MP posts full British police report used to justify ban on Israeli soccer fans, links it to research by anti-Israel group

A Conservative British MP yesterday published the full police report used to justify a ban on Israeli fans attending a soccer game in Birmingham earlier this month, the UK Jewish News reports.

“A reminder: Birmingham Council’s Safety Advisory Group banned Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from the match against Aston Villa. They did so on the back of this West Midlands Police intelligence report. But that report has since been widely discredited,” West Suffolk MP Nick Timothy writes in an X thread after he publishes the report.

Timothy says much of the West Midlands report “bears some resemblance to this ‘research’ report by the Hind Jijab Foundation” — a Belgium-based anti-Israel organization.

“The Foundation claims it ‘laid the groundwork’ for the police. Its chairman, Dyab Abou Jahjah, is a former Hezbollah fighter,” he writes.

Some of the report was revealed by the Sunday Times earlier this week, which found that the report claimed that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans threw “innocent members of the public into the river,” that 500-600 “intentionally targeted Muslim communities,” at an Amsterdam match last year, and that the violence forced the deployment of 5,000 police officers.

However, Dutch law enforcement told the newspaper the examples used to justify the ban were false.

Officials said 10 Israelis were injured in the violence in Amsterdam last year, which the victims said was perpetrated largely by local Muslims and Arabs, with hundreds more besieged in their hotels and fearing they could be attacked when trying to reach their flights home.