Tel Aviv, Israel:

Fresh off a flight home, Israeli soccer fans returning from Amsterdam on Friday recalled clashes and violence they said targeted Jews after a Europa League match.

Kobi Eliyahu, 40, said people with their faces covered “were waiting around every corner… it was very scary to see that.”

Another returning fan, Eliya Cohen, said that after the match between Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv and Dutch Ajax on Thursday, he saw “Muslims looking for Jews to beat up” in central Amsterdam.

“So I left. On the one hand, I wanted to help people, but on the other I didn’t want to stay there,” Cohen told reporters at Ben Gurion Airport, near the commercial hub of Tel Aviv in Israel.

In the arrivals hall, returning fans, some wearing Maccabi Tel Aviv scarves and T-shirts, were greeted by a swarm of journalists and hugged by relieved relatives.

The riots that followed the match, which the home club won 5-0, left five people hospitalized and were deemed “anti-Semitic” by Dutch and Israeli officials.

Despite the huge police presence, authorities were unable to stop the rapid attacks on fans in various parts of the city.

Nadav Zer, 33, said he and others he was with had to run back to their hotel to escape the violence.

“We heard explosions all night long,” as well as “screams and screams” in Arabic, Zer said.

“It was unimaginable the whole night,” he added.

“But we never listened to the police.”

Eliyahu, a photographer who attended the game with his brothers, said: “It was orchestrated. They knew what was going to happen and it was a total surprise to us.”

To him, the violence “looked like the 1930s in Europe,” when anti-Semitic attacks multiplied with the rise of Nazism in Germany, leading to World War II.

“Everyone should understand what happened last night,” said Eliyahu, who asked others to avoid Europe from now on.

“Israelis and Jews should never go to Europe again. They don’t deserve us,” he said.

“It is not related to football”

The violence in Amsterdam came amid anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitic acts reported around the world spiked more than a year after the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which has also spread to Lebanon.

Tensions were already high before the match, with Dutch police reporting “incidents on both sides” on Wednesday.

An unverified video on social media allegedly filmed on Thursday appeared to show some Maccabi fans chanting in Hebrew: “Let the IDF (Israeli military) win! We’ll screw the Arabs!”

Many of the Maccabi Tel Aviv players who landed at the airport left without comment, but the club’s general manager, Ben Mansford, spoke to reporters and called the events “tragic.”

“A lot of people went to a soccer match to support Maccabi Tel Aviv, to support Israel, to support the Star of David,” he said.

“And for them to run into the rivers, for them to be kicked while they are helpless on the ground… these are very, very sad moments for all of us.”

Mansford said the violence was “not football related.”

“There was a magnificent atmosphere in the stadium… but clearly once our fans started leaving the stadium, showing up at the train stations, returning to the center of Amsterdam, that’s when they were obviously attacked,” he said.

Zer, the returning fan, said that despite tight security before the match, the Israelis were left to fend for themselves when it was over and night fell.

“There were… people with bats and stones looking for Israelis,” he recalled, saying he remembered them speaking Arabic.

The attackers, mostly young people, “came from everywhere and we tried to escape from them,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated channel.)