Room for Racism: How Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Hooligans Exposed The UK’s Blind
Spot Over Israel
Summary: this evening’s Europa League between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Aston Villa has been hugely controversial with the West Midlands police decision to ban the Israeli club’s fans being attacked on several fronts. Lost in the furore was the simple fact that the decision was based on hard intelligence and not as has been alleged an act of anti-Semitism.
We thank Nick McGeehan for today’s newsletter. Nick is the co-founder and programme director of the human rights NGO FairSquare and leads their work on accountability and governance in sport.
When the players of Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv take to the park against Aston Villa in Birmingham, it will be to the backdrop of one of the most tawdry and misinformed political controversies in recent memory.
It was the West Midlands Police decision on October 16 to classify the Europa League match as “high-risk” and support the decision of Birmingham City Council to prohibit Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending the match which led to a political and media storm. Controversy over the match had been brewing, but surely nobody within West Midlands Police could have been prepared for the opprobrium that was to come their way from such a broad alliance of staunchly deluded critics.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer was unequivocal in his opposition to the decision, saying “we will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets” and that “the role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation.” The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, also laid into the police saying the decision was rooted in the fact that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are Israeli and Jewish. The Guardian sport columnist Barney Ronay erroneously claimed it was “the first time that overseas sports fans will not be welcome in this country” and spent a lot of time slating Green Party Leader, Zack Polanski’s failure to join the growing bandwagon of UK political leaders condemning the decision. Podcasting historian Tom Holland chided Ayoub Khan, the Birmingham MP who had sought the ban in the first place, while racist influencer Tommy Robinson donned a Maccabi Tel Aviv strip and encouraged his vast army of followers to go to Villa Park for the match. Ironically, it was Robinson’s intervention that led Maccabi Tel Aviv to say they wouldn’t accept any tickets, even if the West Midlands police responded to calls for them to reverse their decision.
West Midlands police were understandably rattled by the inference that they were either fomenting or ceding to anti-Semitism. They had after all, been quite clear that their support for a ban was “based on current intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 UEFA Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel-Aviv in Amsterdam.” Presumably stung by the criticism, they duly provided further details of their due diligence, issuing a statement to the effect that they had consulted the UK Football Policing Unit (UKFPA) “in gaining access to the full details of the previous incidents in Amsterdam via the European policing network.”
West Midlands Police were absolutely correct to examine the violence that accompanied Maccabi Tel Aviv’s visit to Amsterdam in November 2024, and it is obvious that most of their critics did not, since the fallacy that the ban was rooted in anti-Semitism, rather than public safety, could only be sustained by way of wilful ignorance of the facts. The facts in question, being an abundance of evidence showing a large group of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters engaging in provocative, racist and violent behaviour.
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Many Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans are highly organised and experienced fighters who participated in the genocide in PalestineWhat happened in Amsterdam was clear enough at the time to anyone who cared to look closely enough, and was confirmed in a 57-page report published by the Dutch Ministry of Justice in June 2025. The report provides a detailed chronological account of the events of November 6 and 7, explaining what started the violence, who was involved and how it spread.
It is clear that some of the violence in Amsterdam was anti-Semitic in character and provides clear proof of that disturbing fact, noting that “people with a Jewish background, or perceived as such, were targeted in public spaces with targeted threats, intimidation, and assault.” However, it is also clear on the fact that a hardcore of between 500 and 800 Maccabi Tel Aviv were present in Amsterdam, and that some of these supporters “triggered” the unrest the evening before the match by tearing down a Palestinian flag that was hanging from a first-floor window. This was obviously a provocative act in a city - like Birmingham - with a large Muslim population, and one that was widely shared on social media. West Midlands police would also have been able to draw on other sources of credible and widely available information on events in Amsterdam. Reuters verified videos of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters chanting anti-Arab slogans including "Fuck you Palestine” in Amsterdam's central Dam square and Sky News broadcast a video of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans entering an Amsterdam metro station singing a song that included the line “Let the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] win to fuck the Arabs.” This song has a second verse, which includes the line “why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there.” The Times of Israel reported that a video uploaded to social media showed scores of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters, including young children, singing this song at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv upon their return from Amsterdam.
One group who would not have been surprised by the behaviour of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters is the NGO Kick It Out Israel, which issued a damning report on the rise of racism among Israeli supporter groups, with Maccabi Tel Aviv the worst offenders in the 2024/2025 football season, surpassing even the notoriously racist supporters of Beitar Jerusalem. The KIO Israel report stated that the 2024/2025 season was the third consecutive season in which racist chanting has increased in Israeli stadiums, and their observers documented racist chanting among the supporters of 13 out of 14 of the teams in the Israel Premier League.
Racism and violence swirls around many groups of football supporters in multiple countries, but it is clear that it is particularly prevalent and widespread in Israel, and that it has taken on a sinister political character in keeping with the Israeli government’s lurch rightward.
Given the evidence of serious and systematic racism in Israeli football and the manner in which it spilled onto the streets of a European capital last November, one might have thought that Europe’s governing body, which imposes strict obligations on its member associations to stamp out racism, might have intervened and spared Birmingham council and the West Midlands police the headache. It was UEFA, of course, which banned Red Star Belgrade and Eintracht Frankfurt fans from traveling to London in 2019, and Legia Warsaw fans from traveling to Birmingham in 2023, citing racism and violent behaviour. In the aftermath of the violence in Amsterdam, UEFA issued a statement saying that it would ”examine all official reports, gather available evidence, assess them and evaluate any further appropriate course of action in accordance with its relevant regulatory framework.”
Had they done so, they would surely have arrived at the same conclusion as the West Midlands Police, but UEFA, like the UK Prime Minister and many of the UK’s most senior politicians and commentators, appeared to lack either the appetite or the interest to engage with the facts and the evidence in this particular case.
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