By Cain O’Mahony
The Labour leadership, egged on by the Tory media, are continuing their bizarre witch-hunt against West Midlands Police and Birmingham City Council over the Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv match back in November. It is clear that there are elements at the top of the Labour Party who are little more than mouthpieces for the Israeli government.
To recap, given the record of violence and racism by the Maccabi fans, on display at the 2024 UEFA match against Ajax in Amsterdam, the City Council’s Safety Advisory Group backed a decision by West Midlands Police to ban away fans (see article here) from the forthcoming match on 6 November. This brought the usual screeches of ‘antisemitism’ by the Israeli government, backed up by Starmer.
But as pressure grew to lift the ban, at the 19 October 19 match in Israel between Maccabi and Hapoel in Tel Aviv, the disorder and violence was so bad that the match had to be called off. So great was Maccabi’s embarrassment that they said they would not now allow their fans to go to Birmingham. But Maccabi still tried to make out that they were ‘victims’, suggesting that “they wouldn’t feel safe”, etc.
Display of thuggery in Tel Aviv
In reality, of course, after that display of thuggery on October 19, no one could justify allowing them anywhere near Villa Park. So in the end, no one in Birmingham banned anyone – Maccabi did it themselves. As they say in football, we “thought it was all over”.
But then, on November 23, the Sunday Times led on the front page, backed up by a double page spread inside, a line that effectively claimed that West Midlands Police had ‘sexed up’ a report by the Dutch police to justify banning Maccabi fans, following pressure from Birmingham Muslim leaders.
It has been a long standing but ridiculous conspiracy trope by the far right and the US Alt-right in particular that UK cities like Birmingham and London are ‘controlled’ by Muslims. Incredibly however, senior Labour members have now jumped on this racist bandwagon.
On cue, Labour’s pro-Israeli right wing piled in. In one of the most disgraceful speeches ever uttered by a ‘Labour’ politician, Lord Cryer in the House of Lords said the banning decision was made “… under pressure from a bunch of bigots and racists, as well as …. a number of Labour councillors all with one aim: turning Britain’s second largest city into a no-go area for Jewish people.” He went onto call for an enquiry and “…if necessary, suspend the council and kick out any Labour councillors engaged in this evil plot” (BBC News, November 27).
Yet rather than challenge this ‘evil plot’ nonsense, the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, (currently trying to ‘out-Reform Reform’) ordered government officials to talk to Dutch police to stack up the claims of the Sunday Times’. Since then the WMP Chief Constable has been hauled before Parliamentary committees twice, and now the City Council leader is also to get a grilling.
You would think that history began on October 7
In whipping up the anti-semitism smear, the pro-Israeli lobby are using the same methods as the Israeli government to defend their genocide in Gaza. To hear Israeli government spokespersons, you would think that history only began on October 7, and before that everything since 1948 between Israel and Palestine was all sweetness and light. Similarly, anyone would think that the only time there was ‘trouble’ by Maccabi fans was at the Ajax match.
Let’s unpick this nonsense, and get back to reality. Firstly, the Maccabi fan base has a long history of racist violence:
- As far back as 2015, Maccabi were fined by UEFA after their fans at a match in Cyprus lit flares and threw smoke bombs, fought local people and at the match itself unfurled a huge banner declaring: “FEEL THE TERROR OF TEL AVIV”.
- In March 2024, at the match against Olympiakos in Athens, they lit flares in the city centre and attacked a man carrying a Palestinian flag.
- Then there was the Ajax match. Ironically, the best description of what happened there can be found in the very report in the Sunday Times that has spurred the current furore: “The Amsterdam fixture led to two nights of violence after provocations by Maccabi’s ultras, including the pulling down of Palestinian flags from buildings, anti-Arab chants and attacking taxis” (Sunday Times, November 23, 2025).
- Then there was the October 19 Maccabi v Hapoel match, which didn’t even reach kick-off because of the violence.
With that record of violence, no one of sound mind would want them anywhere near Birmingham. As if to emphasise this, the night before the Villa v Maccabi game (without Maccabi fans), there were serious disturbances in the city centre. Youths attacked police and public transport with firework rockets and bricks – unlike the Villa game the next day, riot police with riot shields had to be deployed and there twice as many arrests as there were at the protests and counter-protests at the Villa match.
Armed of dispossessed and alienated young people
The rioting had nothing to do with the match – rather it is an indictment of our ‘cut-back society’ today, with youth services slashed for decades, leaving armies of dispossessed and often unemployed young people who can only find excitement by picking fights with the police.
Of course, this was not reported by the national Tory media and met with even less interest from the Labour government. It did not fit their narrative that having the Maccabi ultras in town would have been perfectly safe.
Incidentally, at the Villa match itself, pro-Israeli groups hired six billboard lorries, prominently displaying the Star of David and carrying slogans such as ‘Banning Jews is discrimination’, etc. These drove through the streets of Birmingham and then trundled around the Villa ground. Despite a large, noisy but peaceful Palestinian Solidarity protest, and a diverse local community, no one fired rockets or threw bricks at the vehicles; they proceeded unmolested. So much for Cryer’s hysteria about Birmingham being a ‘no go area for Jewish people’.
Neither will the media report the point repeatedly made by West Midlands Police, that their initial recommendation was not just backed by the City Council’s Safety Advisory Group, but – like all recommendations to ban away fans – has to be peer reviewed by both the national UK Football Policing Unit and the National Police Chiefs Council: both agreed with the West Midlands Police decision. So by the media’s logic, the whole of the UK police are anti-semitic.
Also, according to the BBC, UEFA currently have “116 active suspended stadium bans” in place, with another 16 under investigation (BBC News, November 28). The rules are quite simple – if fans are violent or show “racist and extremist” displays or behaviour, they get banned. Why should Israeli fans be exempted?
Of course, Israel should not even be in UEFA or indeed the World Cup, as it accepts teams in its leagues from the illegal settlements and should have been given the ‘Russia treatment’ for its genocide in Gaza.
Basic common-sense public safety
But why has such a basic, commonsense public safety issue caused such a furore? It is well documented that the media in Israel has sanitised its so-called coverage of the slaughter in Gaza, and now that there is a ‘peace deal’ (although still hundreds are being killed, as well as new atrocities in the West Bank), the Israeli state wants to ‘reassure’ its people that everything is ‘back to normal’.
Participation in Western international events tells its people that Israel has been ‘rehabilitated’ by the West, that ‘world opinion is on its side’, and is not viewed as the global pariah that it really is.
Israel has always lived the pretence that it is a ‘Western state’ with ‘Western values’. That is why UEFA and indeed Eurovision is of vital importance to the Netanyahu propaganda machine, even though Israel is not in Europe.
Indeed, that was the initial reason for the resurgence of the Villa ban story – Israel and its UK supporters wanted to intimidate any opposition to their participation in Eurovision, in particular the BBC, which is a major player, as the decision approached on December 4 on whether Israel could take part: ‘ban us and we’ll call you anti-semitic, anti-Jew’, you’ll get the West Midlands Police treatment.
The strategy clearly worked, and Israel have been allowed back in. This has empowered the Israeli state. Having achieved their Eurovision goal, you would have thought they would have dropped the Maccabi story.
Arrest of anyone supporting Palestine
But then came the Bondi Beach murders, and the Israeli state sees ‘the Villa treatment’ as a useful stick with which to beat UK institutions. After the murders, Australian police said they would arrest any Palestinian Solidarity protesters who chanted ‘global intifada’, outrageously equating the call for an uprising with acts of individual terrorism.
Very swiftly, no doubt after viewing the battering West Midlands Police were and are still receiving, both the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police said they would do the same.
As we have seen with Kneecap, Eurovision, the Villa, Glastonbury, etc, the Israeli state continually attempts to manipulate our society, terrorising any who dare suggest their responsibility for the genocide in Gaza with the smear of anti-semitism.
That a Labour government is being complicit in all this is scandalous. But that is the cost of a Labour government that has long since abandoned and pretence to socialist ideas. If you sign up to the free market model and the ‘special relationship’ with US imperialism, then unconditional support for Israel is part of the deal. As we have seen with Gaza, Venezuela and now Greenland, it is all blowing back in Starmer’s face – too late, he is learning the meaning of the old saying: ‘those who sup with the devil should have a long spoon’.
[Feature picture of Villa Park is from Wikimedia Commons, here]
