If you hadn’t been paying attention to politics, you might have found it weird how the British government reacted to the ban of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from the upcoming UEFA Super League match with Aston Villa.
If you had heard the club had acted after intelligence from police showed a high risk of violence from fans with a reputation for racism and violence, you might have found it even weirder.
If you joined the dots and realised our ministers were keen for Russian teams to be excluded from sports competitions, due to the Ukraine war, but are not applying those same standards to Israeli football clubs, you would surely find it baffling, but only if you had not been paying attention...
Those of us who have been paying attention know that when Israel says “jump”, the British government says “how high?” You will not find a clearer example of this than Lisa Nandy’s recent speech in parliament in which she made a passionate defence of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans while throwing British fans under a bus.
Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have just been banned from the Tel Aviv derby for throwing pyrotechnics and smoke bombs and engaging in violent acts that left 13 injured, including three police officers. Those fans regularly chant the most hideously racist things about killing children and raping women, and they were responsible for outrageous violence in Amsterdam last year.
It should surely be a no-brainer for a British politician to support a ban on such violent and racist fans. After all, our politicians are not slow to condemn our own fans when they misbehave. But Lisa Nandy did not condemn Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, she did the very opposite...
Zarah Sultana stood up in parliament and laid out everything I have just laid out above, saying:
Maccabi Tel Aviv’s racist fan hooliganism cannot be separated from Israeli militarism. Many of these fans are active or former soldiers who have taken part in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They should be investigated for war crimes the moment they set foot on British soil, not welcomed into our stadiums. And let’s be clear, this Labour government is no innocent bystander. It has armed Israel’s genocide, it has provided diplomatic cover, and it has shamefully denied that genocide is even taking place. So I ask the minister, is there anything this Labour government won’t do to defend the genocidal apartheid state of Israel?
The honest answer would have been “none whatsoever”.
Nandy’s response was a vague and barely quotable word salad, in which she implied that Sultana was being antisemitic by conflating being Jewish with being Israeli. Only Sultana did not do that, Nandy did!
Nandy’s logic would be the equivalent of saying it was racist to exclude apartheid South Africa’s teams from sports competitions - something we did for many years!
It somehow got worse.
Nandy resorted to outright lying to defend Maccabi Tel Aviv’s violent and racist fans. She insisted this is the first time since the early 2000s that such action has been taken against away fans, and yet, this is not exactly true. Napoli fans were banned from Rangers in 2021, Legia Warsaw fans were banned from Aston Villa in 2023, and Rangers fans were banned from Celtic in 2025.
I don’t remember passionate defences for the violent fans from Lisa Nandy in those cases, do you? Fortunately, Oisin has made a passionate call out of Aston Villa’s anti-Polish racism in 2023. Someone had to do it...
You see how stupid Nandy sounds yet? Aside from anything else, Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have just been banned from a game in their own city! Is that antisemitic too? Or is it only antisemitic when we want British fans to be afforded the same safety as Israeli fans?
Absurdly, Nandy is moving heaven and earth to accommodate Maccabi Tel Aviv’s fans:
We will find the resources that need to be made available, once the West Midlands police has come forward with the risk assessment.
In other words, Nandy has not seen a risk assessment, but she has already made up her mind. How is that rational?
If you don’t follow football, you should understand that when a team has a problem with hooliganism, those hooligans are the most fanatical fans, and much more likely to attend away games. When Nandy moves heaven and earth to accommodate such fans, she will be accommodating those hooligans, and any violence will be on her and the Labour government.
Now you must ask why politicians like Lisa Nandy are determined to bend over backwards for Israeli football hooligans. You must ask why she puts the feelings of violent racists before the physical safety of our people. You must ask why our politicians are still sending weapons to a genocidal state. The problem is that as soon as you ask those questions, you will be accused of antisemitism before you have even come up with the answer.
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Does the Labour Party think the entire British public is brain dead?
Unfortunately these incidents are distractions. Israel has not released all Palestinian prisoners even though they discuss the returned Israelis day and night. Fighting is continuing as I write. These are the real problems and don't get side--tracked.