On the field, last night’s losers were Maccabi Tel Aviv, beaten 2-0 by Aston Villa in their Europa League match. Off the field, however, the story was rather different. For one thing, the Maccabi Tel Aviv team arrived in and departed from Birmingham with their heads held high. Despite the attempts of hate campaigners to render the match unplayable – the initial focus was on barring the Maccabi supporters, but swiftly moved to attempting to bar the team and then to making it impossible for the match to go ahead – the Jewish, Christian and Muslim players of Maccabi Tel Aviv braved the hate, did their job as footballers, and left unscathed.
West Midlands police are unfit to take decisions surrounding the safety of Jews and the policing of local hate protests
Despite that, it’s difficult to describe the hate campaign as having lost. There were, after all, no Maccabi fans inside the ground – an outrageous victory for the Jew haters. The fans were barred by West Midlands police (we’ll return to them in a moment), a decision which unleashed a wave of anger about the de facto barring of Jewish supporters from a football match. The hatred of a section of the local Muslim population had led to Birmingham being declared a no-go area for Jews. Maccabi Tel Aviv then took the decision not to put its supporters in harm’s way, and did not apply for any away tickets.
As the government found when it sought to have the decision overturned, the police and local council would not budge. So the club’s decision was almost irrelevant. The real story behind last night’s shameful game, which saw a run-of-the-mill Europa League football match turned into the epicentre of Jew hate, lies elsewhere.
It lies, in fact, in the decision making and outlook of West Midlands police. For whatever reason, the force decided this week to seek publicly to justify its decision to ban Maccabi fans on the basis of a distorted version of the events in Amsterdam last year, when Maccabi fans were targeted by pro-Palestinian thugs and were the victims of what was, in effect, a pogrom.
Last night, the local chief superintendent, Tom Joyce, gave what I consider to be one of the most disgraceful and shameful interviews ever given by a serving police officer when he told Sky News that the police had barred Maccabi because of the hooliganism of its fans. Yes, Maccabi has some hooligan fans. So do Aston Villa. So does every professional football team. But it is simply not true that the violence in Amsterdam was the result of Maccabi fans’ behaviour.
The Dutch court documents show the opposite – that Muslim gangs, organised in WhatsApp groups, orchestrated what they called a ‘Jew hunt’ for ‘cancer Jews’.
I have no idea what Chief Superintendent Joyce thinks of the Gaza war, of the hate marches and protests in the Midlands. But it appears that West Midlands police are unfit to take decisions surrounding the safety of Jews and the policing of local hate protests. At the very least, they have accepted the idea pushed by local ‘community leaders’ that a Jewish or Israeli presence in their locality is inherently provocative.
Should you be in any doubt about mindset and attitude of West Midlands Police, consider this. Last night Galatasaray fans were reported to have gone on the rampage in Amsterdam. Bear in mind that Maccabi fans, who were banned from Villa Park, were the victims in Amsterdam, not the perpetrators. The Turkish club is due to play Manchester City in January. Do you think West Midlands force would be recommending barring their fans if they were instead playing at Villa Park?
I think we all know the answer to that – because as far as I am aware, never before has West Midlands Police decided to bar fans from a visiting team because of hooliganism and the supposed threat of violence. But then never before have the visiting fans been Jewish. And the ‘community leaders’ and campaigners to whom West Midlands police are in thrall could not seem to care less about visits by non-Jewish fans – even those who really do pose a threat.
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