Pro-Palestinian protesters opposing Israel’s participation in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden, in May.
Credit...Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Gaza War Strains Europe’s Efforts at Social Cohesion

Institutions meant to promote civility, from soccer to song, have come under severe stress from rising antisemitism and anti-immigrant politics.

by · NY Times

The various institutions of postwar Europe were intended to keep the peace, bring warring peoples together and build a sense of continental attachment and even loyalty. From the growth of the European Union itself to other, softer organizations, dealing with culture or sports, the hope has always been to keep national passions within safe, larger limits.

But growing antisemitism, increased migration and more extremist, anti-immigrant parties have led to backlash and divisions rather than comity. The long war in Gaza has only exacerbated these conflicts and their intensity, especially among young Muslims and others who feel outraged by Israeli bombings and by the tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza, a large proportion of them women and children.

Those tensions were on full display in the recent violence surrounding a soccer match between an Israeli and a Dutch team in Amsterdam, where the authorities are investigating what they call antisemitic attacks on Israeli fans, as well as incendiary actions by both sides. Amsterdam is far from the only example of the divisions in Europe over the Gaza war and of the challenges they present to European governments.

The normally amusing Eurovision Song Contest, which was held this year in Malmo, Sweden, a city with a significant Muslim population, was marred by pro-Palestinian protests against Eden Golan, a contestant from Israel, which participates as a full member.

The original lyrics to her song, “October Rain,” in commemoration of the 1,200 Israelis who died from the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which prompted Israel’s response in Gaza, were rejected by organizers for their political nature, so were altered to be less specific. Her performance was met with booing and jeering from some in the audience, but she did receive a wave of votes from online spectators, pushing her to fifth place.

It was hardly the demonstration of togetherness in art and silliness that organizers have always intended.

In Germany, where supporting the existence of Israel is a “Staatsräson,” a fundamental principle of the German state, there have been numerous examples of anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies. Palestinian supporters say they, too, have felt marginalized, their voices unheard or unheeded.

The police in Germany have shut down pro-Palestinian conferences and denied entry to pro-Palestinian speakers, while some German art organizations have withheld prizes to authors whom they have deemed to have been overly critical of Israel or of Israeli conduct in Gaza or the West Bank.

A year ago, the Frankfurt Book Fair was accused of “shutting down” Palestinian voices, after an awards ceremony to honor “Minor Detail,” a novel by a Palestinian author, Adania Shibli, was canceled because of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Just this week a documentary film about life in the occupied West Bank that won the Berlin film festival this year, “No Other Land,” opened in German cinemas with renewed charges that it exhibits “antisemitic tendencies,” according to the Berlin city website Berlin.de.

The director of the fair, Tricia Tuttle, rejected the charge, and the website changed its wording.

“The Gaza war has infected everything,” said Stefan Kornelius, a senior editor of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The war causes people to position themselves and support a one-sentence verdict on the Mideast,” he said. “It often runs counter to German Staatsräson on Israel, which supports Israel whatever it takes, and that counterreaction, especially in the arts, causes people to back the Palestinians with some intensity.”

What took place in Amsterdam, however, was of a different order and shook many in Europe beyond the Netherlands.

The match last week between an Israeli team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, and Amsterdam’s Ajax, was part of the Europa League competition run by the Union of European Football Associations, best known as UEFA.

While soccer has always been a deeply partisan sport, stoking nationalism and sometimes related violence, the sport’s near universality also provides a common bond and players from one country often play on teams in others.

Fearing the kind of violence seen in Amsterdam, the authorities in France, which like the Netherlands has a significant minority of Arab and Muslim citizens, deployed an extra 4,000 police officers for a soccer match Thursday evening on the outskirts of Paris between the national teams of Israel and France.

President Emmanuel Macron, his prime minister and two former French presidents attended the match in a show of solidarity against antisemitism, and though demonstrators protested nearby, there was only a minor skirmish in the stands that the police quickly controlled.

Passions have been running high. In Germany, Berlin police are investigating reports that a youth team of Makkabi Berlin, a Jewish football club, was chased by a crowd yelling “Free Palestine” and bearing sticks and knives after a match with another Berlin club. The police said that they were investigating the incident on grounds of breach of the peace, incitement and insult.

If Oct. 7 changed so much for Israel and Jews abroad, Israel’s asymmetric response, which has brought accusations of multiple war crimes and even genocide, has changed much for Arabs and Muslims in Europe, too. Many Muslims in Europe say they feel threatened themselves.

The rise of extremist nationalist parties like the Alternative for Germany, which has numerous neo-Nazi members and has used racist language to condemn immigration and call for the expulsion of nonnative German citizens, has heightened those anxieties.

Aiman Mazyek, chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, said that there is “a climate of fear” among Muslims since Oct. 7.

“Many Muslims in our country are uneasy, they’re afraid to speak out at all, and feel intimidated by the debate,” he said. There have been attacks on mosques and “on Muslims and also those who are perceived to be Muslims at a rate like never before,” he said.

According to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, which monitors both antisemitism and anti-Muslim discrimination, nearly one in every two Muslims in the bloc face racism and discrimination in their daily lives, a sharp increase since 2016, it said in a report last month.

They are targeted, the report said, not just because of their religion, but also because of their skin color and ethnic or immigrant background. Young Muslims born in Europe and women wearing religious clothing are especially affected, the report said, and many face racial profiling by the police.

Given the heightened atmosphere, there was much attention on Thursday’s France-Israel match.

Hélène Conway-Mouret, vice president of the foreign affairs and defense committee of the French Senate, said that feelings among young Muslims were running especially high because of the horrors of the long Gaza conflict and confusion about where they belong.

“There is a real identity issue with second and third generation Muslim immigrants,” she said. “Their parents knew they were Moroccan, for example. But their children wonder, ‘Are they Moroccan,’ and yet they are not.” Nor are they always accepted as French, and face significant discrimination.

In a way, she said, support for the Palestinians “brings them together as a community.”

There have been nearly 70 arrests so far in Amsterdam, including 10 Israelis, for mostly minor offenses. Dutch officials have decried the attacks in Amsterdam as antisemitism, including what they said was an orchestrated effort to seek out Jews, as they also investigate inflammatory actions and vandalism by some Israeli fans.

“What happened over the past few days is a toxic cocktail of antisemitism, hooligan behavior and anger over the war in Palestine and Israel, and other countries in the Middle East,” Femke Halsema, the mayor of Amsterdam, wrote to the City Council.

“Antisemitism can’t be answered with other racism,” she added. “The safety of one group cannot be at the expense of the safety of another.”

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