Banning Israeli Soccer Fans to "Ease Tensions"

"Sports entertainment events should be enjoyed by all, regardless of their race, ethnicity and background."

"But there are rare instances where the political dynamics surrounding such spectacles cannot be ignored and where drastic action must be taken to ensure the safety of fans, players, staff and local residents."

"Now is the time to ease tensions, set aside political differences and focus on the football once more."

Birmingham MP Ayoub Khan 

Maccabi Tel Aviv will not accept ticket allocations from Aston Villa since its fans have been blocked from entry to the soccer match. Getty Images

 

Islamists, comfortable in their achieved berths within Western nations, where they quickly absorbed the lessons of democratic-liberal values and skillfully and creatively adapted their own stealth approaches to undermining those very values, learned to softly spout agreement in the Western social contract to demonstrate their upholding of those values, while subtly perverting them to their own cause. 

 

After carefully making certain it would be understood that the values of equality and democracy were his own, Birmingham MP Ayoub Khan turned then to assuring his listeners that his only concerns were the safety and security of all concerned, and with that in mind, it was a necessary requirement to shut out a certain segment of society for the good of all. Cementing his sanctimony with a call for unity, and a cheery end note of enjoying sport events after eliminating distractions.

 

Those distractions just happening to be the presence of Jews. Jews from abroad, moreover, Israelis who planned to leave Israel on a sport-holiday in London to cheer on their team. But just as Jews carrying Israeli flags or wearing yarmulkes or star-of-David necklaces are informed by the Metropolitan Police that their presence is a goad to pro-Palestinian/Pro-Hamas/anti-Israel protesters who can be galvanized into violence at sighting them and they must either voluntarily leave or be 'escorted' away (i.e. arrested), the presence of Israeli fans at a sport event to cheer on their national team represents a social danger.

 

Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans in Amsterdam in November   AFP/Getty Images

 

While antisemitism rages its incoherent hatred against Jews in Britain as a follow-up to the Hamas mass atrocity in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 -- and the Israeli military's incursion into Gaza, to settle with Hamas terrorism -- with never-ending marches, protests and demonstrations against Israel, Jews mounting counter-protests fail to receive the protection that is extended by police to the committed Jew-hating contingent represented by the U.K.'s Muslim population. 

 

West Midlands Police in Birmingham classified a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Aston Villa on November 6 as 'high risk'.  Citing safety as the rationale, the decision was made to disallow fans of the Tel Aviv team to the game. The Jewish Leadership Council noted: "It is perverse that away fans should be banned from a football match because West Midlands Police can't guarantee their safety".

 

But the simple fact is that the police face violence when pro-Hamas groups assemble. Those groups feel entitled to march, to pray en masse in public spaces stopping foot and vehicular traffic, that it is their right to chant slogans of killing Jews and sending them back to  Poland and shouting for a 'Final Solution'. They want to 'globalize the Intifada', and see Israel disappear, with 'Palestine' rising 'from the river to the sea'. They know they can smash and pillage in their rage, and there will be few consequences.

 

The classification by police as a danger best avoided, saw the local Birmingham council's Safety Advisory Group informing Aston Villa that no foreign (Israeli) fans would be permitted to attend the sport event. Motivated by the memory and fear of race riots in the district of Handsworth, the very prospect of violence erupting at a nearby sport event motivates West Midlands Police to opt for avoidance irrespective of the cost in a free and democratic society.

 

Although Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared that the banning of Jewish fans was "wrong" and that "we will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets", he and his government have done just that: tolerated antisemitism on the streets of Britain. That toleration has gone a long way to instilling confidence in the Muslim contingent of the U.K., prompting them to generate social instability, threats against British Jews, and the commission of criminal civic acts. 

 

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has pledged the government will "find the resources" to allow Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans to attend a match in Birmingham next month. U.K. Parliament

 

An Old Story Repeated: Jews Hunted and Beaten

"To all in Canada bemoaning the horrific violence in Amsterdam last night, where Jews were hunted down and beaten in a modern day pogrom: please wake up!"

"This terrifying display is but a stone's throw from the vile scenes of Jew hatred we've witnessed here at home."

"Whether in Amsterdam, Toronto or Montreal, when the extremist mobs scream they want to 'Globalize the Intifada' they mean it."

[This is the] disturbing reality of Jewish life in 2024. And if nothing is done to address the scourge of antisemitism targeting our community, it won't be long before Amsterdam becomes Montreal or Toronto following one of the usual weekly pro-terror demonstrations."

Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

"[In Telegram groups] there is talk of people going on a Jew hunt."

That is so shocking and so despicable that I still cannot fathom it."

"[Fans were] "attacked, abused and pelted with fireworks."

"My heart goes out to the victims and to their families here and in Israel as well."

 "I am deeply ashamed of the behaviour that unfolded. On Telegram [messaging] groups people talked of going to hunt down Jews. It's so terrible I can't find the words for it."

"[Taxi drivers had been involved in the attacks, after the head of the Netherlands' Central Jewish Committee said they had] moved in groups and cornered their targets".

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema

Riot police had to put up a security cordon around a bus carrying Israeli supporters    EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

 

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs expressed shock and outrage at social media views of attacks in the Netherlands' capital city against a visiting Israeli soccer team and their fans, by mobs of Muslim youth on scooters and on foot, responding to Instagram incitement, in all likelihood the work of Samidoun in the Netherlands. Taxi drivers appear to have listened in on the channel and lent themselves to the enterprise of hunting down Jews and beating them. One video of the sorry affair showed a young Israeli man beaten unconscious by a group of masked men.

Israeli officials said fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team were attacked following the game against Ajax Amsterdam on Thursday.   IsraelinUSA/X

 In Amsterdam, with its large demographic of Muslim immigrants, the Israel-Gaza war that the Hamas invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023 brought to a full conflict in reprisal against the sadistic savagery of thousands of Hamas terrorists, along with those of Islamic Jihad, the PLFP and ordinary Gazan Palestinians committing mass murder, rape, mutilation and hostage-taking of mostly Israeli civilians living in border communities, brought rising tensions. As it did elsewhere throughout Europe and North America.

Leading to constant pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rallies that proclaimed their pride in the Hamas noble enterprise of rape, murder and kidnapping of infants and the elderly Jews who became their victims. Those rallies and protests made it clear that Israel was at fault, according to the terrorist-admirers, that the Palestinian cause of claiming sole ownership of Judaic ancestral geography in the Middle East denied by the presence of a re-emerged State of Israel had its consequences, and in the interests of liberation from 'occupation', mass murder and rape and mutilation were but gentle rebukes.

"Hooligan" supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv involved themselves in clashes late Thursday, in Amsterdam, according to unbiased reports by the Dutch media outlet RTL. Fights with anti-Israel groups  and an assault on a taxi driver ended with a confrontation with other taxi drivers. Who all just happened to be Muslim immigrants to Holland. Bringing with them their virulent hatred of Jews and just incidentally their contempt for the values and justice system of the West. 

Amsterdam civil authorities had placed a ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations in proximity to the sport stadium. Video footage showed a large crowd of Israeli fans chanting anti-Arab slogs en route to the game. That spurred a challenge and soon afterward youths on scooters and on foot began cruising the city searching for Israeli fans. Finding them, the gangs punched and kicked them, then fled to evade the police. 

This is a familiar story, one reflected in Toronto where gangs of pro-Hamas and often masked, groups march into Jewish neighbourhoods to harass and threaten the residents, shouting invective and mocking Jewish-Canadians as colonialists and imperialists whose brethren in Israel have criminally claimed possession of Palestinian land as their own. The Israeli military, they claim, is on a sweeping campaign of eliminating Palestinians through genocidal warfare. 'Globalize the intifada' is a common refrain.

 

Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters hold up a banner about kidnapped hostages Credit: Hollandse Hoogte/Shutterstock

 

In very fact, the 'intifada' has been globalized. Toronto's Mayor Olivia Chow has been appealed to by Jewish groups to enforce the law and have the Toronto Police Services break up the illegal marches and protect Jewish-Canadian citizens' security. An appeal that has been studiously ignored. Jews in Canada view what has occurred in the Netherlands with horror and an instinctive fear that what occurred there will before long be repeated in Canada.

And despite that real fear, along with the very real prospect of the aggressive demonstrations launched continually by 'pro-Palestinian' groups sympathetic to the cause of destroying Israel, launching physical violence against Jews, as the fervor for hunting down Jews where they live escalates, the primary federal authority is content with no response, despite the flouting of laws against such action and the failure of law enforcement to respond to illegal actions.

 

Jews in Canada view with anxiety the agonizing days, weeks and months left before their current Liberal-led Justin Trudeau government will be voted out of office by a fed-up electorate, and the official opposition Conservatives gain government before they can hope for relief from the nightmare that has descended upon them as loyal Canadians. 

 

"Jews are being hunted in Europe days before the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Never again is now" --posted Conservative Leader and prime-minister-in-waiting, Pierre Poilievre, who spoke of the Amsterdam brutality against Jews as 'abhorrent'.

 

Demonstrators run with Palestinian flags in Amsterdam ahead of the match on Thursday.

Jeroen Jumelet/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock