A BBC News website report that was originally published on October 16th under the title “Wrong to stop Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending Aston Villa match, says PM” appeared on the site’s ‘Middle East’ page the following day under the amended headline “Home Office told last week of potential Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban, police unit says”.
Credited to Maia Davies and Dearbail Jordan, that article relates to the October 16th announcement of a ban on Israeli football fans attending a match in Birmingham that was scheduled in August and tickets for which have been on sale since September.
The BBC’s report informs readers that:
“On Thursday, Aston Villa said the city’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) – which advises the council on whether to issue safety certificates – decided that fans of the Israeli club should not be permitted to attend the Europa League fixture on 6 November.”
And:
“Chaired by Birmingham City Council’s head of resilience, the Safety Advisory Group is made up of officials from the local authority, emergency responders – including the police – and event organisers.
According to the council website, its role is to offer advice and guidance regarding public health and safety at events, including to “reduce any negative impact”, but it isn’t able to approve or reject them.
The power to issue safety certificates, which can come with conditions, ultimately lies with local councils. It is illegal for sporting events to go ahead without one in grounds with more than 10,000 spectators.
A Birmingham City Council spokesperson said a meeting had been held with “all relevant partners to assess safety arrangements” for the fixture.
“Following a thorough review, concerns were raised regarding public safety if away fans attend the match, by the police,” they added. “As a result, a collective decision was made to restrict away fan attendance.””
The BBC’s report does not however tell readers that “the council website” does not name the members of that ‘Safety Advisory Group’. BBC audiences are not told that one Birmingham councillor who claims to be a member of such a group had already publicly stated last month that he intended to boycott the match, citing claims of ‘genocide’ (which he has also promoted on social media), ‘starvation’, ‘torture’ and ‘war crimes’. The same councillor had been “reminded of his responsibilities” by the Labour Party in 2016 after calling for a boycott of Israel.
Davies and Jordan’s report is particularly notable for its uncritical amplification of misleading claims concerning incidents in Amsterdam in November 2024. [emphasis added]
“On Thursday, West Midlands Police said it had classified the fixture as “high risk” based on current intelligence and previous incidents, including “violent clashes and hate crime offences” between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv fans before a match in Amsterdam in November 2024.
More than 60 people were arrested over the violence, which city officials described as a “toxic combination of antisemitism, hooliganism, and anger” over the war in Gaza, Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East.”
And:
“Ayoub Khan, an independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr who campaigned on a pro-Gaza platform in last year’s general election, had pushed for the match to be cancelled due to safety concerns and welcomed Thursday’s decision.
He told BBC Newsnight the prime minister “should stay out of operational matters” and leave it to local authorities. […]
“But we cannot conflate antisemitism when we look at what some of these fans did in Amsterdam in 2024. The vile chants of racism and hatred, the chants that there are no schools left in Gaza because there are no children left in Gaza.”
Andrew Fox, honorary president of Aston Villa’s Jewish Villans supporters’ club, said he thought Khan’s comments on Amsterdam were “shameful”, describing what happened there as a “premeditated Jew hunt”.”
Davies and Jordan however refrain from telling BBC audiences in their own words that, as found by official inquires into the attacks on Israeli fans, they were indeed coordinated in advance.
Neither do they clarify that Ayoub Khan (who, as the BBC knows, was referred to antisemitism training by his previous party) had been campaigning – together with his ‘Your Party’ colleague Jeremy Corbyn – since September for the match to be cancelled or relocated or played without spectators or for Israeli fans to be “prevented from entering the UK”, with supposed “safety concerns” listed only after promotion of the ‘genocide’ libel.
Later on in their report, Davies and Jordan also uncritically promote another British politician’s politically motivated ‘apartheid’ smear:
“The Green Party backed the decision and said it was “irresponsible” for Starmer to question a local authority’s safety decision.
Green deputy leader Mothin Ali, said: “These games are taking place in the context of thousands of civilians being killed in Gaza, the illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and the upholding of a system of apartheid.””
Both the Green Party and Khan are quoted in another report on the same story – “Government ‘doing everything’ to overturn Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban” by Euan O’Byrne Mulligan – which appeared on the BBC News website on October 17th.
That report refrains from promoting Mothin Ali’s smears and it does provide readers with a little more understanding of the political motivations behind the campaign run by Khan and Corbyn:
“But the Green Party backed the decision, saying it was “irresponsible” for Starmer to question a local authority’s safety decision.
Ayoub Khan, an independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr who campaigned on a pro-Gaza platform in last year’s general election, said the decision to ban fans was a “moral question” and not just about public safety.
Speaking on BBC’s Politics Midlands, Khan said the rules applied to “Russian football teams which have been banned from European competitions because of their atrocities in Ukraine” should also “apply with Israeli football teams”.
Khan, who has also raised concerns about safety and public order, said that even if additional resources were provided to West Midlands Police, the fans should not be allowed to attend, citing last year’s violence in Amsterdam.”
Interestingly, while the comment from the honorary president of Aston Villa’s Jewish Villans supporters’ club that was included in Davies and Jordan’s report also appeared in the third version of this one, it was removed just over half an hour later.
O’Byrne Mulligan’s report does however present the same misleading portrayal of the November 2024 incidents in Amsterdam:
“On Thursday, West Midlands Police said it had classified the fixture as “high risk” based on current intelligence and previous incidents, including “violent clashes and hate crime offences” between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv fans before a match in Amsterdam in November 2024.
More than 60 people were arrested over the violence, which city officials described as a “toxic combination of antisemitism, hooliganism, and anger” over the war in Gaza, Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East.”
As noted by the independent advisor to the UK government on antisemitism, Lord John Mann, there were in fact no violent clashes between Ajax and Maccabi supporters and of the 62 people arrested in Amsterdam, the majority were Dutch.
Nevertheless, the BBC again promoted a distorted portrayal of the November 2024 events in Amsterdam in an uncredited report by BBC Sport which, notably, also appeared on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page on October 19th.
“On Thursday, West Midlands Police said it supported the ban and classified the fixture as “high risk” based on intelligence and previous incidents.
That included “violent clashes and hate-crime offences that occurred during the 2024 Uefa Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel-Aviv in Amsterdam”, when more than 60 people were arrested.”
The appearance of that report – titled “Tel Aviv derby called off by police after ‘violent riots’” – was clearly not coincidental.
“The Israeli Premier League derby between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv was cancelled before kick-off on Sunday, after what police described as “public disorder and violent riots”. […]
The unrest comes just days after officials in the UK said that Maccabi fans should not be allowed to attend the Europa League match at Aston Villa in England next month because of safety concerns.”
However, the anonymous BBC Sport writer did not inform readers that the fans who threw red and white flares onto the pitch and refused to disperse outside the stadium were – as documented by local sports journalists – the Hapoel Tel Aviv supporters.
As we see, in all three of these reports the BBC distorts the November 2024 events in Amsterdam in a manner that supports the narrative promoted by those intent on having Israeli fans banned from the match in Birmingham for reasons that are not connected to football.
Notably, the BBC had nothing whatsoever to tell readers of any of those three items about the part of the story concerning the Belgium-based, Hizballah-linked NGO called ‘The Hind Rajab Foundation‘ which – according to its own claim – helped compile an anti-Israel dossier “which was handed to West Midlands Police ahead of a Europa League match at Villa Park next month” as part of an organised political campaign supported by a variety of anti-Israel organisations and individuals.
As we have noted here in the past, when the BBC fails to conduct fact checking or to tell its audiences the whole story, it is not engaging in journalism but merely handing a microphone to politically motivated activists.
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BBC NEWS WEBSITE COVERAGE OF ATTACKS ON ISRAELIS IN AMSTERDAM
This morning 21 October 2025 on the BBC Radio 4 “Today program at 8:10 to 88:21there was coverage of this topic – it should be noted that David Bernstein former chairman of Manchester City and Wembley Stadium United put the whole racist anti semitism in perspective and it shows up the foul evil BBC reporting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bernstein_(businessman).
Worth listening to https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/m002l34d