Maccabi Tel Aviv lies collapse

JVL Introduction

Owen Jones is on fire in this exposure of the shenanigans behind the Maccabi furore and in placing this story in a wider context.

In a brilliant video presentation he dismantles the government’s case – and lies –  in its campaign to override the decision taken on security grounds to ban Maccabi’s supporters from attending the game against Aston Villa on 6 November, drawing heavily on the leaked police intelligence which underpinned the decision.

A well as exposing it, he scrutinises other self-aggrandising politicians who jumped on the bandwagon, like John Mann and Tim Farron.

He then sets his sights on mainstream media’s generally biased and shabby reporting of the story.

He is particularly acerbic about Sky News, exposing its shameful behaviour in some detail. (Sky has form, following a disgraceful incident where its good report of Maccabi fans running riot in Amsterdam in November 2024 was suddenly pulled a few hours later and replaced, without explanation, with a report claiming the exact opposite of what it had previously said!).

Among other things, Sky interviewed someone called Andrew Fox in his capacity as “honorary president” of  the Aston Villa Jewish Villans Supporters Club. He is in fact a research fellow at the right-wing Henry Jackson Society and is not Jewish.

The only other known member of that society is Eliot Pollack, apparently its chair. What is known about him is that he worked for the Israeli embassy for three years as press secretary and  has been heavily involved in Israel advocacy for over two decades.

Thanks to the work of Gary Spedding which Jones draws on, it is unclear whether this society actually exists as a functioning supporters club at all. Or is it simply a hasbara operation?

Jones concludes;

“Ask yourself this. If our politicians and media outlets are lying about this, what else are they lying about? That’s why it is so important that the rest of us speak up ever louder about the truth.”

Do support Owen Jones and alternative media. Subscribe to his reports here.

RK

The video is subscription only, but you can access it for a £3 one month sub. Below is a rough transcript we have produced. Please check against the video before citing.

Maccabi Tel Aviv lies collapse

Owen Jones, 22 Oct 2025

It was a pack of lies just collapsed in the most spectacular fashion imaginable.

For the last few days you have been lied to and indeed smeared by your own government by leading politicians and by the British media. And now they have been completely and utterly humiliated. In a sane world people would now be resigning in disgrace.

This is about the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in the upcoming game against Aston Villa in Birmingham which led to a firestorm, to put it mildly, with politicians and media outlets claiming this was about antisemitism, to defamed particularly the Muslim community of Birmingham as being dangerous, hateful, racist thugs.

Well, the police intelligence has now been leaked and guess what? It tells us that British ministers went to the House of Commons and made false statements. The intelligence had been reported in the Guardian newspaper. Let me read exactly what is says

Let me carry on reading:

Let me just emphasise that point. It was Maccabi fans considered likely to be the perpetrators of trouble.

The Guardian report that police intelligence concluded the following :

Just absorb what you are hearing here.. The British government was trying to die in a ditch over allowing scores of extreme Maccabi hooligans with a past history of violence and shouting racist taunts to come to a mixed community in Birmingham with a large Muslim population. The British government knew that the Dutch police told them that Maccabi fans had instigated trouble in Amsterdam. They also knew that Maccabi fans had randomly picked Muslims in Amsterdam to attack and yet they were willing to allow these fans to come to a Birmingham community with a large Muslim population.The community impact assessment also noted that supporters of the ban included local Jewish residents.

The Guardian goes on to quote a source with knowledge of the assessment who said the biggest risk was always the extreme Maccabi fans who want to fight.

The paper goes on:

That’s what the source said. There’s a pretty chilling detail given what I just read to you that given there’s no direct flight from Israel to Birmingham, Maccabi fans were likely to travel first to London with trouble consequently spread across the three days these hooligans would have been in Britain.

Apparently the risk was so severe that the government would have to draft in special riot police with at least one thousand five hundred to two thousand riot officers needed with many brought in through mutual aid with an estimated cost of £6 million though the likely cost was projected to be higher. But in the end Maccabi Tel Aviv abiled the government out by announcing they wouldn’t sell tickets for the match.

We should note, by the way, that the truth was always there for anyone who cared.

Even an Israeli newspaper last year which claimed this was a pogrom against Maccabi fans began:

Before we just look at the lies you were fed, just listen to this clarification yesterday from Sky News [you can find the Sky News report embedded in the video]:

“We want to bring you a clarification now related to this story in our breakfast programme on Friday morning when discussing criticism of this decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from the Israeli club’s upcoming fixture with Aston Villa. We incorrectly said that the decision was based solely on the inability of the authorities to guarantee the safety of those fans. But we should also have reflected concerns referenced by the Safety Advisory Group about previous violent clashes involving Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters which were also considered by the group.”

Oh, no biggie then, Oh, just a minor detail, it’s not as though that completely changes the story that they were supposedly reporting on. What Sky News is saying here is that they framed the story around Maccabi Tel Aviv fans being banned on the grounds that the authorities were unable to protect them. This is the same Sky News which interviewed someone they claimed was a Jewish Aston Villa fan called Andrew Fox who, as I covered in a previous video isn’t Jewish at all, is in fact a pro-Israel propagandist working for the militantly pro-Israel right-wing think tank, the Henry Jackson Society, with a history of joking about Palestinian children who’d been shot or indeed killed by the Israeli military claiming that the evidence was faked.

Some more on this. Andrew Fox was interviewed by Sky News as the honorary president of the Aston Villa Jewish Villans Supporters Club. What mystified everyone was there was very little evidence whatsoever that this group ever existed. If you use Google, however, according to the activist Gary Spedding, Andrew Fox claimed that this supporters club is part of Fans for Diversity. So, Spedding emailed the Football Supporters Association which runs Fans for Diversity, and discovered

It goes on:

Eliot Pollack is apparently the chairperson of the Aston Villa Jewish Villans Supporters Club, Spedding goes on:

It is important to know at this time Mr Eliot Pollack was an employee of the Israeli Embassy in London as the press secretary between October 2009 and September 2012. He has been heavily involved in Israel advocacy for over two decades.

So Sky News platform someone they claim was a Jewish Aston Villa fan who isn’t Jewish at all. Erased his pro-Israel affiliations as well as his digusting track record, all justified on the basis of him being the honorary president of a supporters club which exists on paper but for which there is no evidence of any meaningful activities beyond that.

This is the same Sky News which last year released a video package detailing what Maccabi Tel Aviv fans [recording unclear} did in Amsterdam then without any meaningful explanation deleted it, and then uploaded a new version which erased the actual facts of what happened.

What the hell is going on here then? Let’s just consider now what our politicians and media outlets said. Prime Minister Keir Starmer denounced the decision as wrong, attempting to overturn police operational independence, declaring “We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets.”

Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, repeatedly attacked MPs who supported the ban as antisemites telling the House of Commons, “What is astonishing in this case is that it is unprecedented in modern times for all away fans to be banned because of the behaviour of a small minority.” This is a lie, it’s not unprecedented at all. She misled the House.

Politicians repeatedly claimed this was about banning Jewish football supporters, conflating Israeli football supporters and specifically Israeli football hooligans with Jewish people because of the potential of racist violence against them.

Former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron ,said among other things:

When challenged that the reasons Maccabi fans were being banned because of prior violence he said:

At this point of me speaking to you, Tim Farron has said nothing meaningful about the new information.

Lord John Mann, the so-called independent adviser to the UK government on antisemitism said he’d done a detailed report on the events in Amsterdam which he offerd as evidence to oppose a ban on Maccabi football hooligans. Sorry Maccabi football fans, full stop. Because his view is that these aren’t, this isn’t about hooliganism.

That the argument he’s making.

Now this is the same Lord who when I tried to question him at Labour Party conference, claimed he’d never spoken on the Israel Palestine conflict, lost his temper told me to F-off, grabbed my microphone and stormed off with it.

We then retrieved multiple clips of him expressing pro-Israel “perspectives”. And yet, astonishingly, he still claims, “I have never spoken on the Israel-Palestine conflict in the many years I’ve been in parliament. So he has no idea of my views, my meeting, or indeed my Amsterdam Report”.

What’s so astonishing about this is he says this when he (quote) tweets the clip for our video from Labour Party conference in which we literally include footage of him speaking in support of making of pro-Israel narratives.

I mean the level of gaslighting…

Then there is the vile Dan Hodges at the Mail on Sunday who among other things has backed the assertion that the Palestinian children of Gaza can just go to hell. I’m not joking. That’s what he did. He framed this ban as driving Jews from the streets of London.

Hodges, we should note, went to Israel earlier this year on an all-expenses paid trip courtesy of ELNET , a pro-Israel lobby group dedicated to strengthening Europe Israel relations.

It won’t disclose its funders, but we know one is a Trump supporting billionaire.

According to a report by OpenDemocracy, ELNET told their supporters that there was no starvation in Gaza earlier this year and also saying the IDF should not worry about killing innocent civilians who live near Hamas terrorists.

They also, according to OpenDemocracy, partner closely with Israel’s foreign ministry.

Here’s what this episode underlines once again. When it comes to Israel and Palestine the political and media elites are lying to you. They’re trying to shield an apartheid state committing genocide. Whether it be arming that state, silencing, monstering and arresting those opposed to its crimes or, in this case, even trying to protect its football hooligans.

This should be a national scandal.  Keir Starmer has repeatedly said that his first duty is to keep the British people safe. And yet he sought to overturn police advice in order to allow racist football hooligans with a history of violence from a state committing genocide to come to an ethnically mixed community with a large Muslim population despite knowing that those hooligans had a history of attacking Muslims at random.

The cabinet minister Lisa Nandy not only tried to turn Maccabi fans into the victims, she defamed people as antisemites if they supported this ban.

It gets worse. This all whipped up an anti-Muslim hate campaign with claims that Maccabi fans were at risk because of local Muslims in Birmingham hating Jewish people.

So our politicans use lies to back football hooligans from the state committing genocide, whipping up racist hatred against their own citizens in the process.

This is a massive scandal. In a sane world, this is more than reason enough for both Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy to resign in disgrace. That’s not going to happen partly because the media organisations who would need to lead those calls for resignation participated in the same deceitful smear campaign I just outlined.

Ask yourself this. If our politicians and media outlets are lying about this, what else are they lying about? That’s why it is so important that the rest of us speak up ever louder about the truth.

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