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UK Gov’t Adviser: Police ‘Conflated’ Intelligence to Support Ban Against Maccabi Tel Aviv Soccer Fans
Soccer Football – UEFA Europa League – Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv – Villa Park, Birmingham, Britain – Nov. 6, 2025, Aston Villa’s Ian Maatsen scores their first goal. Photo: Action Images via Reuters
The British government’s independent adviser on antisemitism said on Monday that the West Midlands Police (WMP) department “conflated” evidence and used “inaccurate” intelligence when making the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from a Europa League soccer match in Birmingham last month.
“Some of the intelligence is not very good. Some of it’s not intelligence at all,” John Mann told the Home Affairs Committee in the British Parliament. “And the tactics used could have been better.”
Mann spoke to Parliament right before West Midlands Police Chief Constable Craig Guildford, Assistant Chief Constable Mike O’Hara, and Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster were questioned by the parliamentary committee about their move to ban Israeli soccer fans from the match between Maccabi and the UK’s Aston Villa at Villa Park on Nov. 6. The decision was made by police in collaboration with Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG), a panel that includes Birmingham City Council. The match last month had heavy police presence and concluded with 11 arrests but no serious disorderly conduct.
WMP made its evaluation and decision about the ban based largely on intelligence given to the force by Dutch police commanders about violence that took place surrounding a Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in the Netherlands last year, the MPs were told on Monday.
In November 2024, Maccabi fans were violently attacked by fans of the Dutch soccer team Ajax followed their match in Amsterdam. During the premeditated and coordinated violence, Maccabi fans were chased with knives and sticks in the streets, run over by cars, physically beaten, and forced by their attackers to say, “Free Palestine.” Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema called the attackers “antisemitic hit-and-run squads” who went “Jew hunting.”
Before the British police officials spoke to the Home Affairs Committee this week, Mann was questioned and said he “struggled” with some “inaccurate” details in the West Midlands police intelligence report that supported their banning of Maccabi fans. Last week the national police force of the Netherlands told The Times that several claims in the report were false and issued a statement explaining what it told West Midlands police.
Mann said the West Midlands intelligence report “conflates” facts and mentions several details that simply “didn’t happen” in relation to the Ajax-Maccabi match in Amsterdam on Nov. 8, 2024. He gave one example about a Maccabi and West Ham match mentioned in the report that never took place. Guildford admitted that it was noted in the report “due to some social media scrapping,” which included a “search through social media to see what’s trending.”
Mann said the intelligence report also falsely claimed Maccabi fans ripped down several Palestinian flags on game day in Amsterdam and threw members of the public in into a river. It further contained the false accusation that 5,000 Dutch police officers were deployed in response.
The report went on to falsely state that pro-Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soccer fans were fighting in the streets of Amsterdam throughout the day on Nov. 6, 2024, according to Mann. He explained that reports from Amsterdam officials clearly indicate the violence only started after the match ended, and there was only one reported incident of a Palestinian flag being pulled down, on the day before the game. The report also referred to multiple incidents against taxi drivers, when there was only one incident the night before the match, Mann stated. “The suggestion that Macabi Tel Aviv fans were going around Amsterdam trying to find local people specifically from the Muslim community going into Muslim areas – that didn’t happen,” he added.
“I’ve looked at the intelligence report of the West Midlands Police and I struggle with some of the intelligence within it, including the intelligence about Amsterdam. It doesn’t concur with the discussions I had in Amsterdam and the facts I saw in Amsterdam,” Mann said. “Some of the stuff in the report simply doesn’t match the Amsterdam [police] reports and I think the evidence has been fitted to try and get a solution because obviously [if] you don’t have the Israeli fans, there’s no conflict … A banning of fans needs to be properly intelligence-led. The facts have slightly changed to fit the decision.”
“What you’re trying to say quite clearly is that is that the facts have slightly changed to fit the decision?” an MP asked Mann. “Correct. Correct. That would be a summary of what’s gone on here,” he replied.
In response, Guildford defended the ban against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, saying the decision “wasn’t taken lightly” and was made after a “careful assessment.” The ban was the “best way of maximizing the safety” of everyone involved, O’Hara saud. “Had we allowed the fans and it had gone wrong I feel that I would be sitting here again anyway.”
He also denied “fitting” evidence to support the ban and discredited suggestions of a “conspiracy” within the police force to target Maccabi fans, saying they were “completely wrong and misleading.”
“We’ve acted with integrity. My assurance to yourselves as a panel is that we were not influenced in any way, shape, or form by anybody politically,” he argued. “We did our service to the best of our ability, and the officers acted in line with their training and professionalism.”
Guildford told the Home Affairs Committee that his chief inspector had a virtual meeting on Oct. 1 with three Dutch police commanders and discussed the violence last year when Maccabi played Ajax in Amsterdam. Guildford said he trusted what his chief inspector was told during the meeting and the information they received from Dutch police “swayed” the police force’s assessment not to allow Maccabi fans to attend Villa Park for the game on Nov. 6. The information provided by Dutch police “certainly influenced the way our assessment was heading,” Guildford said.
“The information provided from the Dutch was very, very clear in terms of they reflected on the days before, during, and after the match as a result of clashes between the Maccabi ultras and the local Muslim community,” he explained. “In terms of what we were told, the ultras were very well organized, militaristic in the way that they operated. They attacked members of the local community, including taxi drivers. Tore down flags. People were thrown into the river.”
He added that the Dutch commanders were “unequivocal” that they “would never want to have Maccabi Tel Aviv playing in Amsterdam again in the future.” He also said that Dutch police “probably underestimated the level of threat and risk” from Israeli soccer fans and changed their account of what they told British counterparts in the virtual meeting on Oct. 1 because they were under political pressure.
O’Hara said Sebastiaan Meijer, a spokesman for the Amsterdam division of the Dutch police, “naysayed” some of the intelligence and made it “very clear they’re under a lot of pressure, in their words, from City Hall.”
Mann told MPs he suggested to West Midlands police and the Birmingham City Council alternative solutions before they announced the ban against Maccabi fans, which included ideas like having Maccabi supporters escorted by police in and out of the stadium to avoid any confrontations. Another suggestion he made was changing the game’s kickoff to an earlier time in the day so visiting Maccabi fans did not have to stay overnight in Birmingham, which could reduce the risk of violence ensuing in the area surrounding the stadium. Mann also told the committee he talked to both Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv regarding the concerns ahead of the match, and said both teams handled it “maturely and sensibility” and were “extremely cooperative.”
“I was surprised at the decision to ban the fans. I don’t think that was the most appropriate decision nor the most sensible decision,” Mann noted.
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Hillary Clinton Warns Youth Being Misled by ‘Totally Made Up’ Narratives About Gaza, Israel
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks on the first day of the 2024 Clinton Global Initiative Meeting at the Hilton Hotel in New York City, US, Sepy. 23, 2024. Photo: MediaPunch/INSTARimages via Reuters Connect
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a stark warning this week, arguing that young Americans are increasingly turning against Israel because they are consuming misleading and often fabricated social-media content about the Gaza war.
Speaking at an Israel Hayom summit in New York, Clinton said that young people were being influenced by “totally made up” videos depicting alleged Israeli actions in Gaza, many of which she claimed were nothing more than stylized pro-Hamas propaganda.
Clinton noted that more than half of young Americans now receive their news primarily from platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, where short, highly sensationalized clips often spread faster than verified information. She warned that these platforms prioritize emotion over context, leaving users vulnerable to narratives that ignore decades of Israeli security dilemmas, Hamas terrorism, and the broader regional picture.
Clinton lamented that her attempts to have conversations with young people over the Gaza War have been fruitless, noting that students “did not know history, they had very little context, and what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda.”
Her remarks reflect growing concern among pro-Israel advocates and politicians about the generational shift in US public opinion. Recent polling show that younger Americans, across political lines and even within the Jewish community, are significantly less supportive of Israel than older generations. Clinton suggested that this shift is less a product of thoughtful engagement with the conflict than of a digital information culture in which Hamas and its sympathizers have gained enormous influence.
”It’s not just the usual suspects. It’s a lot of young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand. A lot of the challenge is with younger people. More than 50 percent of young people in America get their news from social media,” Clinton said.
“So, just pause on that for a second. They are seeing short-form videos, some of them totally made up, some of them not at all representing what they claim to be showing, and that’s where they get their information,” continued Clinton, who previously served as a US senator from New York.
In today’s fragmented media environment, a single unverified video can reach millions of people within hours. Analysts have repeatedly documented how decontextualized or manipulated footage from Gaza circulates widely before fact-checkers can intervene. Meanwhile, footage that reveals Hamas’s extensive use of human shields, its embedding of military infrastructure inside hospitals, or its responsibility for repeated ceasefire collapses rarely achieves the same viral momentum. According to experts analyzing the flow of information, the asymmetry has allowed simplistic narratives portraying Israel as an aggressor to dominate the feeds of young users who lack the historical grounding needed to assess such content.
Clinton’s comments underscore a growing consensus that modern warfare is fought not only on the battlefield but also online in the domain of public relations. Israel, she suggested, faces an unprecedented challenge in countering digital propaganda that spreads farther and faster than any official briefing or nuanced reporting.
Clinton warned that the crisis extends beyond Israel to the United States and other democracies struggling to maintain informed public discourse. The result is an American youth culture increasingly swayed by unverified images and misleading narratives rather than history, context, or the realities of Israeli security, an information landscape that has reportedly been leveraged by foreign actors such as Iran, Qatar, and Russia to push disinformation.
Clinton’s remarks amounted to a call for a more robust response to online misinformation and for renewed efforts to inform young Americans about the complexities of the conflict.
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New York Governor Puts New Holocaust Memorial Project in Motion
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. Photo: Reuters Connect
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday signed legislation to establish a new memorial honoring victims and survivors of the Holocaust that will be constructed inside the Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in Albany.
“With the first ever state-sponsored Holocaust Memorial, we are honoring the victims and survivors of the Holocaust while ensuring that all visitors have a place to remember and reflect on what the Jewish community has endured,” Hochul said in a statement announcing the action. “New York has zero tolerance for hate of any kind, and with this memorial, we reaffirm our commitment to rooting out antisemitism and ensuring a peaceful and thriving future for all.”
Per the legislation, Senate Bill 5784, the construction of the memorial, the first ever to be sponsored by the state government, will be managed by New York’s Office of General Services (OGS). Hochul’s office said its completion will give “visitors the opportunity to reflect on issues that touch the core of our society” and “serve as a reminder of the dangers of antisemitism, racism, and all manifestations of intolerance.”
Dan Dembling, president of the Capital District Jewish Holocaust Memorial, a nonprofit from upstate New York which promotes knowledge of the Holocaust, said his group is “deeply grateful” to Hochul.
“At this time when antisemitism is so high and rhetoric is reminiscent of the Nazi era, the need to remember the Holocaust is critically important,” Dembling said. “As envisioned, this memorial will have statewide impact by helping to educate people about the consequences of prejudice left unchecked and hopefully inspire New Yorkers to stand up against hate in all its forms.”
The approval of the Rockefeller Plaza Holocaust Memorial comes amid a rise in antisemitic incidents in New York, especially in New York City, where, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), hundreds of anti-Jewish acts have been perpetrated in 2025 and a record 976 struck the city in 2024.
During the hate crime wave, the Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn suffered a violent series of robberies and other attacks. In one instance, three masked men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood. Before then, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. Additionally, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.
Hochul’s handling of the problem has been criticized by Jewish civil rights activists and Republican lawmakers. Many lambasted, for example, her endorsement in September of the candidacy of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist who is allied with far-left anti-Zionist groups and has vowed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit the city. Mamdani has also supported boycotts targeting Israel and failed to denounce the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which has been widely interpreted as a call for terrorism against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
The endorsement prompted accusations that Hochul was contributing to the rising popularity and aggressiveness of political Islamism across the Five Boroughs. Days after Mamdani won his bid for mayor, anti-Israel protesters staged a riotous demonstration in which hundreds of people amassed outside a prominent New York City synagogue and clamored for violence against Jews.
Hochul’s political opponents blamed her leadership for the incident.
“This is [Gov.] Kathy Hochul’s New York,” US Rep. Elise Stefanik, a leading Republican candidate running to unseat Hochul in next year’s gubernatorial election, said on the X social media platform. “When New Yorkers were looking for strong leadership from our governor, instead of standing against antisemitic hate, Hochul chose to endorse a raging antisemite for mayor of NYC putting Jewish families at risk.”
Hochul’s office has maintained that her administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism lead the nation, pointing to its constituting a new Division of Human Rights, enacting a “first ever statewide plan to combat antisemitism,” and approving legislation which requires colleges in the state to hire a civil rights coordinator.
College campuses in the state continue to see shocking incidents of antisemitism, however.
In September, law enforcement agents filed hate crime charges against two Syracuse University students who they say forcefully gained entry into a Jewish fraternity’s off-campus house during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and heaved a bag of pork at a wall, causing its contents to splatter across the floor. Just days earlier, someone graffitied antisemitic messages inside the Weinstein residence hall at New York University.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Guinness World Records Tells Israeli Charity It’s Currently Not Accepting Submissions From Israel
People stand next to flags on the day the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, are handed over under the terms of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
An Israeli nonprofit organization had its application to the Guinness World Records rejected recently because the latter has a current policy of not accepting submissions from Israel or the Palestinian territories.
The Matnat Chaim charity, which helps people make voluntary kidney donations, said on Wednesday it contacted Guinness World Records (GWR) to discuss an event it is planning next month at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem where 2,000 Israeli kidney donors will gather in one place, which would be a world record. The charity hoped the event would be entered into the next Guinness Book of World Records. However the nonprofit’s request was rejected by GWR, which claimed that it is currently not processing record applications from Israel or the Palestinian territories.
“We deeply regretted the decision to involve politics in a purely life-saving effort. Humanity should be above all boundaries or conflicts,” the charity, whose name means “Gift of Life” in Hebrew, wrote in a Facebook post. “But the truth is, no record book can truly contain the greatness of our donors. Our true record is not measured by certificates hanging on the wall, but by 2,000 men, women, and children who got up from their sickbeds and returned to life. It is measured by thousands of families who received their loved ones back.”
“Guinness may choose not to list us in their book, but our wonderful donors are listed in the book of lif. And this is the most important record there is,” the charity added. “Next month, we will meet in the name of God, the Matnat Chaim family, at the Nation Buildings and break a record. We continue with all our might in our activities, because there are still lives to save.”
Guinness World Records said in a statement on Wednesday that the policy has been place since November 2023, shortly after the war in Gaza started following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel,
“We are aware of just how sensitive this is at the moment,” GWR explained. “We truly do believe in record breaking for everyone, everywhere but unfortunately in the current climate we are not generally processing record applications from the Palestinian Territories or Israel, or where either is given as the attempt location, with the exception of those done in cooperation with a UN humanitarian aid relief agency.”
GWR said it is “monitoring the situation carefully” and the record application policy is subject to a monthly review. “We hope to be in a position to receive new enquiries soon,” it added.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called the policy “inexcusable” in a post on X. He said Israelis “expect and demand that this twisted decision be revoked immediately.”