LONDON: The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has welcomed the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending their upcoming UEFA Europa League match at Aston Villa but says the fixture itself should be canceled.<\/p>\n
In a statement issued on Friday, PSC said the ban should be understood in the context of what it described as the club\u2019s \u201ctrack record of committing racist violence\u201d in cities hosting their games, as well as Maccabi Tel Aviv\u2019s alleged involvement in Israel\u2019s apartheid system.<\/p>\n
The campaign group pointed to chants reportedly used by some Maccabi fans, including: \u201cWhy is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there,\u201d referencing the deaths of Palestinian children in the conflict.<\/p>\n
PSC argued that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2019s criticism of the fan ban shows \u201che expects Birmingham residents to tolerate racist incitement and expects police to provide cover for it,\u201d adding that this reflects \u201cblatant anti-Palestinian racism.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group also cited previous incidents of violence involving Maccabi supporters, including clashes in Amsterdam last season, where fans attacked residents and attempted to assault a taxi driver.<\/p>\n
PSC said the club has further \u201cdirectly involved itself in Israel\u2019s atrocities,\u201d including sending care packages to Israeli soldiers and producing videos of employees serving in the military as motivation before matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarmer\u2019s willingness to conflate opposition to Israel\u2019s crimes with antisemitism has now taken him to a place where he defends, supposedly in the name of antiracism, the rights of avowedly anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic, violent thugs to demonstrate their hate in a British city and at a football match,\u201d Ben Jamal, PSC director, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Maccabi fan base has an egregious track record of racist violence that led them to being banned from the city of Amsterdam. Starmer wants Birmingham to host people who chant for Palestinians to be raped and their villages burned. The fixture should not be going ahead. Israel and all Israeli clubs should be removed from international competitions,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
PSC said allowing Israeli football teams to compete in international competitions \u201csanitizes Israel\u2019s horrific atrocities against Palestinians\u201d and argued that the Israel Football Association includes clubs based in settlements on land taken from Palestinians.<\/p>\n
The group said international sporting bodies should follow the precedent set during apartheid South Africa and ban Israeli teams from competitions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has welcomed the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending their upcoming UEFA Europa League match at Aston Villa but says the fixture itself should be canceled. In a statement issued on Friday, PSC said the ban should be understood in the context of what it described as …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":88362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88364,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88342\/revisions\/88364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}