Palestine Action has been allowed to appeal against its proscription, the mighty YouGov has shown 50 per cent more support for the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans at Villa Park than opposition to it, and this evening's Tel Aviv derby has had to be abandoned even before it had kicked off, by order of the assaulted Police, due to the extreme violence and "risk to human lives" on both sides. She will not, of course, but Shabana Mahmood should resign both her portfolio and her seat.
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is in Tel Aviv, along with all the other fighting age men whom we did not want marauding through a British city on their foreign passports and from their home addresses outside the United Kingdom. The people who usually insisted on adherence to "the intelligence" would have been correct in that insistence this time.
There has never been an Israeli ceasefire, and if there were, then what would be the point of continuing to arm Israel? Impose the embargo now. And as for the profession to have stopped the nightly surveillance flight from RAF Akrotiri, that is an admission that it had been flown, compounding Britain's complicity in the Gaza genocide.
Maccabi Tel Aviv fans roamed the streets of Jaffa earlier, looking for victims to beat up, before the game that was eventually cancelled against Hapoel Tel Aviv.
ReplyDeleteUK people, do you want this in Birmingham?
Not according to YouGov, by 42 per cent to 28.
DeleteI live in Amsterdam and saw up close what happened when Maccabi played Ajax. In the light of those events it is frankly dishonest to present this as a question of whether Birmingham can protect Jewish people.
ReplyDeleteAnyone interested should look up the interviews with the Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema – not the press release she gave in immediate aftermath of the events but later, once after she had a chance to review the full facts. Quotes such as “That information was not known to me…The story of a racist club (Maccabi) was never properly told to me.” Or to me even more disturbing “We were completely caught off guard by Israel. At 3am, (Israeli) Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu was already giving a lecture about what happened in Amsterdam, while we were still gathering the facts”.
The way the story was covered globally was also very disturbing, Dutch citizen journalists having their footage of Maccabi fans attacking local people used on international media networks with a voice over explaining the exact opposite as being the case. There is no doubt that there were some targeted attacks that night on Maccabi fans, but only after they (or a significant number of them) had behaved in a way that no decent person could condone, we now have footage of hundreds of Maccabi fans chanting “let the IDF win f*** you Arabs” and “f*** you terrorists die everyone die” and rumours of far worse things. Can or rather should a local police force protect people who behave like the Maccabi fans is an interesting question and it is very very different one from the generalised ‘protect Jewish people’.
What happened in The Netherlands after that match should be a chilling example to British politicians and it is why Birmingham made absolutely the right choice by banning Maccabi fans. Geert Wilders used a dishonest interpretation of the event to ratchet up his anti-Arab agenda, the row in government led to a cabinet minister resigning and in Amsterdam a large portion of the Moroccan community were left feeling their own government cared more about protecting Israeli football hooligans than them. The negative effect of these feelings in Amsterdam could be felt for years.
Thank you for this important insight.
DeleteBridget Phillipson was on Sky News this morning and was asked about the ban on Maccabi fans. She was misleading saying that the police banned the match primarily due to the risk to Maccabi fans' safety. The police statement didn't single out Maccabi fans' safety though, and a more recent statement from the police emphasised how the police were also concerned about the safety of visitors and local communities. It pains me that a Labour MP is more concerned about Israeli fans with a history of violence than people in her own country.
ReplyDeleteBut I assume that it does not surprise you.
DeleteStarmer should also resign for blatant political interference in a straightforward policing matter, then we'd get Akhmed Yakoob and Andrew Feinstein into Parliament at the same time.
ReplyDeletePatience.
DeleteMaccabi fans were hunting down Hapoel fans in the streets after the game was called off. These are the people Starmer is absolutely determined to inflict on the people of Birmingham. And he was prepared to overrule a local safety group, regional police, the local MP, the local football club, a national football policing organisation and Europe-wide intelligence-sharing networks to get it.
ReplyDeleteA former Director of Public Prosecutions.
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