PARIS — The soccer game between Israel and France kicked off at Paris’ Stade de France Thursday night as hundreds of protesters gathered nearby amid heightened tensions in Europe over Israel’s deadly assault on the
Gaza Strip
and
Lebanon
.
Thousands of police officers were deployed across Paris, seeking to avoid a repeat of last week’s
violence in Amsterdam
involving locals and Israeli fans.
Meanwhile, in the stadium, just a trickle of soccer fans turned out and some in the crowd appeared to whistle over the Israeli national anthem in an apparent bid to drown out the sound.
Soccer fans filed into Stade de France amid a heavy police presence. The process was orderly, though some expressed nervousness.
Theo Petit, 23, who came out to support France, said he was invited to the game by a friend.
“We are a little stressed about coming here but it’s a game, a football game,” said Petit, who is studying to become a dietician. “We love football, so we decided together to not be frightened by the context of this match.”
Paris police confirmed to NBC News around 4,000 officers would be on duty, with some 2,500 deployed to ensure security around the Stade de France,
in the suburb of Saint-Denis just north of the capital, and some 1,500 posted elsewhere across the city.
“It’s an exceptional measure, three to four times greater than what we usually mobilize,” Paris police chief Laurent Nunez told RTL radio on Wednesday, according to the Reuters news agency.
A number of volunteers with Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, or The Human Rights League, a French organization that aims to observe and defend human rights, were stationed outside the stadium to observe police forces’ handling of the event.
As the crowd of protesters began to swell at Aubervilliers, about a mile and half from the Stade de France,
an image was circulating
on social media of masked men in black holding bats. The photo was posted to an account, verified by NBC News, belonging to Betar, which describes itself as a Zionist activist movement, with several global chapters including France.
“Guard duty,” the original caption read. “we will remain in the streets of France,” and that they will be at the game, followed by a emojis of the Israeli flag, a flexed bicep, the Star of David and a crown.
By nightfall, several hundred protesters had gathered, with some chanting, “Beirut, Gaza. Paris is here with you!”
One of the protesters, Irene Karalis, a 22-year-old university student and activist, said she is referring to the game as “the match of shame.”
“We think that it’s not possible to continue to live normally, to study normally, to work normally, when there’s a genocide in Palestine right now,” she said.
“I’m against all forms of discrimination and racism, and I’m obviously against antisemitism,” Karalis added, referring to the attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam that is casting a shadow over the match. “And that’s why I’m also against instrumentalization of antisemitism and against the assimilation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.”
Inside the stadium, Nunez said that only French and Israeli flags would be allowed, effectively barring Palestinian flags at the match.
French President
Emmanuel Macron
was expected to attend the match alongside predecessors Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, in what Macron’s office described as a show of “fraternity and solidarity” following the events in Amsterdam.
Police said in a
post
on X that they had also received authorization to use drones to survey crowds both Thursday and Friday, though they did not say exactly where these would be deployed. Meanwhile, the National Gendarmerie deployed dozens of patrol teams assigned to metro lines.
But attendance at the Nations League game is expected to be low, with French media reporting that only about a quarter of the 80,000-capacity stadium will be filled when it kicks off at 2:45 p.m. ET. Israel has warned its citizens against attending sporting events abroad.
The French organization Urgence Palestine, which organized a demonstration near Le Front Populaire metro station in Saint-Denis, said in an Instagram post on Thursday, “We don’t play with genocide! No to the France-Israel match.”
Ramy Shaath, a political activist and co-founder of Urgence Palestine told NBC News that demonstrators wanted to send a message that they would not allow the “whitewashing of Israeli crimes.” He said they also wanted to call on soccer’s governing bodies to ban Israel from participation.
The ramped-up security presence
comes after the violence surrounding the soccer match between Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax of Amsterdam put authorities across Europe on high alert.
Officials have said the violence was marked by incidents of people who “actively sought out Israeli supporters to attack and assault them” — in what Macron as well as leaders in the Netherlands and Israel denounced as antisemitic attacks — and violent and inflammatory actions by some of the Israeli team’s supporters, including singing anti-Arab chants calling for “death to the Arabs.”
It also comes after multiple
demonstrations
were held in the French capital on Wednesday night.
They centered on a pro-Israel gala that had been expected to be attended by anti-Arab, far-right Israeli finance minister
Bezalel Smotrich
, is known for his incendiary statements, including advocating for the resettlement of Gaza by Israelis once the war ends, suggesting Arabs and Jews use separate maternity wards, and asserting that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.”
Smotrich canceled his trip to France to speak at the gala, citing security concerns, but at least two demonstrations went ahead, drawing hundreds of protesters.
At one point during one of the demonstrations held by pro-Palestinian groups, tear gas appeared to have been deployed against the crowd, as police in shields and riot gear pushed up against protesters. Meanwhile, organizers at another protest held by leftist Jewish groups condemning the gala told NBC News their rally was shut down by police.
Demonstrators at both events told NBC News they did not want to allow the normalization of Israel’s actions in Gaza, where local officials say more than 43,000 people have been killed over the past year.
The U.N. said over the weekend that women and children accounted for around 70% of those who have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive in the enclave following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks, in which Israeli officials say some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage.
“We won’t stop protesting,” one demonstrator, Omar, 30, who declined to provide his last name, said, speaking during a demonstration on Wednesday night that saw protesters march from Paris’ Saint-Lazare station to Place de la République.
“We are not afraid of the police,” he said.
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