On November 22, The Sunday Times published an article quoting Dutch law enforcement saying that the British police used false intelligence to secure a ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending an Aston Villa match that took place on November 6.
The ban on fans attending the match attracted massive media attention. While originally the police listed it as a public safety risk issue, later reports raised concerns that the ban had actually resulted from massive pressure from anti-Israel organizations, such as Game Over Israel, and anti-Israel politicians.
The drama continued last week at a Home Affairs Committee when Lord John Mann – the independent antisemitism advisor to the UK government – highlighted issues with the West Midlands leaked intelligence report.
Claims included allegations of violence against Muslims
Some of the more truth-bending claims in the report included that, during a match between Tel Aviv and Ajax in Amsterdam in 2024, Maccabi fans threw “innocent members of the public into the river,” that between 500 and 600 fans “intentionally targeted Muslim communities,” and that 5,000 police officers were deployed in response.
Sebastian Meijer, a spokesman for the Amsterdam division, however said hat he did not recognize the West Midlands’ police finding that the Israelis were “highly organized, skilled fighters with a serious desire and will to fight with police and opposing groups,” and that in the only known case of a man thrown in the river, the victim was a Maccabi Tel Aviv fan.
Bending the truth further, the report claimed that “the most recent match Maccabi played in the UK was against West Ham in the Europa League on November 9, 2023. It marked Maccabi Tel Aviv’s last competitive appearance on UK soil to date.” However, such a match never took place. West Ham has, in fact, never played Maccabi and on that day was playing against a Greek team.
When called to testify about his decision-making, West Midlands Police Chief Constable Craig Guildford stood by his intelligence gathering and the ban.
Instead of apologizing for the false information, he referred to the West Ham statement as an honest error in the “social media scraping” process (“My preparation was wrong, but that doesn’t mean the document was wrong”), and suggested that the Dutch police statements were made under duress.
While Guilford glossed over the inclusion of a fictitious match in an intelligence report, it raises the question of what else in the report was factual.
Why is the police acquiring their intelligence from social media, rather than, say, speaking to the football clubs involved?
And more importantly, was a wider campaign behind the creation of such a shoddy intelligence dossier?
It is worth saying that the report was never meant to be made public and was, in fact, leaked. Nevertheless, it raises serious concerns, given that this intelligence was used to ban Jewish fans from a football match.
Why, also, in an era of accountability, is a police officer shifting the blame elsewhere?
And Guilford is not the only one who has doubled down on the decision to ban the fans. Multiple politicians have doggedly refused to accept any criticism of the decision, the police, or others. A notable example is passionately anti-Israel Birmingham MP Ayoub Khan, who has been posting almost exclusively about the matter for the last few days.
“No matter how much you try to spin the facts, you can’t deny the actions of vile racist thugs of the Maccabi Tel Aviv FC shown on social media,” he wrote. And, “Every Brit knows that the British police would not be lying for foreign hooligans!”
“We’re just pretending the prime minister and the entire opposition didn’t try to pile on the political pressure,” he added.
Why does an elected official care so deeply about this case? And why, despite evidence coming to light, is Kahn so set on defending the decision of the police? Not just the police’s decision, but also incorrect facts.
On December 2, Khan posted on X/Twitter, “It has been revealed that, despite misleading media narratives, there was a coordinated, MILITARISTIC MUSLIM HUNT in Amsterdam by organized Maccabi racist thugs the night before the game!”
However, the Dutch police confirmed that this never happened.
Let’s not forget who the MP was who called for the ban from the start: Kahn. And not just that match: He continues to call for a blanket ban on all Israeli teams.
One must ask what say the MP had over the decision?
It is a worrying situation for the United Kingdom if its police are using bogus intelligence to make significant decisions, and it is even more worrying that politicians with strong anti-Israel agendas may have been part of the puzzle.