Fans of the Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv have been barred from attending a Europa League game against Aston Villa in the United Kingdom next month because of security concerns, the English club said.
Birmingham City’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) – the body responsible for issuing safety certificates for matches at Villa Park, where the game is to be played – informed Aston Villa that Maccabi Tel Aviv away fans will not be permitted to attend.
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Aston Villa confirmed in a statement on Thursday that the “club has been informed that no away fans may attend the UEFA Europa League match with Maccabi Tel Aviv on Thursday, November 6, following an instruction from the Safety Advisory Group”.
“Police have advised the SAG that they have public safety concerns outside the stadium bowl and the ability to deal with any potential protests on the night,” the club said.
West Midlands Police said they had classified the match as high risk based on “current intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 UEFA Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam”.
“Based on our professional judgement, we believe this measure will help mitigate risks to public safety,” the police force said.
Last year’s clashes in Amsterdam between pro-Palestinian supporters and Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv led to dozens of arrests and five people imprisoned.
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While accusations of anti-Semitic attacks quickly circulated following the clashes in Amsterdam on November 6 and 7, reports soon emerged of Israeli fans provoking the violence and of rampaging through the Dutch capital, assaulting residents, destroying symbols of Palestinian solidarity and chanting racist and genocidal slogans against Palestinians and Arabs.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, and the London-based Jewish Leadership Council have all criticised the ban.
Starmer said in a post on social media that the ban was “the wrong decision”.
“The role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation,” he said.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Saar described the ban as a “shameful decision” and called on authorities in the UK to “reverse this coward decision”.
The Jewish Leadership Council said it was “perverse that away fans should be banned from a football match because West Midlands Police can’t guarantee their safety”.
“Aston Villa should face the consequences of this decision and the match should be played behind closed doors,” the organisation added in a statement.
The move to ban away fans from the fixture in Birmingham comes amid growing calls to ban Israeli football teams from international competition over Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“We collected and verified extensive evidence of this systematic instrumentalisation of football culture in genocide,” Ashish Prashar – a campaign director at Game Over Israel, which has been pushing to ban Israel from FIFA and UEFA, told Al Jazeera. “This report integrates findings — from stadium racism, to assaults in Europe, to soldiers turning genocide into football propaganda — and demonstrates why Israel’s place in global sport is indefensible.”
More than 30 legal experts wrote earlier this month to UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin, saying that banning Israel from competitions was “imperative”, citing a report by United Nations investigators that confirmed Israel is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians.
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The signatories highlighted the damage that Israel is inflicting on the sport and athletes in Gaza.
“These acts have decimated an entire generation of athletes, eroding the fabric of Palestinian sport,” the experts said.
“The failure of the Israel Football Association (IFA) to challenge these violations implicates it in this system of oppression, rendering its participation in UEFA competitions untenable,” they said.
“UEFA must not be complicit in sports-washing such flagrant breaches of international law, including but not limited to the act of genocide,” they added.
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