I've been known to be pretty vicious taunting the opposing team at a sporting event-one of my favorites is yelling "sucks" after a player's name is announced, and another is throwing cups of beer at NBA players lying on the scorers table. On a rare occasion, I have even insulted opponents, commenting on their corpulence or their mother's sexual habits.Even so, I think the fans in a Dutch soccer league have me beat in creativity, spirit and outright repulsiveness.

For some bizarre reason, Amsterdam Ajax, one of the most accomplished soccer clubs in Dutch history, call themselves the "Jews." Fans wrap themselves in garb embroidered with Hebrew writing and buy Israeli flags. The team's logo consists of the head of the legendary Greek warrior, Ajax, inside the Star of David. There are no Jews on the team, none on the club's board, and there are very few Jewish members in the crowd.

When Ajax is on the field, supporters of the opposing side taunt the players with shouts of "Jews to the gas!" and "Hamas! Hamas!" They give the straight-armed Nazi salute and make hissing sounds like gas chambers. Thousands of fans, enticing others to jump about, yell that, "Everyone who's not jumping is a Jew!"

Not surprisingly, real Jews have stopped showing up to the games.
Apparently, the club has no real Jewish origin. "About 30 years ago, the other teams' supporters started calling us Jews because there was a history of Jews in Ajax," Ajax fan Fred Harris told The New York Times, "so we took it up as a point of pride and now it has become our identity."
"It'll never change," another fan said. "It's been our identity for almost 30 years-you can't erase it." Well, excuse me.

With the increasing viciousness of the chants, the club has asked an independent committee to try to come up with a strategy to end the pretend identity. "Not only Jews are bothered by this," the club's president, John C. Jaakke, told the Times. "I'm not Jewish and I hate it, too." Well, Mr. Jaakke, I, as a Jew, appreciate your concern.

Isn't Amsterdam a liberal European country, not an anti-Zionist dictatorship? Furthermore, who takes on the identity of a real group of people? It is not like the Fighting Irish; the University of Notre Dame has always been a predominantly Irish Catholic school.

Frankly, an Amsterdam team calling themselves the Jews is just creepy. But we can remember the Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Chiefs, Washington Redskins, and Atlanta Braves, all references to the Native Americans (who really exist) when searching for insensitive and disgusting team names.

Thankfully, this isn't only an anti-Semitic phenomenon. Ajax supporters, when facing a German team, displayed a banner reading "Jews take revenge for '40 to '45."

Thankfully, using political slurs to cheer on the team isn't only a phenomenon found in the Netherlands. Americans are commonly disparaged in many soccer arenas across the world. When the U.S. soccer team visits Mexico, our players get inundated with cheers of "Osama! Osama!"

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that all of the chants mentioned above are insensitive, offensive, idiotic, ridiculous, nauseating and disgusting.

Either way, whether the goal of the Osama chant and the Hitler salute is to make the players fear for their lives, mock them, distract them or just get fans to be loud and excited, it does not belong in the sporting arena.
These chants may very well be purely in the spirit of the game for some fans, but they have crossed the line. I know this is a lot to ask, but they should find something else to mock their opponents about, like their mothers.

It will be a tough transition, especially for Ajax supporters, who have really bonded with the Jewish identity of their favorite team. "Many people are walking around with Jewish stars tattooed on their bodies and they're not Jewish at all," Jaakke told the Times.

Those of us who are Jews are really honored by the gesture.