Wednesday briefing: Making sense of the Maccabi Tel Aviv saga, where law and disorder fumbled with fandom
Good morning. In the end, the decision that capped the controversy over the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending their away match against Aston Villa was taken not in Birmingham, or even Westminster – but Tel Aviv. On Monday night, a statement on the team’s website said the club would be declining any allocation even if the ban was reversed. Because of “hate-filled falsehoods”, it added, “a toxic atmosphere has been created, which makes the safety of our fans wishing to attend very much in doubt”. That means that the government’s efforts to make their attendance possible are now academic. But it also heads off a potential nightmare scenario for those in the UK who have decried the ban: Maccabi fans being allowed to attend, and serious disorder breaking out as a result. With a few exceptions, there was a broad consensus in British politics that the local authority’s decision was wrong. But much of the discussion has ignored the rational case for that decision – which was taken in response to some of the worst football-related violence of recent years. Today’s newsletter attempts to unpick a tortuous political saga where fandom and antisemitism once again became a political football. Here are the headlines. Five big stories UK news | Family courts will no longer work on the presumption that having contact with both parents is in the best interests of a child, in a landmark change that domestic abuse campaigners have said “will save so many children’s lives”. Ukraine | Plans to hold a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Budapest have been put on hold as Ukraine and its European allies rallied in pushing for a ceasefire without territorial concessions from Kyiv. Last night, Russian drones and missiles killed two people in Kyiv and damaged key energy facilities. Covid inquiry | Boris Johnson has rejected claims that his government failed to prepare for school closures at the outbreak of the pandemic, telling the Covid-19 inquiry that it would be “amazing” if the Department for Education (DfE) had not realised that plans were needed. Environment | Coal use hit a record high around the world last year despite efforts to switch to clean energy, imperilling the world’s attempts to rein in global heating, according to the annual State of Climate Action report published on Wednesday. Business | Almost half a million workers are to receive a pay boost after it was announced that the real living wage paid voluntarily by 16,000 UK companies will rise to £13.45 an hour in April. In depth: The mixed messages and repercussions of a controversy where all is not as it seems
The Maccabi statement did not identify what finally led the club to decline any offer of tickets that might be forthcoming. But one plausible claim reported yesterday underlines what a toxic mess the situation has become: according to Jewish News, the final straw was Tommy Robinson’s promise to attend the match. A source said: “With Robinson’s supporters potentially posing as Maccabi fans on the streets of Birmingham, we concluded that the risk had become unacceptable.” In other words, even Maccabi recognised that an extremist intervention could put innocent fans at risk. Views will vary on whether that is the fault of those who ordered a ban in the first place, or those who sought to reverse a decision taken by those closest to the risk. We can, at least, try to make sense of how we got here. *** Why was the ban put in place? The decision was taken by Birmingham’s safety advisory group, which is responsible for issuing safety certificates for football matches, with the support of West Midlands police and the UK football policing unit. After the UK-wide body provided West Mids police with access to details of a previous outbreak of trouble in Amsterdam involving Maccabi fans (pictured above), the local force classified the fixture as high risk. Primarily on the basis of that evidence, the safety advisory group – which includes police representatives, event organisers, local authority officials and emergency planners – decided to ban Maccabi fans from attending. Vikram Dodd has a detailed report on the basis of the decision, which makes clear that it was largely the result of concerns about Maccabi fans – but also failed to consider that it might be interpreted as a surrender to antisemitism. Every English Westminster party other than the Greens opposed the decision, and the government, without directly overruling the safety advisory group, said it was working to make resources available to reverse it. Keir Starmer called the decision wrong and said “the role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game”. That drew criticism from some with experience of similar issues, with Professor Lucy Easthope, an expert in emergency planning, warning of the appearance of interference, and saying that the prime minister had shown “terrible instincts”. Nazir Afzal, former chief executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, said: “When it comes to football related violence, the police – not politicians, not armchair pundits – know what’s safe and what isn’t.” *** Whose safety was at issue? One claim made repeatedly in the days since the decision was announced is the idea that Jewish Maccabi fans have been banned for their own safety. In the Spectator, Brendan O’Neill characterised the decision as “punishment of Maccabi fans to ‘save them’ from Brits who hate the Jewish homeland”. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said that it “sends a horrendous and shameful message: there are parts of Britain where Jews simply cannot go”. In parliament, the Labour MP Graham Stringer said: “It would be a disgrace and a shame if this country could not guarantee the security of a group of Jewish fans, coming from Israel, walking down our streets.” But those arguments seriously oversimplify the apparent basis of the ban. The trouble in Amsterdam, which has a large Muslim population, was initially characterised as an unprovoked antisemitic attack on Israeli fans. But the full picture that emerged suggested that the trouble had involved Maccabi fans attacking Muslims in the city, chanting things like “Why is there no school in Gaza? There are no children left there,” and instigating some of the earliest confrontations. There were also plainly antisemitic elements on the other side, including a call for a “Jew hunt” and what the mayor described as “antisemitic hit-and-run assaults” that drew no distinction between hooligans and ordinary fans. (We covered this at length in the newsletter last November.) Taken as a whole, the picture presented by this and other past incidents suggests that ordinary Jewish fans of Maccabi could be at risk should trouble arise in Birmingham, an obviously intolerable outcome – but that Maccabi’s hooligan element have a history of instigating disorder, and that nearby residents and fans, including members of Birmingham’s large Muslim community, would plausibly be at risk from them. *** What else do we know about Maccabi’s ‘Fanatic’ element?
In that First Edition from last year, James Montague – an expert on football hooliganism – provided a useful explanation of the history of the “Fanatics”, the subset of Maccabi’s organised “Ultra” support who are violent. Traditionally, he said, “you have a very highly developed, very political culture” among Israeli club fanbases. Maccabi once fell in the middle of that spectrum, but that has shifted in recent years. Montague went on: You have to understand that as the politics of Israel changes, so do the politics of the Ultras. They are organised young men, many of whom have been in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] because of conscription, and what they say and chant tracks where the country is.’ As a result, he said, there is a much stronger ultra-nationalist element within the Maccabi fanbase today. ‘That isn’t something about the club, per se. It’s something about how Israel is changing.’ In recent years, evidence has mounted of that shift. In Athens last year, Maccabi fans beat a man carrying a Palestinian flag ahead of their match against Olympiacos. They fought local residents in Cyprus in 2023 before a match against AEK Larnaca. A match against Turkish side Beşiktaş was relocated to Hungary, where it was played behind closed doors, because of fears of disorder. And there is an extensive history of racist chanting against Arabs. The chaos in Amsterdam was the most extreme example of that tendency. The Tel Aviv derby between Hapoel and Maccabi was called off on Sunday because of rioting and what Israeli police described as “risks to human life”. Ironically, there is good evidence that rather than being violence instigated by either fanbase, that disorder was the product of a growing tendency among Israeli police to target fans. This excellent Middle East Eye report has more on that. *** Were there other factors in the outcry over the ban? In a statement to the House of Commons, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, sought to put the government’s opposition to the decision in a broader context. The government’s stance, she said, was “set against a backdrop of rising antisemitism in this country and across the world, and of an attack on a synagogue in Manchester in which two innocent men were killed”. Supporters of that argument say that if the issue is whether the local police force has sufficient resources, they should be provided by central government, which Nandy said would be made available. Some have also argued that this is an attempt to introduce by the back door a ban on Israeli teams playing internationally: a petition promoted by the independent local MP Ayoub Khan before the decision was made said that “hosting such teams sends a message of normalisation and indifference to mass atrocities”. Councillors Waseem Zaffar and Mumtaz Hussain, who sit on the safety advisory group, have made the same argument. Fifa has come under pressure to institute such a ban given that some Israeli teams appear to be in breach of its rules against professional sides playing on occupied territory. Meanwhile, the Guardian’s Jonathan Liew noted the dizzying contortions that have led to “choosing to stand with the far-right foreign football hooligan against the local police force” – but also raised the “increasingly sinister securitisation of football fans at matches”. But as his piece suggests, it is possible to recognise that pattern and view the Maccabi decision as being based on a specific threat assessment, rather than evidence of a local authority cowed by antisemitism. *** Is there a precedent for this decision? Another claim repeated a lot in recent days – including from Nandy herself – is that this is an unprecedented step. But while such decisions are fairly unusual, it isn’t really accurate to say this is a unique case. Across the continent, there are numerous recent cases of away fans being banned from European fixtures. Feyenoord fans were banned from a game against Roma in Rome last year; Galatasaray fans were banned from Leverkusen in February; Benfica fans were banned from Marseille in April; Eintracht Frankfurt fans have been banned from attending next month’s match against Napoli. There are other examples besides. In England, Uefa banned Eintracht Frankfurt fans from Arsenal in 2019, and Red Star Belgrade fans from Tottenham in the same year. And in 2023, after violent clashes before Legia Warsaw’s match with Aston Villa, West Midlands police denied entry to all away supporters. What is true is that the Legia Warsaw case is the only recent example of a UK local authority banning away fans because of the risk of violence – and was a decision taken live, rather than pre-emptively. But it doesn’t follow that the Maccabi decision is evidence of a different analysis. Partly, it’s because such serious threats are relatively rare; and partly, it’s because where Uefa has made a decision, there is no reason for the local authority to act. What else we’ve been reading
This moving and intimate photo essay about the “hidden victims” of the opioid crisis – those who lived after overdosing, such as JB Jarrett, above – will stay with me for a long time. Aamna This interactive offers a compelling, and utterly bleak, insight into the influence of the manosphere. One striking detail: misogynistic messages are the most dangerous result, but the thing that draws boys and young men in are the descriptions of financial success. Archie Sanae Takaichi has made history by becoming Japan’s first female prime minister. What plans does she have for a country whose population is ageing and shrinking faster than predicted? The answer apparently lies with Margaret Thatcher. Aamna Would you like a “Tamagotchi with a soul”? Alarming as this sounds, it’s also the basis of the Friend, a wearable AI device that’s meant to be a companion in lonely moments. Madeleine Agger spent a week with one, and it’s a relief to learn it often seemed like “the most boring person at a party”. Archie Is Instagram a safe place for teens? The app has introduced new safety features, but culture journalist Tayo Bero is, rightly, unconvinced. Aamna Sport
Football | Two goals for Viktor Gyökeres added a gloss to Arsenal’s victory over Atlético Madrid, helping the Gunners to a 4-0 win. In the night’s other Champions League fixtures, Manchester City beat Villarreal 2-0 and Newcastle beat Benfica 3-0. Rugby | England’s Emily Scarratt has announced her retirement from rugby after a 17-year international career. The two-time World Cup winner said in a statement the “time feels right to step away”. Basketball | Looking forward to the return of the NBA, which tipped off last night? Check out this handy Guardian guide to the players, teams and narratives to watch as the season unfolds. The front pages
The Guardian’s page one splash is “Family law shift hailed as victory for children facing domestic abuse”. The Times has “Chancellor plans £2bn tax raid on middle class” and the i paper runs with “Benefits set to rise by 4% as problems pile up for Reeves”. “Grooming gangs inquiry in chaos” – that’s the Mail while the Telegraph covers (the lack of) Ukraine developments: “Putin defies Trump as peace talks collapse”. “Boris: Our lockdowns failed kids” – that’s former PM Johnson at the Covid inquiry, in the Metro. The Mirror promotes its Pride of Britain awards under the headline “Britain isn’t broken, you are all amazing”. Keir Starmer is shown with recipients. “Help ensure Sasha’s evil killer stays inside prison” – that’s the Daily Express wanting the deadline scrapped for appeals against lenient sentences. “Bailey hears ‘alarm bells’ over private credit after big US corporate failures” – read that one in the Financial Times. Today in Focus
AI slop: Is the internet about to get even worse? Tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker analyses the rise and rise of AI-generated video, and what it will mean for the internet and beyond. Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron
The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Toad patrol groups are popping up across the UK to protect the beloved stalwart of the British countryside. The population has almost halved since 1985, but thanks to 274 dedicated patrol groups, their fortunes may slowly start to turn around. This decline is in part due to traffic: toads travel a fair distance from where they have been hibernating (often woodland ) towards a large pond to mate. This often means travelling across country roads, but many don’t make it. It is estimated several hundred thousand toads are killed on UK roads every year. Enter toad patrol groups, who carry toads across roads in buckets, as well as counting the number (dead and alive) they find. These groups also lobby for other protection measures, such as road closures and underground wildlife tunnels. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
