Violent protest outside NorwayIsrael soccer game

Anti-Israel Protesters threw rocks and fireworks at police as they attempted to disrupt a Norway-Israel under-19 soccer match in Skien on Tuesday.

Video posted by pro-Palestinian activists showed protesters clashing with police in riot gear. Demonstrators banged on the gates to the Skagerak Arena while police pepper spray against them.

Protesters wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags berated the officers and picked up loose gravel to hurl through the gate.

“Norway and Israel played a football match, so how can Russia be boycotted from all sports arenas while Israel is still in every sports scene and Eurovision while committing genocide of the Palestinian people?? Double standards!” photographer and activist Eyad Al Zaro wrote on Instagram on Tuesday.

The Norwegian Football Federation decided last Tuesday to close the match to spectators after “an overall assessment of the safety of the players and the public.”

Med Israel for Fred (MIFF) had originally planned to attend the game with its members before it had been closed to the public.

MIFF director Conrad Myrland wrote on Tuesday that one could only wonder what would happen to the Israeli athletes if the protesters had broken in.

“Do you want a country where nationalist and Islamist violent activists get to control who can play football or who can watch football? Or do you want a country where such violent mobs are arrested and condemned?” Myrland wrote on Tuesday.

Norway won the match 2-0, ending Israel’s European Championship qualifying campaign.