Cancelled football match exploited to further vilify Israelis

Maccabi Tel Aviv’s decision to decline any allocation of tickets for away fans at next month’s match against Aston Villa in Birmingham has provoked a range of reactions.

This announcement coincided with the British government’s efforts to reverse an earlier ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending the match in the UK.

Maccabi Tel Aviv explained that as a result of ‘hate-filled falsehoods’, a toxic atmosphere had been created, calling into serious doubt the safety of fans wishing to attend.

The club issued a statement saying: “Inflammatory rhetoric and half-truths are never healthy, but the remarks being generated in this particular case are of the most concerning variety. Not for Maccabi Tel Aviv or football, but for the sake of society and its underlying values, the agendas involved here should be examined more closely.”

The Israeli club also denounced what it called efforts by ‘various entrenched groups to ‘malign the Maccabi Tel Aviv fan base, most of whom have no truck with racism or hooliganism of any kind, and to exploit isolated incidents for their own social and political ends’.

According to the club, the latest example of this is the claim that a decision by Tel Aviv police to cancel Sunday’s derby match is being attributed to Maccabi Tel Aviv fans.

‘It was not,’ the Club added.

This decision was met with widespread astonishment in Israel and internationally, as there was no apparent rationale for it. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer described it as ‘wrong’, emphasising that ‘the role of the police is to ensure that all fans can enjoy the match without fear of violence or intimidation’. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said the decision was a ‘national disgrace’, and Simon Foster, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, called for an ‘urgent review of the decision to ban Maccabi fans’.

In Israel, President Herzog was among many who expressed concern that the decision “reflects the rise of anti-Semitism, where Jews are punished for their identity”.

Even the UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations) said that it ‘regrets the decision and supports efforts to ensure a safe match with all fans present’.

In addition, in the wake of the cancellation of the Tel Aviv derby on Sunday, a series of statements began to emerge, providing further justification for the decision to prohibit Maccabi fans from attending the Birmingham match.

Apart from politicians such as British MPs Ayub Khan and Richard Burgon, who are known for their anti-Israel bias, several UK media outlets, including Sky News, reported on Sunday evening that ‘Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are infamous for their violent behaviour’.

West Midlands Police implied that the risks for the Birmingham fixture had been heightened by stating that they were ‘contacting Israeli authorities post-derby to assess Maccabi fans’ role in the violence’.

However, it should be noted that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have no special record of violence and hooliganism that sets them apart from other major football clubs.

Maccabi Tel Aviv expressed outrage that its supporters were not to blame for the cancellation of the match in Tel Aviv.

Video evidence obtained by TPS-IL, The Press Service of Israel, a still of which is shown in the picture, clearly shows that Hapoel Tel Aviv fans threw flares into the stadium. It is also notable that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans did not participate.

Avraham, a supporter of Maccabi Tel Aviv who spoke to TPS-IL, stated that, aside from the flares thrown into the stadium that injured three police officers, the majority of Hapoel Tel Aviv fans were also behaving appropriately. ‘The atmosphere was beautiful until that point,’ he recounted.

The video footage we obtained provides concrete evidence of this. Even after the Hapoel Tel Aviv fans — whose vendetta with the Minister of National Security, Ben Gvir, is well known — started clashing with the police, the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans did not join in. They had no reason to anyway.

However, this incident has been widely exploited to demonise not only Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, but also Israelis in general, at a time when antisemitism is on the rise in Europe and the UK.

These were the ‘hate-filled falsehoods’ that Maccabi Tel Aviv referred to when explaining its decision not to send its fans to the UK, even if the ban was lifted.