Employees of the Dutch national railway company Nederlandse Spoorwegen sang an anti-Semitic soccer chant on Feb. 22 over an inter-city train’s public announcement system.
During a train ride from a parade in the southern city of Tilburg to Rotterdam, workers chimed over the loudspeaker, “Where do the Jews come from? From Israel, far away. Do super Jews live there, too? Yeah, super Jews live there, too. Do Jews like soccer? Only when they’re rooting for Ajax,” the AD newspaper reported, citing complaints by passengers.
The song plays on the Jewish ties to Ajax, Amsterdam’s largest soccer club, whose fans regularly fly Israeli flags and refer to themselves as “Jews” at matches.
The next day, a Sunday, the railroad company called the song “completely inappropriate.”
The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, Dutch Jewry’s watchdog on anti-Semitism, called the incident “stupid beyond words” and “unacceptable.”
It said a stronger response was needed “to make it clear to everyone that such songs do not belong in a public space.”
