UK cops used lies to justify banning Israeli fans: Dutch police chief

A recent report revealed that British authorities misrepresented Dutch police findings to justify a sweeping ban on Israeli spectators at a soccer match.

By World Israel News Staff

Dutch police have cast doubt on key claims made by British authorities to justify banning Israeli soccer fans from a recent match, saying that allegations about Israeli supporters’ behavior at a previous game in the Netherlands were false.

In October, Aston Villa announced that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned from attending an international match in Birmingham between the two teams. British police justified the sweeping and unprecedented ban by alleging that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans had been violent and unruly during a match against Ajax in the Netherlands last November.

However, according to a report in the Sunday Times, the information cited by British police — purportedly based on Dutch police assessments — was highly inaccurate.

One of the more questionable claims used to support the ban alleged that 200 Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters were “linked” to the IDF, making them a supposed threat. Amsterdam police spokesman Sebastiaan Meijer told the Sunday Times that, due to Israel’s mandatory conscription, the assertion was essentially absurd, because nearly every young Israeli man has served in the IDF.

Meijer also emphasized that British police would not have access to intelligence about individual fans or the details of their military service. “Most young men in Israel have some connection to the IDF, but we did not investigate it and we don’t have a number for that. Of course not. I read [the allegation]. I was really surprised,” he said.

British police also claimed that Israeli fans had “thrown innocent members of the public into” a river. But Meijer said the only person thrown into an Amsterdam canal was an Israeli fan, who was assaulted by local Muslims and forced to say “Free Palestine” before being allowed to climb out of the freezing water.

Further errors appeared in the British justification for the ban on Israeli spectators, including an assertion that Dutch police deployed 5,000 officers to contain clashes that broke out around the time of the match. In reality, only 1,200 officers were on the scene, Meijer said.

The British police report also misrepresented the violence itself, suggesting Israeli fans instigated the clashes. While a small number were involved in minor skirmishes, local Muslims launched a coordinated assault on Israeli supporters, including families and women. The incident was later described as a modern-day “pogrom” against Israeli Jewish visitors to the European city.