Alleged context (feel free to correct if you have info in comments):
After Israeli Maccabi hooligans terrorized Amsterdam, the Dutch government demonized the pro-Palestine movement and banned protests. People came to protest anyways (peacefully)
The police arrested peaceful protesters and put them in a bus. They were driven to a parking lot. The police released them from the bus in a parking lot near a station.
While the protesters were walking to the station the police started hitting them. Allegedly for not moving fast enough.
@lalehamirali on instagram has reported this whole event in their story. But here’s a summary:
- There was a peaceful protest on Amsterdam dam square. Due to the events with maccabi hooligans the city decided that protests are not allowed in the city until Thursday (today). Trough court decision the protest of Wednesday evening was allowed after all, but not in certain locations like the dam square. So the police considered the protest illegal.
- After a while the police started surrounding the protesters and called on them to leave and go to the assigned protest location.
- When the protesters didn’t leave, there were told by the cops to get into a bus that would bring them to the assigned location.
- Protesters didn’t comply and were forcibly put into the bus that they thought would bring them to the assigned location.
- Instead they were brought to a parking lot in the outskirts of the city. This is a tactic the police uses often to end protests they deem illegal or ‘dangerous’, because it allows them to end the protest without arresting all protesters. It’s on the protesters to get home safely (which can be very tricky because sometimes this happens at night when there is no public transport and not everyone will have their phone/money on them).
- There was no police on the parking lot so the protesters thought they could just leave and try to get home.
- Laleh says in their story that apparently someone in the bus, when most people had already left, broke a window.
- This resulted in lots of police coming to the parking lot and basically hunting on protesters who are trying to run away to safety. You can see in Laleh’s story how panicked everyone is because they don’t know what’s going on and the police just keeps going after them and hitting them, resulting in people having to run into nettle bushes and ditches. This goes on for a while and according to Laleh about 3/4 of the people in the bus were arrested.
Mainstream news has reported on the violence (one of the rare occasions that they actually do that) and police is ‘investigating’ the incident.
Thank you for the context!
So they participated in an illegal protest and then are surprised police used violence to stop it after giving warnings?
Why would violence be the appropriate / expected result in your mind?
Using violence to enforce the law and government decree is literally the job of the police.
I expect police to arrest people breaking the law or fine them, not beat them with sticks.
I have been to plenty of protests, where it got rough. I have been arrested several times at protests as well.
I prefer a shove and a couple of hits with a bat to legs and torso to spending a day in lockup, getting my ID and fingerprints taken, and later a fine on top. Riot cops aren’t gentle when they arrest you.
Maybe you would. How about a 60 year old woman?
That’s a silly way to word it, that normalizes violent behavior. It’s a common tactic / tool they use, but more accurately:
“enforce the law and government decree is literally the job of the police.”
Violence, at the most cynical, is a common way they do it.
In this case, (not discussing the whole bussing thing), if an arrest was required, say, for the bus damage, it should have been completed with the absolute minimum violence.
It’s not silly. It is the most reasonable lens through which to examine the citizen’s relationship with police: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
Normalizing via speech is entrenching this very problem. I’m not saying this thread is gonna tip the scales, I’m discussing that the above commenter replied as if it’s the right response. They are condoning and almost evangelizing the topic (evangelizing is way too active a word, I can’t think of a better one, but this one is too much).
I think there’s distinction between your raising the issue that police have a monopoly on violence, and their commenting that violence is their job. Given the context, it comes off as they are saying “it is correct and GOOD that the police met this group with violence.”
I contend it is not appropriate, but accept that is is common (even systemically so)
Arresting a person in a pissed off crowd isn’t exactly easy.
What we see in the video is the end of police enforcing dispersal of the crowd. We don’t see the repeated non violent orders to disperse that preceded this.
The people in the video participated in an illegal protest and ignored repeated police orders to disperse.
As far as police violence goes, the video isn’t terrible. You even see the cop help up the guy on the ground.
I agree. This video does not depict a person being “beat up”
The job of the police is to enforce law and government decree without violence. Violence is just a tool they have access to, but it doesn’t mean it should be used for every kid and granny.
If Russia outlawed protests and their police came to beat up people protesting anyway, would you say the same thing? Or would you laud those protesters as heroes?
Russia is not a free and democratic country.
In this case the city of Amsterdam only made pro palestine protest illegal for a few days to protect public order after incidents of rioting. Protesting would have been fine just a few days later.
Russia is nothing like that.
The temporary ban on demonstrating against the governments complicity in genocide. Out of fear of extreme violence which never manifestaties.
#JustDemocracyThings.
There were several violent riots in the preceding days? First around the football match with lots of injured and then arson in a tram a day later.
Was any of those things done during an organized planned peaceful protest?
So when the USA resumes conducting illegal detentions, extraordinary renditions, and mass expulsions in a few months, I guess that’s just the consequence of living in a free and democratic country, and we should just accept it.
All of these things are not the same as we saw in the video and you know it.
How’s that boot taste?
Says they stopped the protest and bussed them to a second area, and then beat them.
What did you think happened?
There was rioting at the second area as you know well.
When you have to work this hard to maintain your worldview, it’s not a good sign.
I believe in democracy and rule of law.
Utter non sequitur. This is something someone says to bulwark their worldview to themselves, not to convince others of the merits of their view. You’re just proving my point.
The lies we tell ourselves are not convincing to others.
“Illegal protest”
“Uhm, guys, could you please wait until the war is over to protest against genocide in Palestine? Otherwise we’ll kick your teeth in.”
Protest became illegal for a few days in one city because of riots.
They should make riots illegal.
lol, what a summary
I know the billionaires are the main course but when the revolution comes, we’re gonna have bacon as an appetizer aren’t we?
Pigs-in-a-blanket is what you want. In this case the sausage (pig) is the rich and the blanket (bacon) is the poh-poh.
Good to see the Dutch upholding their colonial history
Good thing it wasn’t in Belgium.
🤲
What are you talking about? Did the Dutch colonize Palestine?
The Dutch are one of the most evil, bloody and successful colonizers throughout world history. They didn’t colonize Palestine, only assisted, but they sure as hell colonized, raped and pillaged their way through many a country in their history. Now they play the good guy Dutch role so we won’t make them pay for their atrocities
Oh, you mean the ancestors of the current Dutch population. Gotcha. Okay, well if we are talking about ancestors, then I guess every ethnic group has had ancestors that colonized somewhere or other, since humans don’t live exclusively in the place we evolved. And I’m sure we also agree that people don’t have to answer for the crimes of their ancestors, only the crimes we do ourselves.
Well, Interesting framing. How many years until the Palestine genocide is fine? Or is that the good old colonialism that’s OK?
You see, that’s just twisting what I said. I didn’t say that genocide is okay. I said that people who do crimes are responsible for them, not their descendents. And, that eventually the migration of populations, with the possible displacement of the previous population, becomes permanent.
Look, practically all of history is a series of migrations, wars, resistance, conquest, counter-conquest, etc. Action and reaction. The Arab countries tried to eject Israel and Israel beat them back five times. Israel is spear-won territory. The Palestinians continue to fight, as is their right, but they’ve lost. Israel is not going to pack up its bag and give up their country, so the only way to get rid of Israel is to literally genocide them. If the Palestinians continue to fight the way they did on October 7, they should also expect to die, including civilians as collateral damage. That’s war. If they want to stop dying, they should make a compromise with Israel. The two-state solution has been close before, but certain death cults keep scuttling it. You know why? Reasonable people think it is all about land division and compensation. But that was all negotiated previously. At the end of the day, the final sticking point was Jerusalem. The crazy Jews want to rebuild the Temple, and the crazy Muslims want to stop the Jews from tearing down al-Aqsa mosque to do it. It is the nutters, not the average person, who is standing in the way of peace. Unfortunately, you can’t fix stupid, especially not religious stupid, which is why Israel wants to crush Hamas utterly. All of this hand-wringing about genocide is silly and counter-productive. It is based on some woke narrative, not on facts. If the Israelis wanted all of the Palestinians dead, there would be millions killed, not 43,000. They want Hamas dead and for the Palestinians to stop supporting that death cult. If you leave the narrative aside for a moment, 43,000 dead over the course of a year of pretty one-sided war sure does sound a lot more like collateral damage than genocide, doesn’t it?
It’s funny. When it’s your ancestors who stole land it’s in the past and I should forget. But you’re blaming Israelis today for what was established in the 40s.
I actually really love that. You guys just brush off all responsibility and say “it was my ancestors” but you’re still enjoying the fruits of the rape you committed against others. You still look down on those people you fucked.
this person claims to be native, but also claims in other comments they grew up under a “communist regime” where they and their friends were supposedly raped.
Stupid American. There’s no natives or Indians anywhere but the u.s right? Not like the entirety of the Americas is populated with native peoples, despite your best efforts to eradicate us. Damn you’re seriously stupid, or racist, or both. Literally every country on this continent has us.
So many assumptions there. I don’t look down on the Palestinian people. I admire their willingness to fight. But, at a certain point, the war is over. You can have an eternal insurgency, or you can make peace. As I said, the issues that would allow Israel and Palestine to live side-by-side have largely been negotiated already. Look, we all get it. The creation of Israel was done poorly. But ongoing events like October 7 are not healthy or sustainable for either side. Israel isn’t going away. It can’t go away. Israel is a fact on the ground. So what is the point of ongoing terrorism like October 7? Obviously, all that terrorism has accomplished is retaliation and death. There is a better way.
The same choices will probably present themselves to the leadership of Ukraine, sadly. If the US and Europe don’t drastically ramp up support for Ukraine and give them long-range weapons, Russia will grind them down. What should the Ukrainians do if they can’t win? Fight to the last man? Achieve a ceasefire and then spend the next 80 years supporting a holy war insurgency against Russia? No, that’s dumb. That’s a good way to lose the world’s support and also get bombed into oblivion by Russia, and make your people miserable and poor. Ukraine isn’t dumb. They’ll negotiate a ceasefire and acknowledge the de facto borders at the time of the ceasefire. Then Ukraine will build up its economy again and wait for Putin to die and for events to turn their way. Then, hopefully, they will join the EU and possibly NATO.
Palestine could do something similar. Go for the two-state deal. Forget about right of return, forget about Jerusalem, drop the religious fundamentalist bullshit. Trade away Gaza to Israel in exchange for removing all of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Or something similar. Unify the Palestinian people in a common geography and a positive vision for the future. Land deals work. Remember that time Israel handed back the Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt? Egypt and Israel are still at peace.
What about compensation? Well, the world will help the Palestinians rebuild if they think Palestine will be stable and not an Iranian puppet supporting a terrorist insurgency. The Saudis alone would probably supply tens of billions of dollars to Palestine if Hamas wasn’t there to hoover it up and convert it into weapons and terror tunnels.
I think we all need to cut out the zero-sum thinking because it leads to people becoming so desperate that they are willing to do literally anything to win.
