Dutch city bars Israeli fans and reopens Europe’s debate on shutting Israel out of sport
Alkmaar’s refusal to admit Hapoel Be’er Sheva supporters to a Europa League match, on security grounds, lands amid a widening European push to treat Israel as Russia was treated
THE HAGUE (MNTV) — A Dutch city’s decision to bar Israeli football supporters from a European fixture has reignited one of the most contentious debates in European sport and culture: whether Israel, like Russia before it, should be excluded from international competition over the genocide in Gaza.
Authorities in Alkmaar ruled that supporters of the Israeli club Hapoel Be’er Sheva would not be admitted to the October 15 Europa League match against AZ Alkmaar, after classifying the fixture as “very high risk” over the likelihood of protests and clashes.
The ban concerns fan safety and public order rather than the club’s participation itself — but it arrives against a backdrop of mounting European pressure to sideline Israel from the sporting and cultural arenas altogether.
That pressure has already reshaped one of the continent’s biggest events. The Netherlands was among at least five countries — alongside Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and Iceland — whose national broadcasters withdrew from the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest over Israel’s participation, the largest boycott in the competition’s 70-year history.
The Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS cited not only the genocide but the “serious erosion of press freedom” and the high number of journalists killed in Gaza.
In August it confirmed it would maintain the boycott for a second consecutive year.
The campaigners’ central argument is one of consistency. UEFA and FIFA swiftly banned Russian national and club teams from all competitions after the invasion of Ukraine; critics ask why Israel, accused by a UN inquiry and leading rights organisations of committing genocide, has faced no equivalent sanction.
More than 70 former Eurovision contestants, over 1,100 musicians, and thousands of film-industry figures have signed open letters demanding Israel’s exclusion from cultural events, arguing that its continued participation serves to normalise and whitewash the assault on Gaza.
Spain’s culture minister, Ernest Urtasun, framed the position bluntly, insisting it was not antisemitic to denounce what he called a genocide and describing the Israeli government as “genocidal.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, among Israel’s sharpest European critics, has said such stances put his country “on the right side of history.”
Palestinian-led campaigns, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and the group No Music for Genocide, have pressed the same case across sport, music and film.
The governing bodies have so far resisted. The European Broadcasting Union declined to put Israel’s exclusion to a vote, insisting Eurovision was “not an instrument for sanctions,” and European football authorities have not moved to bar Israeli clubs — leaving decisions like Alkmaar’s to be made locally, on the narrower ground of security.
That gap is where the Dutch case sits: a municipality acting on public-order grounds, within a continent still divided over whether to act on principle.
For supporters of the boycott movement, every such decision — a barred stand, a withdrawn broadcaster, a cancelled fixture — is a step toward the isolation they argue Israel’s genocide in Gaza demands.
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