The Maccabi Tel Aviv ban is a shameful act of appeasement

So it’s official: English football isn’t safe for Jews. These aren’t my words, but those of Maccabi Tel Aviv – the Israeli club whose fans have been banned from attending their upcoming Europa League clash with Aston Villa in Birmingham, over ‘safety’ concerns.

While the British government has been trying to put pressure on West Midlands Police and Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group, which issued this cowardly ruling last week, to allow Maccabi Tel Aviv fans to attend, the club has essentially now told them not to bother.

Even if the ban is overturned, the club said in a statement overnight, it would refuse the allocation of away tickets. ‘The wellbeing and safety of our fans is paramount’, it said, adding that a ‘toxic atmosphere has been created which makes the safety of our fans wishing to attend very much in doubt’.

Thus, an Israeli team has decided that Britain’s second city is a no-go zone for its – largely Jewish – fans. And, to our shame, they have a point. The upshot of this entire, despicable scandal is that anti-Semitism, Islamist sectarianism and official cowardice have made this city a potentially hostile environment for Jews and Israelis.

While West Midlands Police and the Safety Advisory Group have been decidedly vague about precisely why they decided to ban all visiting Maccabi supporters – a drastic step we haven’t seen taken for 25 years, according to culture secretary Lisa Nandy – we all know who they are scared of. And it isn’t the Maccabi lads.

The assorted anti-Semites cheering on the ban point to Maccabi Tel Aviv’s alleged football hooliganism. You can tell this is bollocks given the example they all point to: the horrific scenes in Amsterdam last November, when Maccabi supporters were the targets of violence. Locals and bussed-in agitators went on what they called a ‘Jew hunt’, beating Israelis in the streets.

Apparently, we are supposed to believe that because a handful of Maccabi fans were also filmed chanting anti-Arab slogans and ripping down Palestine flags, that all of the Israelis who were attacked that night brought this anti-Semitic fury on themselves. Victim-blaming is fine, it seems, when the victims happen to be Jewish.

Those saying Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Brum ban was well-earned don’t seem to have followed the court cases in Amsterdam, in which it was shown those attacks were organised well in advance of the Europa League fixture against Ajax. The scumbags rallied on WhatsApp and Telegram groups. One of them had 900 members. They were salivating about beating up the ‘Cancer Jews’. In all, 62 arrests were made, and only 10 of them were Israelis.

The cancellation of the Israeli Premier League derby between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv on Sunday, following what police described as ‘public disorder and violent riots’, has provided more grist to the Jew-haters’ mill. Even though there is no proof, as of yet, that Maccabi fans were the main culprits there.

The Israelophobes are now having to pretend that a few bad apples is totally unheard of in European football; that banning all of a team’s fans is a totally normal response to pockets of (alleged) disorder. As Barney Ronay, chief sports writer for the Guardian, points out, are we going to demand Paris Saint‑Germain supporters be banished from every ground in the land, given their Champions League ‘celebrations’ last season left two fans dead and a copper in a coma? I’ll wait.

We all know why the authorities in Birmingham caved in. They fear a repeat of what happened in Amsterdam, and I don’t mean a few idiotic Maccabi ultras burning some of the city’s plentiful supply of Palestine flags. They fear a ‘Jew hunt’ on our own soil. They fear that thugs will listen to that Birmingham imam, who was filmed saying Maccabi supporters should be ‘shown no mercy’. They fear – and not without cause, it must be said – that at a time when anti-Semitic incidents recently hit a 40-year high, when an Islamist whose name was literally Jihad recently went on a fatal stabbing spree at a synagogue in Manchester, that Jews might not be totally safe here.

So it is that Britain, a nation that likes to pride itself on its Second World War stand against Nazism and Jew hatred, has become a nation in which Jewish football fans are fearful to tread. We desperately need to reckon with how we got here. But before that we need to ensure fans are never banned like this again, simply because we have allowed being Jewish to become a provocation.

The answer to mob anti-Semitism isn’t appeasement. It is defiance. Footing the bill for more officers is a small price to pay for maintaining Britain’s reputation as a country with something resembling a moral compass. The problem here isn’t a shortage of resources. It’s a famine of moral courage. Time to find some.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater