By Dara O’Cogaidhin
When Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group announced that, following a thorough assessment of the risk of violence, no Maccabi Tel Aviv fans would be allowed to attend the Europe League clash against Aston Villa in Birmingham on 6 November, politicians from across the spectrum lined up to denounce the supposed antisemitic nature of the ban.
The culture secretary Lisa Nandy told MPs that the Labour government would provide the necessary resources to enable Maccabi fans to attend the game, claiming the original ban ‘chooses the exclusion’ of Jewish people. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, alleged the decision demonstrated ‘there are parts of Britain where Jews simply cannot go’.
In a perfect case study for manufacturing consent, the Maccabi supporters’ record of racism and violence was swept under the carpet by the media. In Amsterdam, only a year previously, they took over the streets singing genocidal chants including ‘Death to Arabs’ and ‘Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there’. An Arab taxi driver and pro-Palestinian protesters were also attacked by Maccabi hooligans; many of whom have served in Israel’s genocidal IDF.
The Guardian football correspondent Barney Ronay downplayed the racist rampage in Amsterdam, charging Independent Alliance MP Ayoub Khan of wanting to ‘ban supporters of an Israeli team from watching a football match in Birmingham’. Ronay then falsely claimed that ‘British authorities have decided for the first time that overseas sports fans will not be welcome in this country’, ignoring Aston Villa’s ban on Legia Warsaw fans in November 2023 after previous clashes.
Ronay also stated that support for the ban on Maccabi fans provided succour to claims on the right that Birmingham was becoming a ‘mid-90s-Mogadishu-style no-go zone’. These words were penned only a week after the Conservative MP Robert Jenrick made the incendiary claim that the Handsworth area of Birmingham was a ‘slum’ where he ‘didn’t see another white face’.
Khan, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, received a barrage of Islamophobic and racist abuse from journalists and MPs following his praise for the Advisory Group’s decision. The LBC journalist Iain Dale called him an ‘antisemitic racist c**t’, while the Conservative MP Jack Rankin called him an ‘unintegrated, racist antisemite’. In Parliament Khan called out his critics and the Labour government in particular, for the deliberate and disingenuous conflation of antisemitism with the banning of racist football hooligans.
On 17 October Keir Starmer stated that the government would do everything in their power to overturn the ban. Two days later the Maccabi ultras were rioting back in Tel Aviv. The local derby between Maccabi and Hapoel had to be abandoned before kick-off after Israeli police determined the violent clashes between fans represented a ‘risk to human life’. Maccabi subsequently released a statement that it would decline any offer of tickets for the Aston Villa game.
Cue silence from the grandstanding Starmer, whose plan to forcibly impose the violent, racist Maccabi ultras on an ethnically diverse city like Birmingham lies in tatters. In their absence Tommy Robinson has promised to attend the game as a Maccabi fan, calling on his supporters to do the same. He is seeking to exploit the heightened tensions that have been stoked by Starmer and Co.
In Amsterdam, Maccabi’s hooligans tried to humiliate the city’s Arab community, but locals fought back. They had every right to. Ayoub Khan’s fellow Independent Alliance MP Adnan Hussain caused outrage recently when he equated fascists and anti-fascists, tweeting that both are ‘equally absurd’. There is nothing absurd about self-defence. Birmingham’s large Muslim community, trade unionists, and anti-fascists should organise self-defence groups to protect their city against the risk of violence from Robinson’s fascist thugs on 6 November.
We also need the largest possible mobilisation against Maccabi Tel Aviv playing Aston Villa in the Europa League. This game should be cancelled, with or without Maccabi fans present, just as sporting events involving teams from apartheid South Africa were picketed and boycotted. The Israel Football Association is deeply implicated in the racist apartheid system, with at least 6 clubs located in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
UEFA and FIFA are both complicit in sports-washing the genocide in Gaza, which for years has shielded Israel from accountability for its illegal occupation and its apartheid state. The maximum pressure needs to be applied to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv and all Israeli football teams from European and international competitions immediately in accordance with demands from the Palestinian-led BDS movement.
