Last week, the JC revealed that the mayor of Amsterdam “did not recognise” claims attributed to Dutch officials by WMP that up to 600 Maccabi fans had been responsible for violent and offensive behaviour in the city in November 2024 when the club played Ajax.
Now a Maccabi fan who was one of the dozens of Israeli supporters injured in what was later revealed to be a “Jew hunt” organised on WhatsApp in Amsterdam has told the JC of his shock over the ban from Villa Park. Raz Magnezi said: “I thought when we came back into Israel, that everybody understood what happened there.”
He rejected claims that Maccabi fans’ behaviour justified the ban, particularly in comparison with most other clubs. “Everywhere you have this minority… but they don’t represent anything,” he said.
The 26-year-old was attacked after the match against Ajax, and a driver attempted to run him down on the night. He is now too terrified to leave Israel again.
His brother was also subjected to an attack that left him with an eye injury.
Magnezi is certain what lies behind the ban and the moral inversion that portrays victims as aggressors. “I really think it is antisemitism,” he said.
Maccabi fan Raz Magnezi (right)[Missing Credit]
On Monday, Chief Constable Guildford admitted to MPs on the home affairs select committee that a Maccabi match against West Ham United in November 2023, which was cited in a report by the force to justify the ban, never took place, blaming the error on a social media search.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said that Monday’s session “revealed a shocking series of admissions from West Midlands Police.
“It’s now clear the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from travelling to Birmingham was a capitulation to an extremist mob, backed up by questionable evidence.
“After such a litany of errors, it’s only right that the chief constable resigns.”
Former home secretary Lord Howard, who is also a former Conservative party leader, backed the Tory frontbencher’s call. He told the JC: “Chris Philp is right to call for resignations at West Midlands Police. People up and down the country ought to expect better from their police forces.”
Former attorney general Sir Michael Ellis told the JC that after Monday’s committee appearance “it is clear the police have failed to conduct themselves over this decision in a way that maintains public confidence and community cohesion in the UK.
“In the circumstances I regret to say that the chief constable’s position has become untenable.”
At the committee hearing, Guildford was accused of citing “fictitious matches off the internet” by Lib Dem MP Paul Kohler. Lord Mann, the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism – who was questioned by the committee before Guildford and assistant chief constable Mike O’Hara – described a WMP intelligence report as “inaccurate” and said it “conflates different things”.
The report claimed that several Palestinian flags were pulled down from buildings by Israeli supporters. Mann pointed out that there was only a single reported incident of this.
WMP claimed that their evaluation of the threat posed by Maccabi came from the Dutch. Guildford said that there “was lots of pressure locally on the Dutch police as a result of this match”.
He said: “My very careful conclusion … is that I think initially the Dutch probably underestimated the level of threat and risk,” adding: “The day of the match they deployed an abundance of riot-trained police and I think the whole incident left them in a position whereby they hadn’t anticipated the level of disorder.” One of the disputed figures was that 5,000 police officers were required in Amsterdam for the fixture.
However, Guildford appeared to admit that it was based on an assumption. He told MPs that Amsterdam police had told them that they had deployed 2,000 riot police on the day of the match between Maccabi and Ajax.
“Where the 5,000 comes from is … our professional assumption of our silver commander, which is over the three or four days of the actual event, you’d need about 5,000 police officers.”
Nick Timothy MP said in a post this amounted to an admission that they exaggerated “the number of officers deployed by Dutch police last year to justify the ban on Israeli fans”.
He added: “The figure in their ‘intelligence’ report was just a guess by West Midlands officers.”
WMP were already under significant pressure, including from the prime minister.
Keir Starmer told the JC in an interview last week that he was “very concerned and troubled by what we’re seeing in terms of the intelligence reporting”, adding: “We need to get to the bottom of that to find out exactly what happened.
“I think it’s not just one police force. We need to look consistently across to see what information, what intelligence, is being relied on, and whether it is the right intelligence upon which serious decisions need to be taken. But I am troubled by what we’re all seeing emerging in relation to this particular case.”
The Maccabi fan ban was also raised by Labour peer Lord Cryer in the House of Lords. The former chair of the parliamentary Labour Party told peers last Wednesday: “We have a situation where the police force stands accused of fabricating evidence while under pressure from a bunch of bigots and racists – as well as, it pains me to say, a number of Labour councillors – all with one aim: turning Britain’s second-biggest city into a no-go area for Jewish people; and they actually succeeded in that.”
A JLC spokesperson said: “The evidence that West Midlands Police presented to the home affairs select committee was riddled with inaccuracies. The suggestion that ‘political and press pressure’ somehow forced Dutch police to reassess events in Amsterdam is deeply concerning. Even more troubling was the suggestion that members of the Jewish community wanted Maccabi fans banned. And despite the seriousness of their allegations, West Midlands Police did not seek insight from any club or police force that has hosted Maccabi Tel Aviv fixtures before.
“It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a decision to ban Israeli supporters was taken for reasons unconnected to their conduct, and that the “facts” were cherry-picked to justify a predetermined outcome.”
