Supporters of Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv went on a violent rampage in Amsterdam before and after their side’s match against Dutch team Ajax in the Europa League on November 7, 2024.

New York, November 21 (RHC)-- The New York Times has rejected an offer from one of its award-winning journalists to investigate the violence in Amsterdam in the wake of clashes between Israeli forces posing as football fans and people in the city.  The snub to the idea by Dutch reporter Christiaan Triebert came to light in an email shared with the news website Electronic Intifada. 

His email was directed to Charlie Stadtlander, a senior manager at the NYT, who previously served as a senior press officer for both the US Army and the National Security Agency, according to the report.  Triebert explained to the manager that he had pitched “a visual investigation I was conducting into the events of [6-8 November] in Amsterdam.”

“Unfortunately, that story was killed,” he wrote. “I regret that the planned moment-by-moment visual investigation was not further pursued.”   “This has been very frustrating, to say the least,” Triebert wrote.

Triebert appeared interested in carrying out reporting that would remediate the false narrative insistently advanced by his own newspaper – that the Israeli fans were victims of mob violence motivated by anti-Jewish hatred.

The wave of violence that erupted on November 7 in Amsterdam saw supporters of the Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv storming through the city, tearing down Palestinian flags on private property and chanting incendiary slogans after their team lost 5-0 to Dutch club Ajax on November 7.

Western media, including the NYT, has framed the November 6-8 clashes as “anti-Semitic” and ignored hard evidence of provocation and violence by Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters.   The NYT has also come under fire for using a video of Israeli football hooligan violence in Amsterdam last week to claim the exact opposite of what the video actually showed.

The U.S. newspaper claimed footage shot by Dutch photojournalist Annet de Graaf showed “anti-Semitic attacks” on Israelis – even though it actually showed Israeli mob violence against a Dutch citizen.

For several days, the footage was attached to the top of the paper’s 8 November report about events in Amsterdam the night before.  But on Tuesday the paper was forced to issue a correction, after Graaf publicly condemned international media for mislabeling her video as evidence of “anti-Semitic attacks” against Israeli football supporters.

Western media also ignored evidence like social media videos of Maccabi supporters engaging in provocative behavior and chanting slogans such as "Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!”

Since October 7, 2023, media outlets in the U.S. and UK have faced growing criticism from experts and social media users for biased coverage that downplays allegations of genocide in Gaza and favors the Israeli narrative.