Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana were right to criticise Lisa Nandy and Starmer for their disgusting attempt to link the ban on racist hooligans to anti- semitism. Their Independent Alliance bloc in parliament says Nandy. the Culture & Sports Minister, should resign.
"Lisa Nandy’s grossly misleading comments have served as the basis for appalling accusations about the motivations of those who support this ban.
"The government has taken an issue of public safety and distorted the facts for political ends – and it has been caught out.
"This is about a group of fans with a history of racism and violence. This is not about banning Jewish people. The attempt to conflate the two is a shameful attempt to exploit the fear and anxieties of Jewish communities".
Starmer’s pathetic efforts have now been rendered meaningless by the Maccabi club which said this week that it wasn’t going to sell tickets to the match to their fans, even if the decision was overturned because a “toxic atmosphere' had been created around the fixture through 'hate-filled falsehoods'.
But the truth is Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have had a long history of violence and anti-Arab racism. On the day of the match with Ajax in Amsterdam last year their fans rampaged through the Dutch capital attacking anyone they thought looked like a Muslim or a Palestinian supporter before fleeing when enraged Ajax fans and passers-by took to the streets to drive them out of town.
After the match, which Ajax won five-nil, the Zionist lie-machine went into top gear to portray the riots as a pogrom while reactionary Dutch leaders and a host of other European politicians joined in the chorus of bourgeois outrage at what they called a “Jew hunt” led by the “anti-semitic gangs” of Amsterdam. They said the violence was an attack on Jews but no such attacks were reported against the local Jewish community. And in the following days the “pogrom” narrative fell apart as more details and witness accounts surfaced.
In 2023 in Cyprus, Maccabi supporters were arrested for possession of flares and smoke bombs. Others engaged in fights with local residents. In Athens in March 2024, Maccabi fans beat up a man carrying a Palestinian flag ahead of the game with Olympiacos. And only last week a local derby between Maccabi and Hapoel Tel Aviv was cancelled after what the Israeli police described as "public disorder and violent riots" which led to 12 people and three police officers being injured.
The decision of the Birmingham authorities to ban the Maccabi fans on safety grounds has been welcomed by many. But some say it doesn’t go far enough. Palestine solidarity campaigners say that the game should be abandoned altogether because Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Others say that Israeli football teams, which are not even located in Europe, should be banned by UEFA from all competitions. We agree.
Allowing Israeli football teams to compete in international competitions allows Israel to cynically present itself as a normal country, obscuring the truth of its oppression of Palestinians.
Israel's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has killed many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including many hundreds of Palestinian footballers. It has destroyed Gaza's football stadiums, training grounds and pitches.
The Israel Football Association directly participates in Israel's crimes against Palestinians. It governs football clubs based in illegal Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians, facing down Israel's military assaults and ethnic cleansing, have long demanded that Israel is banned from international sporting and cultural bodies as a means of holding it accountable for its crimes, just as apartheid South Africa was.
We agree!
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