I found myself strangely irked over the weekend by the response to the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv playing Aston Villa; I think it was because the talking heads on the radio all claimed they knew better than members of the public.
A case in point was Rachel Johnson on LBC, who began by saying the ban was clearly anti-semitic, then fielded a series of phone calls from football fans — some Jewish — saying it was nothing of the sort and that Maccabi fans were a bunch of violent thugs, or at least their ultras, the super-fans who tend to travel abroad.
Despite being repeatedly told this by callers whose opinion she had solicited by going on the radio and asking them to call, she refused to change her mind.
I’m not a football fan, but I listen to the news. Because I have friends in Holland, and because of Congleton’s long links with the Dutch, I listen to a weekly Dutch news podcast that summarises the latest events in the Netherlands for English-speakers.
The riots involving Maccabi fans in Amsterdam were initially covered as anti-semitic violence against visiting supporters, but the story rapidly changed: the Maccabi fans had begun the trouble, attacking Muslims, assaulting locals, vandalising property, tearing down Palestinian flags and chanting racist slogans.
Violence is never the answer, of course, but the Israeli fans were not initially attacked for being Jewish but for being trouble-making thugs, and the Dutch thugs who attended did not just attack Israelis. This does not mean there were no anti-semitic attacks (there were), but it does suggest a group of people you would not want walking down your own street any time soon.
You may have missed the reality: Sky News was criticised in Holland for editing reports and deleting social media posts referencing the anti-Arab behaviour of Israeli fans. Sky News removed references to Maccabi fans tearing down a flag, even though the men on video could be heard speaking Hebrew.
Marc Owen Jones, a disinformation expert, said that media outlets including the BBC had given a “ridiculously skewed” version of events.
Over here, the Villa ban on Maccabi fans was recommended by Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group. It was decided after an intelligence assessment was conducted by West Midlands Police, shared with the national UK football policing unit. West Midlands Police classified the fixture as “high risk,” and the Fare Network — set up to counter discrimination in European football, and which reports to UEFA — told PA that it was “reluctant to question” the police risk assessment.
I have some experience of football thuggery. When I was a teenager, we used to go to watch Stoke City at the old Victoria Ground, and coming out of the Boothen End after some games it was literally turn left for violence, turn right for the coaches. We were too young and stupid to be truly frightened, but it was intimidating watching groups of men have proper punch-ups only yards away.
At about the same time, the Bostock’s coaches started having bricks thrown at them on the D-road going back to Congleton after matches. Apparently, Stoke fans left when the gates opened, caught a train to Etruria, ran to the D-road and lobbed bricks at passing coaches — not caring whether they were home or away, or even football supporters at all.
Football hooligans are neither nice nor terribly bright, and only want to inflict violence on others.
Some years later, I had closer contact when I worked in a bar in Leeds and we were warned by the police that the Leeds ultras (the Intercity Crew, I think) were trashing pubs in the city centre.
Eventually, they came to our bar and it was rather unsettling, to say the least. I was punched in the head trying to serve a charming gent a pint of lager, and things were hairy for a short while until the police arrived and the fans departed. We all cracked jokes about the bar being such a dump it wasn’t worth wrecking, but joking aside it was not enjoyable — even more distressing than the time I had to disarm a punk armed with a knife in the same bar, but that’s a different story. Basically: football hooligans are not pleasant company.
So I think it is naive to assume that a club with a violent record and violent fans — the New Israel Fund found Maccabi Tel Aviv had the second-most racist fans in Israel — was going to go to an area of Birmingham with a high Muslim population and clap politely.
Indeed, Wikipedia reports that players on the team often face racist abuse from their own fans. Fans yelled anti-Arab slurs at Maharan Radi, an Arab player, and monkey noises at Baruch Dego, an Ethiopian-Jewish player.
The Birmingham police made the decision purely on football safety grounds, for which there is plenty of evidence. The outcry this week came from people claiming it was anti-semitic, for which there was no evidence. It was claimed it was a reaction to the war in Gaza … but you’d be a mug if you didn’t think that was a factor, either. It would be stupid not to take into account the situation in Gaza — would Maccabi fans take it as “justification” for attacking Muslims, and racist thugs for attacking the Maccabi fans? You do not have to take a view on either Jews or Israel to see that there would be fighting in a residential area.
Steer Kalmer, as our columnist Simple Soul calls him, proved he could neither steer nor stay calm, offering to fund policing for a situation the police themselves had said they could not police. This shows how inept a politician he is: he’s in a no-win situation either way, and for ignoring the advice of experts.
If the police decision proved to be based on credible intelligence, he’s going to look stupid. If the fans are allowed in and there’s trouble, he’s going to look stupid. The chance of the Maccabi fans arriving peacefully, watching the football and going home quietly is probably between zero and nil.
Happily, common sense intervened from an unlikely source — Maccabi Tel Aviv itself, which has said it won’t supply tickets, although this does not stop fans coming over without.
“Everything is politics,” somebody said (Thomas Mann, according to Google), but sometimes it isn’t; it’s just common sense.
