\n<\/p>\n
Pressure is mounting on West Midlands police over their ban on fans of the Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv from a match at Aston Villa next month, as the area\u2019s crime commissioner demanded a review of the decision.<\/p>\n
Senior cabinet ministers, including Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, and Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, are due to meet on Friday to \u201cfind a way through\u201d, after the ban was criticised by politicians across the spectrum including the prime minister.<\/p>\n
West Midlands police said on Thursday they had classified the fixture as \u201chigh-risk\u201d based on intelligence. The force also cited violence that occurred during a 2024 Uefa Europa League match between Ajax and \u00adMaccabi in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
However, Keir Starmer and the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, both condemned the ban, saying the match should be allowed to take place.<\/p>\n
Simon Foster, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, a Labour politician, said on Friday that he had requested a review of the decision, the operational plan, the assessment and evidence that led to it. Foster said he wanted to determine \u201cwhether or not this decision and recommendation is appropriate, necessary, justified, reasonable and a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim\u201d and whether \u201call and any suitable alternative options have been considered\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ian Murray, a minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, said on Friday the decision to ban travelling supporters was \u201ccompletely and utterly unacceptable\u201d and that Nandy would meet officials from the Home Office and elsewhere to discuss it.<\/p>\n
Murray told Sky News: \u201cThe prime minister has said we will do everything we possibly can to resolve this issue. It\u2019s an operational issue for the police, and government doesn\u2019t get involved in operational issues for the police. But I know the culture secretary of state will be meeting with the Home Office and other stakeholders today to try and see if there\u2019s a way through this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Separately, he told BBC Breakfast: \u201cWe can\u2019t be in a position as a country to determine whether people are able to go to public events \u2013 like football matches, all sorts of festivals or other big public events \u2013 on the basis of their race, religion or background. That is just the wrong decision to make, and the police need to look at how they can facilitate making sure this can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters hold flags at Dam square before the Europa League match with Ajax in 2024.<\/span> Photograph: Jeroen Jumelet\/ANP\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n A report by Dutch police into the \u00addisorder during the 2024 Amsterdam match found Maccabi fans had torn a Palestinian flag down from a local building and burned it, shouted: \u201cFuck you, Palestine,\u201d and vandalised a taxi. Maccabi fans were also taped chanting: \u201cOl\u00e9, ol\u00e9. Let the IDF win, fuck the Arabs.\u201d<\/p>\n After the match there were what the Amsterdam mayor called a series of \u201chit-and-run\u201d assaults on Maccabi fans, which led to five people being taken to hospital. A further 20 to 30 were injured. Sixty-two people were arrested, mainly for public order offences. Four local people were given short jail terms for the violence against Maccabi fans.<\/p>\n John Mann, the government\u2019s adviser on antisemitism, challenged the police\u2019s position, saying: \u201cThe police and Birmingham council have ignored my advice. Unlike them, I spent three days investigating the incidents in Amsterdam. Both clubs want all fans there and have fully cooperated in making this happen.\u201d<\/p>\n It is not unusual for away fans to be banned from travelling to away games but as a Uefa-mandated punishment. The organisation recently forced Romania to play a game behind closed doors after racist behaviour from its supporters.<\/p>\n French authorities prevented Feyenoord fans from travelling to a match in Lille in January, citing several incidents of fan violence.<\/p>\n Ajax were prevented last month from having fans at a Champions League match in Marseille after the French interior ministry banned \u201canyone claiming to be an Ajax Amsterdam supporter\u201d from \u00adtravelling between the French border and the southern city.<\/p>\n The West Midlands police ban came after pressure from the local independent MP Ayoub Khan.<\/p>\n Khan told Newsnight on Thursday: \u201cWe cannot conflate antisemitism when we look at what some of these fans did in Amsterdam in 2024 \u2026 We\u2019re talking about violent fans and I think the prime minister should stay out of operational matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Starmer called the move \u201cthe wrong decision\u201d and Badenoch said it was \u201ca national disgrace\u201d.<\/p>\n Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem leader, described the ban as racist against Jews: \u201c\u2018We can\u2019t have Jews watching football, people might get violent towards them\u2019. Are we seriously saying that we are incapable of protecting football fans from racism? I\u2019m flabbergasted. This is shameful.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018We\u2019re not banning them because they\u2019re Jewish, it\u2019s because they\u2019re hooligans \u2026\u2019 is the risible defence for the ban from people who know nothing about football or hooliganism, but are desperate not to acknowledge or admit their own racism. This is a stain on Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n Uefa, the governing body of European football, has urged local authorities to allow Maccabi fans to travel. The organisation said in a statement: \u201cUefa wants fans to be able to travel and support their team in a safe, secure and welcoming environment, and encourages both teams and the competent authorities to agree on the implementation of appropriate measures necessary to allow this to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Jack Angelides, the chief executive of Maccabi Tel Aviv, said he had not been told formally that the club\u2019s fans would not be allowed to attend the game.<\/p>\n He said the team had played a game against Turkish opposition recently without incident \u2013 though that game was moved to Hungary and played without any fans in the stands.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re talking about a very small number of people in stadiums such as Villa Park,\u201d he told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme on Friday. \u201cStadiums around the world have managed to accommodate much larger groups of away fans.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrew Fox, the honorary president of Aston Villa Jewish Villans supporters\u2019 club, said: \u201cIt\u2019s obviously about much wider issues surrounding the Gaza war, and that sends a really worrying message about British society: that we aren\u2019t civilised enough to have a debate over this without it descending into football violence or violent attacks on fans who are coming from another country just because we disagree with that country\u2019s policies.\u201d<\/p>\n In contrast, the Green party\u2019s deputy leader Mothin Ali said there should be a \u201csporting and cultural boycott of all Israeli teams, like we saw for South African teams under apartheid\u201d because of the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pressure is mounting on West Midlands police over their ban on fans of the Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv from a match at Aston Villa next month, as the area\u2019s crime commissioner demanded a review of the decision. Senior cabinet ministers, including Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, and Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[7075,16993,163,743,16992,17015,1551,5106,9253,12735,3098,2187],"class_list":{"0":"post-28671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-aston","9":"tag-aviv","10":"tag-ban","11":"tag-fans","12":"tag-maccabi","13":"tag-midlands","14":"tag-police","15":"tag-pressed","16":"tag-tel","17":"tag-tie","18":"tag-villa","19":"tag-west"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}