended to Lebanon.

Western governments’ support for the Israeli war machine and indifference to human life is the source of the Zionists' continued impunity, experts say.
 
Source: Press TV