THE decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans from Birmingham wasn’t anti-semitism. It was anti-fascism.

On October 16, 2025, Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group and West Midlands Police, following standard risk assessment procedures used across Europe for decades, classified the November 6 Europa League fixture between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv as “high risk” based on current intelligence and documented previous incidents.

This is the same process applied to countless matches. This is public safety protocol; how communities are protected from violence.

Yet within hours, the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called this evidence-based safety decision “wrong.” Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch labelled it a “national disgrace.” Cabinet ministers convened emergency meetings to overturn a local safety assessment. The Israeli Foreign Minister called it “shameful.” A co-ordinated chorus across the Establishment insisted: this ban was anti-semitism.

This is not just political interference in operational policing. This is the weaponisation of anti-semitism accusations to shield racist violence. A textbook case of ideological inversion, where perpetrators recast themselves as victims.

In November 2024, Maccabi Tel Aviv fans descended upon Amsterdam for their Europa League match against Ajax. The violence began before the match even started.

Hundreds of Israeli fans, many dressed in black rather than team colours, rampaged through the city centre, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there.” They tore down Palestinian flags from residents’ homes, kicked in doors, attacked taxi drivers, threatened to kill occupants of buildings, and armed themselves with sticks and pipes.

These organised acts of racist terror prompted Amsterdam’s ban on Maccabi supporters.

The Hind Rajab Foundation’s report “Game Over Israel: Sports Culture as a Cog in Genocide” documents how Israeli football culture has been weaponised to normalise genocide. Maccabi Tel Aviv, Israel’s most decorated club with a vast mainstream following, has repeatedly filled stadiums with displays glorifying soldiers, with ultras chanting anti-Arab slogans and celebrating military violence in Gaza.

Across the 2022-23 season alone, there were 65 incidents of racist chanting from Maccabi fans at matches in Israel. According to Israel’s own Ynet news outlet, racist chants by Maccabi fans surged by 71 per cent in 2025. The Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace found that Maccabi supporters led the Israeli league in racist incidents, with 118 racist chants recorded during a single season between 2024 and 2025.

Such figures reveal organised fascist formations exploiting football’s mass appeal.

In Athens in March 2024, Maccabi fans brutally beat a man carrying a Palestinian flag and lit flares in the city centre. In Cyprus in 2023, Maccabi supporters were arrested for possession of flares and smoke bombs and engaged in fights with local residents. Their match against Turkish team Besiktas was relocated to Hungary and played behind closed doors “due to the possibility of provocative actions.”

Those chants about “no children left in Gaza” are not abstract provocations. They are celebrations of mass slaughter.

When Maccabi fans chant “there are no children left,” they are not engaging in tasteless banter. They are celebrating the industrial-scale killing of children. They are performing genocide ideology in the streets of European cities.

This is what West Midlands Police sought to prevent in Birmingham — a city where 30 per cent of the population is Muslim and over 19,000 people identify as Arab. This is a community that has every reason to fear the arrival of organised racist hooligans who celebrate violence against Arabs and Palestinians.

On October 3, before the ban was officially announced, Aston Villa Football Club sent an email to matchday stewards informing them they could opt out of working the Maccabi Tel Aviv fixture, acknowledging that some “may have concerns” about attending. The club explicitly stated this absence would not impact their contractual attendance requirements.

Aston Villa knew. They knew the risk was real. They knew their own staff were frightened.

On October 19 2025, just three days after the Birmingham ban was announced and amid the political firestorm demanding it be overturned, the Israeli Premier League derby between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv was abandoned before kickoff after what Israeli police described as “violent riots.”

Smoke grenades, fireworks, and flares were thrown onto the pitch. Stones rained down from the stands. Twelve civilians and three police officers were injured. Nine people were arrested, with 16 others detained for questioning. Israeli police cited “endangerment of human lives” in cancelling the match, describing “disorderly conduct, riots, object throwing, smoke grenades, fireworks, injured police officers, and damage to stadium infrastructure.”

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans created such violence that Israeli authorities deemed the match too dangerous to proceed. Yet British politicians insist these same fans should be welcomed to Birmingham’s Aston Villa.

The timing is extraordinary. As Starmer and his Cabinet worked “at pace” to overturn the Birmingham ban, Maccabi fans were proving precisely why the ban was necessary.

Independent MP Ayoub Khan, whose constituency, Birmingham Perry Barr, encompasses the area around Villa Park, led a petition calling for the ban that garnered over 4,000 signatures from Birmingham residents who understood the threat these hooligans posed to their community.

For his evidence-based advocacy for community safety, Khan, who is Muslim, has faced a deluge of Islamophobic abuse, death threats, and calls for his resignation. Social media platforms exploded with slurs calling him a “jihadi MP” and “terror supporter.”

On October 18, 2025, far-right extremist Tommy Robinson — real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — posted on social media, encouraging his followers to “support Maccabi Tel Aviv at Villa Park” on November 6, sharing a photo of himself wearing a Maccabi Tel Aviv shirt during his recent state-sponsored visit to Israel.

Robinson, founder of the English Defence League, had just returned from Israel, where he was hosted by Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli. During that trip, Robinson toured the Gaza border, visited illegal West Bank settlements, met with anti-migrant activists in Tel Aviv, and addressed a crowd of 1,000 people.

Robinson brought his “football lads” to London for far-right marches. Now he explicitly calls them to Birmingham to “support” racist Israeli hooligans. This is not about football. This is about creating a fascist street mobilisation in a city with one of the largest Muslim populations in Britain, under the cover of fighting anti-semitism.

The Football Policing Unit informed the Home Office over a week before the ban that restrictions on visiting fans might be necessary because violence was likely. West Midlands Police conducted a thorough risk assessment using standard procedures applied across European football. This was professional, evidence-based policing.

Starmer overruled it for political calculation.

The hypocrisy is staggering. This government has granted police unprecedented powers to ban protests and declared that “cumulative” demonstrations constitute a public order threat. Yet one match with documented violent hooligans must proceed at any cost, with unlimited state resources deployed.

Starmer claims he won’t tolerate anti-semitism on British streets. But arguably, he will tolerate — indeed, facilitate — Islamophobic violence, anti-Arab racism, and genocidal chanting, as long as it’s performed by Israeli football hooligans backed by the far right.

In response, what is required is not equivocation. Not “nuance.” Not concern about “all forms of hatred.” What is required is revolutionary clarity about what we are witnessing.

This is not a debate about football. This is a struggle over who has the right to safety in public space. This is about whether racist violence can be laundered as cultural expression. This is about whether genocide ideology can march through European cities wrapped in the flag of victimhood.

Conflating opposition to genocidal football hooligans with anti-semitism is not fighting hatred. It is enabling it.

Football is meant to unite. Israeli football culture has become a vehicle for racism, militarism, and propaganda celebrating mass killing.

This was about protecting us all. The Birmingham ban was correct because it recognised a foundational principle: public safety cannot be subordinated to political pressure. Communities have the right to be protected from organised racist violence, regardless of how that violence wraps itself in the language of identity.

When West Midlands Police stated that banning Maccabi fans would “help mitigate risks to public safety,” they were doing their job. When Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group followed standard risk assessment procedures, they were protecting their community. When Khan led a petition representing thousands of constituents demanding safety, he was fulfilling his democratic mandate.

That Starmer, backed by the full weight of the British Establishment, sought to override this decision reveals the bankruptcy of parliamentary democracy when confronted with the demands of empire. It reveals that British state power will sacrifice the safety of its own Muslim and Arab communities to maintain alignment with Israeli state violence.

That Robinson can co-ordinate with the government’s objectives — one calling his fascist troops to Birmingham while the other deploys state resources to enable the match — exposes the grotesque alliance between mainstream politics and far-right extremism when genocide is at stake.

The decision to ban Maccabi hooligans from Birmingham was not about excluding anyone from football. It was about ensuring everyone could be safe. It was about refusing to normalise genocidal ideology in our streets. It was about protecting us all.

The Birmingham ban was about safety. Their opposition to it was about power. We know which side we are on.

Claudia Webbe was previously the MP for Leicester East (2019-24). You can follow her at  www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and x.com/claudiawebbe.