radiofree.asia

Maccabi Tel Aviv ban: Police prove Starmer’s smear was pure politics

This week, Birmingham police blew apart the government’s narrative that the Maccabi Tel Aviv travel ban was driven by antisemitism. As it turned out — and as we reported at the time — Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have a history of hooliganism, and it’s very normal to block such fans from travelling.

Now, the Birmingham MP at the centre of the original controversy has called out the PM for his gross mishandling of the situation:


Unbelievable

Birmingham MP Ayoub Khan spoke about the ban in October, noting the “latent safety risks”:

Because he looked out for his constituents, Khan faced attacks from politicians, journalists, and Tommy Robinson:

Maccabi Tel Aviv are well known for their international hooliganism, and the Western media is known for clumsy cover ups:

On 6 November, Sky News reported that:

Police have revealed to Sky News they advised banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from Aston Villa due to “significant levels of hooliganism” in the fan base jeopardising safety around the match – rather than threats to visiting Israelis.

Chief superintendent Tom Joyce said:

We are simply trying to make decisions based on community safety, driven by the intelligence that was available to us and our assessment of the risk that was coming from admitting travelling fans.

I’m aware there’s a lot of commentary around the threat to the [Maccabi] fans being the reason for the decision. To be clear, that was not the primary driver. That was a consideration.

We have intelligence and information that says that there is a section of Maccabi fans, not all Maccabi fans, but a section who engage in quite significant levels of hooliganism.

What is probably quite unique in these circumstances is whereas often hooligans will clash with other hooligans and it will be contained within the football fan base.

We’ve had examples where a section of Maccabi fans were targeting people not involved in football matches, and certainly we had an incident in Amsterdam last year which has informed some of our decision-making.

So it is exclusively a decision we made on the basis of the behaviour of a sub-section of Maccabi fans, but all the reaction that could occur obviously formed part of that as well.

Tel Aviv First

As Sky News stated, the move to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans was “angrily opposed” by Keir Starmer. This is what he said at the time:


Did Starmer not think to ask the police why they banned the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans?

Or did he decide to tarnish their reputation because he thought it would be politically beneficial in the moment?

Starmer wasn’t the only one speaking out either, with Lisa Nandy making a statement in parliament:

Now, people are calling for Nandy to resign:


This country

Don’t get us wrong, we’re often critical of the police. The fact that the police make bad decisions, however, does not mean that every decision they make is bad.

Banning travelling fans because their supporters contain a division of notorious ultras wasn’t just a good decision — it was a normal one. The fact that the PM and his underlings chose to attack the police for this informed choice shows the UK is an increasingly un-normal place.

Featured image via Number 10

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.