Riga, Latvia – Thick black smoke billowed across Skonto Stadium as fans of the Israeli football team, Beitar Jerusalem, defied UEFA rules, setting off several rounds of pyrotechnics.
With only one minute played of the UEFA Conference League qualifier match against Riga FC, Latvian fans looked bewildered as a Beitar fan, wearing a black balaclava, nonchalantly threw a succession of fireworks around the stand, causing a small fire and scorching parts of the away stand.
A banner displaying the name of Beitar supporters’ fan club, “La Familia”, sat draped across the stands. The notoriously racist fan club, which is known for its anti-Arab chants and violent behaviour, has in the past come up against the police in Israel.
In 2016, an undercover police operation resulted in the arrest of 56 fans on suspicion of smuggling weapons and violence.
On Thursday, one Beitar fan held up an Israeli flag in the home stand, garnering cheers from other Beitar fans, but angry stewards ushered them down the steps and into the away stand.
The team, which in its 89-year history has never signed an Arab player, boasts right-wing Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir among its supporters. It is currently playing its home matches in Romania due to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and travelled to Latvia just weeks after fans were filmed chanting “Death to Arabs” while marching through the streets of Bucharest, where their team beat Sutjeska of Montenegro 5-2.
After the Riga game on Thursday, the raucous fans were held inside the stadium perimeter for about half an hour. A solitary home fan shouted “free Palestine” towards the direction of the Beitar fans gathered behind the gates. “F**k Palestine”, came the response.
The game had ended 3-0 to Riga FC, and afterwards, Beitar fans let out their frustration by setting off flares in heavy traffic. Amid the chaos, a number were herded off to police vans by Latvian police.
An Israeli soldier holds his scarf showing the colours of Beitar Jerusalem football club while others hold up an Israeli flag while posing for a group photo at a position close to the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on December 14, 2023 [Jack Guez/AFP]
‘Double standards’
The chaotic, alcohol-fuelled behaviour displayed by Beitar fans may not be new to European football, but it comes amid the backdrop of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians and led to calls from rights groups for Israeli teams to be banned from European football competitions.
The world football governing body, FIFA, has repeatedly delayed its review of a Palestinian bid to have Israel suspended from the international arena over its war on Gaza.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it took FIFA only a matter of days to suspend Russian teams from all international football competitions.
That highlights the “double standards” shown towards Palestinian lives, Dima Said, spokesperson for the Palestine Football Association and former captain of Palestine women’s national football team, told Al Jazeera.
She said seeing Israeli football fans being allowed to shout anti-Palestinian chants without punishment around Europe is “as a Palestinian athlete … one of the hardest things to watch”.
“For me to see that those people who publicly support genocide, who publicly advocate for children to be killed, is something that’s very harmful for me as a human being, first, but secondly, as a Palestinian, it should not be allowed,” she said.
She also pointed to the fact that more than 200 Palestinian footballers have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began.
On Wednesday, the former Palestinian national football team player, Suleiman al-Obeid, was killed in an Israeli attack on aid seekers in Gaza.
Last November, Israeli football fans clashed with apparent pro-Palestinian protesters before and after a Europa League football match between their team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, and Dutch team AFC Ajax in Amsterdam.
Videos shared on social media at the time showed Israeli fans chanting racist, anti-Arab songs, vandalising a taxi and burning a Palestinian flag.
After the game, when fights broke out, Dutch police arrested people who had retaliated against the Israeli fans, as world leaders made accusations of anti-Semitism.
It was an incident that Thomas Ross Griffin, a sports studies scholar and associate professor of postcolonial literature at Qatar University, says demonstrates the impunity with which Israeli fans can act.
“If these were English fans rampaging through the streets, destroying taxis, breaking into property, smashing windows, beating private citizens … there will be condemnation all over Europe, but you attach these fans to an Israeli sporting entity, and suddenly … they’re the victims,” he said.
Beitar Jerusalem will play their home leg against Riga FC in Romania on August 14.
