OPINION: From Birmingham to Amsterdam, the threat against Jews is the same
Beneath the veneer of “community harmony,” the UK faces a new reality – mob rule. The consequences of failing to stand against it will be disastrous
So here we are. Two weeks after a terrorist attack led to the murder of two Jews in Manchester, more than 1,000 Jews are being told they shouldn’t come to Birmingham, in order to “mitigate risks to public safety”.
Let us be more specific. On Thursday 6 November, Maccabi Tel Aviv is due to play a UEFA Europa League football fixture against Aston Villa. Yesterday, the Safety Advisory Group for the city of Birmingham advised that fans of the Israeli team would not be permitted to attend the game.
West Midlands Police, the local law enforcement authority, quickly weighed in, saying that it supported the decision, having “actively engaged with a wide range of local partners and community representatives in preparation for this fixture”.
We can have a very good idea of who was among those “local partners and community representatives” – Ayoub Khan, the MP for Birmingham Selly Oaks, where Aston Villa’s stadium, Villa Park is located. Khan was one of the so-called “Gaza Independents” elected last year on a platform, first and foremost, of hostility towards the UK’s relationship with Israel. It was his name – alongside that of Jeremy Corbyn’s of course – on a petition started by Corbyn’s “Peace and Justice project” urging the authorities “to urgently cancel this fixture or take immediate steps to ensure public safety and community harmony.”
Khan, it will not shock you to hear, has welcomed the decision to ban Maccabi fans. “From the moment the match was announced, it was clear that there were latent safety risks that even our capable security and police authorities would not be able to manage”, he oozed. Having succeeded in his mission, he ended his statement with quite breathtaking chutzpah, recommending that “now is the time to ease tensions, set aside political differences and focus on the football once more”.
But before we “focus on the football once more”, maybe we should take just a moment or two to talk about those “latent safety risks”. After all, Messrs Khan and Corbyn talked about them in their letter, describing what they called a “track record of violence by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans: The club’s supporters have previously caused serious disruption and violence during matches abroad, including clashes and riots in Amsterdam. Their arrival in Aston – a diverse and predominantly Muslim community – poses a real risk of tensions within the community and disorder.”
Seeing as these two MPs have so helpfully raised it – as did the police in their statement – let’s talk about what happened in Amsterdam last year.
Last November, Maccabi Tel Aviv played Ajax in Amsterdam. Approximately 1,500 Maccabi fans travelled to the city to watch the fixture. A video was taken of a group of around 40-50 Ultras – hooligans, sadly common to all large football clubs – chanting vile and completely unacceptable things about Arabs in general and Gazans in particular. This, of course, was later reliably misreported by Al Jazeera, the Qatari state mouthpiece, as “hundreds of fans”.
Further videos then circulated, showing other people rampaging in the streets, attacking anyone identified as a Maccabi fan and harassing other people to ‘prove’ that they were not.
“Anti-racist” commentators have sought to present what happened in Amsterdam as some sort of Dutch version of the battle of Cable Street – according to their account, hundreds of racist hooligans (by which they mean Israelis in general) poured into the city, at which point the doughty defenders of local civic pride meted out some tough justice to these denizens of darkness, who after all, must accept group responsibility for the terrible situation in Gaza. The Birmingham ban, therefore, is the right thing because it will prevent these racist hordes from roaming the streets of the UK. Simple!
Except that this is the exact inverse of the truth. We know what happened in Amsterdam, because the trials that came next showed it. Whatsapp groups were set up before Maccabi fans had even travelled to the country. Some members, such as a man identified as ‘Karavan H’, worked in local hotels, and provided information on locations Maccabi fans would be staying at and what flights they were due to take. Others spoke plainly in the groups of what they wanted to do. ‘Rachid O’ asked people to share locations of Jews, writing “I might never get this chance to beat up f***ing Jews again”. This was followed later by “Haven’t any Jews died or been stabbed? In critical condition or in the ICU?” ‘Umutcan A’ talked about a “Joden Jacht” – “Jew hunt”. The violence was organised, premeditated and explicitly antisemitic in nature.
Now, perhaps the police looked at what happened in Amsterdam and determined that there was a significant chance of that happening here, therefore seeking to avoid it. Less than two years ago, after all, West Midlands police experienced what was later described as the worst violence officers had experienced at a match in decades, when a group of Legia Warsaw fans rioted outside Villa Park.
More than 40 Warsaw fans were arrested (more than four times as many than Maccabi fans arrested in Amsterdam). There are certainly precedents for away fans being banned when authorities deem that there will be clashes between them and fans of the opposing team.
But this is something different – and the wide range of condemnations have shown it as such. Because what this is, in fact, is an admission from the police that a significant group of people within the UK’s second city has made it clear it will not countenance the presence of people of a specific nationality – and law enforcement has bowed to this.
Reports are emerging that the government is working to ensure that this decision is overturned – we can only hope this is the case. The alternative is to accept that beneath the veneer of “community harmony” the UK faces a new reality – mob rule. The supporters of those who have brought this country’s city centres to a standstill, week after week, are now suddenly lecturing us all about “public safety”.
If they are not faced down now, they will be impossible to stop in future.
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