The Controversy Around the Maccabi Tel Aviv vs Aston Villa Football Match

Emilie De Maerschalck, BSc Politics, Philosophy and Economics

Initially scheduled for the 16^th of October, West Midlands Police requested that fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv football team be prevented from buying tickets to the team’s match against Aston Villa in Birmingham on the 6^th of November.  

Initially, they refrained from providing further explanations other than public safety, leading to confusion about whose security the police were concerned for. 

The Labour government, as well as the right-wing media, immediately characterised the announcement as antisemitic. Keir Starmer tweeted his outrage, saying, ‘We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets,’ assuming the police were refusing to protect Jewish fans. Many Labour MPs accused West Midlands Police and communities in Birmingham of antisemitism. On the 20^th of October, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy declared in Parliament that she was ‘appalled’ that fans were being banned because of the risk posed to them due to their Jewish identity. The government’s stance suggests an undemocratic interference in the separation of executive and judicial powers. 

However, a report by The Guardian revealed that the intelligence informing the police’s risk assessment and subsequent decision, identified the major risk posed by Maccabi fans, and not to them. In an interview with Sky News, Tom Joyce, Chief Superintendent of West Midlands Police in Birmingham, stated that the decision was driven mainly by information they had received from Dutch police, according to which ‘a section of the [Maccabi] fans was targeting people outside football matches.’

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have become known for extreme hooliganism, illustrated in November 2024 in Amsterdam during a Europa League match against Ajax. Altercations between hooligans and locals reportedly included violence and provocations on both sides. Maccabi fans however, were said to have chanted slogans such as, ‘there are no schools left in Gaza because all the children are dead,’ ‘Let the IDF win to fuck the Arabs,’ ‘Fuck you fuck you Palestine,’ and ‘Death to Arabs.’ They were filmed committing hate crimes, including tearing down Palestinian flags from residents’ windows and burning them. They also attacked taxi drivers and set fire to a taxi. Over 60 people were arrested and 5 were taken to hospital. The mayor of Amsterdam announced that she would not host Maccabi Tel Aviv again.

Dutch police estimated that around 200 Maccabi fans were linked to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), which have been accused of war crimes, and that 500 to 600 fans were trained fighters willing to confront police.

Even in Israel, Maccabi fans have been known to throw projectiles and flares onto football pitches. The fans’ ‘rape song,’ regularly sung by team ultras, includes racist comments about Arab people, death threats, as well as comments that glorify sexual violence.

Following The Guardian’s revelations, Lisa Nandy was accused of misleading Parliament by numerous independent MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, by implying that the Maccabi fans were the ones under threat of antisemitism when in fact they were assessed as posing the threat themselves. She denied the allegation when questioned by LBC journalist Lewis Goodall, and refused to apologise.

The Maccabi Tel Aviv incident illustrates the current increase in the weaponisation of antisemitism by politicians in the UK and more broadly in the West. Following the 7^th of October 2023 attack, and the subsequent genocide in Palestine, numerous criticisms against the state of Israel and/or its citizens have been labelled as antisemitic, particularly by members of the Labour government.

According to Ash Sarkar - British journalist and libertarian communist political activist - this alignment with the pro-Israeli position could either be the consequence of the close relationship between Labour and the Israeli government, or the result of pure political convenience, as it is the path of least resistance. However, she argues that these antisemitism claims could be used to close down the Overton window for the left, making it easier to exclude them.

Paradoxically, this has resulted in discrediting increasingly real antisemetic claims. False claims have also contributed to the marginalisation of other ethnic groups, particularly Muslim communities, who are frequently accused of antisemitism.  

Claims of antisemitism in the decision to call off the Maccabi Tel Aviv match are undermined by the fact that similar decisions are often made in football in the interests of public safety. The Eintracht Frankfurt fans were among others banned by the Prefect of Naples from attending a football match against SSC Napoli on the 4^th of November. These sanctions did not have a discriminatory goal but rather aimed to keep football stadiums as safe and inclusive as possible.

The Aston Villa vs. Maccabi Tel Aviv football match ultimately went ahead without away fans on the 6^th of November. Seven hundred police officers were deployed as protests took place outside the stadium. One protest was pro-Palestine, calling for Israeli teams to be banned from UEFA and FIFA, highlighting what participants have described as a double standard between the treatment of Russian teams after the invasion of Ukraine and the treatment Israeli teams have received during the ongoing genocide. The other protest was pro-Maccabi Tel Aviv, opposing the ban on away fans, accusing it of antisemitism and calling for politics to be kept out of football. 

While no instances of physical violence were recorded, eleven arrests were made. Among those, five people were arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences, two for abuse shouted towards pro-Maccabi Tel Aviv demonstrators and one for abuse directed at members of the pro-Palestine protest, according to police. There were also instances of racist abuse towards a police officer, which led to the arrest of a man, as well as racist abuse during a road-rage incident near the stadium. Other arrests were made on suspicion of drug offences, breach of the peace, failure to comply, and handling fireworks.