JVL Introduction
A letter sent to the Police and Crime Commissioner of the West Midland police in support of Chief Constable Guildford and his decision to ban the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending the match with Aston Villa in November last year and regretting his enforced resignation.
RK
Simon Foster, Police and Crime Commissioner
West Midlands Police
Birmingham
16th January 2026
Dear Mr Foster
I am writing this jointly with Jenny Manson, Chair of Jewish Voice for Liberation (formerly Jewish Voice for Labour). We are writing in support of Chief Constable Guildford, and in support of his decision to ban the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending the match with Aston Villa in November last year.
We believe that Chief Constable Guildford had to make a very difficult decision in the midst of confusing and contradictory reports about the behaviour of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans at previous matches, in particular in Amsterdam. It seems obvious to us that there would have been a substantial risk of serious disorder if the Maccabi fans had been allowed to attend the game, and we are astonished that no mention of this risk is being made in the present complaints against Chief Constable Guildford. In November 2024 there was serious disorder in Amsterdam due to the presence of Maccabi fans. Whether they were the instigators of the trouble, or merely its victims, should not be the only concern. There was violence, and it would have been avoided had the Maccabi fans not attended. It seems that the reporting of the violent incidents was sensationalised by journalists and others on both sides. Initial reports, endorsed by the Mayor of Amsterdam, described it as an antisemitic pogrom, but this was later called into question when film footage emerged of Maccabi fans rampaging through the streets and chanting deeply unpleasant racist slogans. The Mayor of Amsterdam herself apologised for her earlier description of the event as antisemitic.
But the precise details of how many taxis were vandalised, how many people were thrown into the river, and by whom, and how many Palestinian flags were pulled down, should not be the primary concern. There was plenty of evidence that the Maccabi fans could be violent. And indeed, only weeks after the decision to ban their attendance at Aston Villa, a Maccabi Tel Aviv match against another Tel Aviv team had to be called off after violent rioting before kick-off. And just today, footage has emerged of more violence from Maccabi fans against Palestinians.
Given the evidence of danger, and given the fog of misinformation, it seems to us entirely appropriate to have prevented the attendance of the Maccabi fans. The Chief Constable has been criticised, in particular by Sir Andy Cooke, on purely procedural grounds which pay no attention at all to whether his decision was correct, though this is surely the more important consideration. While procedural failings should be attended to, the fact that the Chief Constable arrived at the correct decision surely should carry more weight.
All this is to leave aside the anxieties that members of Birmingham’s large Muslim community will have felt at the presence in their streets and neighbourhoods of a substantial contingent of Maccabi fans. After all, the Israeli Defence Force was and is still perpetrating an internationally acknowledged genocide,[*] against Palestinians in Gaza, and the Maccabi fans include many soldiers from the IDF. Their chant (in Hebrew) “there are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left”, audible on footage of the Amsterdam riots and subsequently widely reported, gave a chilling impression of what might happen if they came to a city with a large Muslim population, and this and other reports created a great deal of anxiety in Birmingham.
We note with surprise and dismay that in the preliminary report that Sir Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary presented to the Home Secretary, no mention is made of any interview with any Birmingham Muslim organisation or individual. Sir Andy refers to twenty “interviews with significant people”, among them the Chargé d’Affaires at the Israeli Embassy, representatives of the Birmingham Jewish community, and Lord Mann, the Government’s independent advisor on Antisemitism. Birmingham’s Muslim population makes up 21% of the total, while its Jewish population amounts only to 0.2% – in other words there are one hundred times as many Muslims as Jews. And yet the Chief Inspector of Constabulary found time to meet with three organisations concerned with antisemitism, and not a single organisation concerned with the welfare of Muslims.
We believe that the widespread coverage of this issue as one in which the overriding concerns are “antisemitism” and relations between the police and the Jewish community will ultimately be to the detriment of community relations in Birmingham and more widely. Birmingham’s Muslims will see that they cannot expect protection from their police force, and across the country the strong impression will have been given that anyone who offends the presumed interests of Israelis and the Israel lobby will be harried and forced to resign. This is not just our impression as Jews critical of current Israeli policies – we are writing in part at the urging of a Rabbi who for obvious reasons does not wish his name divulged, who is very anxious at the spectacle of the forcing from office of Chief Constable Guildford in response to pressure from Jewish organisations. We deeply regret the forcing from office of Chief Constable Guildford, which we learned of during the writing of this letter. Despite his resignation, we believe that the issue is not all over, and we urge all concerned to review carefully the pressures they were subjected to and the decisions they have taken in response to these pressures.
Yours Sincerely,
David Mond and Jenny Manson, for Jewish Voice for Liberation
PS We ask you to pass a copy of this letter to former Chief Constable Guildford, and to express our regrets that he has been forced out for trying to do his job.
Note
[*] That this is a genocide is agreed by an authoritative United Nations commission, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Israeli Human Rights groups B’tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, many of whose members are Jewish.