I have only found one news source that actual tells the story properly (warning, long read): https://whispering.media/the-maccabi-gospel/
What is different, is that Maccabi fans were blocked from attending by the police/council when no other sets of fans are given the same treatment. Secondly, the police were aware of plans within the Birmingham Muslim community to attack said fans. Instead of coming down on these people planning violence, they decided to avoid the situation entirely.
Furthermore, they ignored evidence from the Amsterdam authorities who haven't said the Maccabi fans were as riotous as you claim. Using AI hallucinations was just the cherry on the cake.
- Beat an Arab taxi driver
- Tore a Palestinian flag from a woman's balcony and attempted to break in to the apartment.
After they FAFOd and got their asses handed to them the media treated them like the second coming of Anne Frank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2024_Amsterdam_riots.
The "media reporting" section of the article is particularly illuminating - a Zionist influence operation was in full swing afterwards to minimize the bad behavior of the Israeli fans.
Furthermore Maccabee fans have a reputation for hooliganism in Israel itself. So the West Midlands assessment was eminently reasonable.
The manufactured storm over the decision again showcases a broader pattern of insidious Zionist influence over Western institutions. The decision was lawyered to death in a manner only Israelis get the benefit of.
https://news.sky.com/story/statement-by-the-amsterdam-police...
> The Amsterdam police made clear that among Maccabi supporters there were 500-800 ultras visiting the city in November 2024. Like other European ultra groups, these fans were organised and, on some occasions, seemed willing to fight. The Amsterdam police also stated that a lot of disorder in those days were the result of different groups provoking each other.
> At the same time, another development takes place - small groups of pro-Palestinian rioters actively search for individuals they perceive as Israeli, Jewish or Maccabi supporters. At 23:55pm, the first 'flash' attacks on Maccabi supporters begin at Dam Square. Several dozen violent incidents in the city centre follow. The pro-Palestinian rioters use various methods to reach their victims. Some move on foot, others use scooters or taxis to move quickly through the city. This makes it difficult for the police to intervene quickly and effectively. This proves to be a fundamentally different form of violence compared to earlier situations, which involved clashes between groups facing each other. From 1:24am onward, reports of attacks decrease, but fear among Jewish residents of Amsterdam and Israeli tourists remains high. Multiple reports come in of people feeling unsafe and not daring to leave their hotels.
The Macabbi ultras were violent and racist hooligans, as you said. But you can't excuse or leave out the behaviour of their opponents who went on a "Jew hunt" (their words!) and attacked random Jews or Israelis, unaffiliated with the football hooligans.
From your wiki link:
> Most of the people involved in the attacks on Maccabi fans were taxi drivers and youths on scooters,
So yes, if the people attacking the Maccabi fans are taxi drivers, yes, I'd expect to see taxi drivers getting beaten up right back.
> In the nights following the attacks, people thought to be Jewish continued to be targeted, including being forced out of taxis and ordered to show their passports to check if they were Israeli.
Didn't feel the need to mention this? Oh, sorry, random people being forced out of taxis to check if they're Israeli is just an overstatement by the media, "the second coming of Anne Frank", I forgot.
A group of Maccabi Fanatics chased two men, beating one with a belt as he tried to escape in a taxi. After the police arrived, the group ran away, joining other Maccabi ultras, nearly all of whom wore black clothing instead of team colours, walking towards Rokin. This group of around 50 Maccabi supporters gathered in front of Villa Mokum, a squat where several Palestinian flags were displayed.
Why not mention this?
0 - https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/47336888/maccabi-tel-...
No... This is again the trope that anti-genocide == antisemitism.
Might be the words of one person, but you find crazies everywhere. In this specific case, according to all the foltage I've seen, on one side you had a group celebrating the death of children while their country perpetrates a genocide, on the other you had people by and large talking about punishing that behaviour.
So I'm pretty sure their words were "Free Palestine".
You have the causality backwards: maccabi fans started attacking taxis before the latter started retaliating.
> At the same time, another development takes place - small groups of pro-Palestinian rioters actively search for individuals they perceive as Israeli, Jewish or Maccabi supporters. At 23:55pm, the first 'flash' attacks on Maccabi supporters begin at Dam Square.
Didn't feel the need to mention the lead-up to this? Everything in the article that came before this line, maybe? Here are some excerpts:
> In the early morning of 7 November, at approximately 12:20am, the control room receives reports that a group of about 50 Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters are pulling a Palestinian flag off a building façade and obstructing traffic.
> Some of the supporters are wearing face coverings, shouting anti-Palestinian slogans, and harassing people.
> Of the group walking along the Rokin, several individuals remove their belts and use them to attack taxis. Scooter riders are also attacked with padlocks.
> The next day, around 12:15pm, the first [maccabi] supporters arrive, and the group quickly grows. They chant anti-Palestinian slogans.
> During the fan walk, supporters shout slogans in Hebrew. Afterwards, it appears that these include highly offensive, racist expressions. At the front walks a group wearing face coverings.
> Around midnight, Maccabi Tel Aviv rioters gather at Central Station and move towards the city centre. Along the way, they equip themselves with materials such as metal rods and stones. Stones are also thrown at taxis.
It sounds like maccabi rioters started it.
It's mentioned in the GP post. I'm in no way hiding or excusing what the hooligans were up to, only noting that the GP made an extremely one-sided statement, whereas the Amsterdam police statement covers all the disorder, including confirming what the GP said.
> It sounds like maccabi rioters started it.
And if there were no opponents to them, then it would only be Maccabi hooligans being arrested. But instead they had opponents who were equally ready to riot and use violence, including against random people who the attackers simply felt were Jewish or Israeli.
I put it to you that the Maccabi hooligans were not the only thugs in Amsterdam that week.
If there were no maccabi instigators rioting and assaulting people the attackers simply felt were Palestinian or Muslim, then it would be peace in the street.
On top of that: Based on israel's behavior in Palestine, they seem to be strongly in favor of disproportionate, indiscriminate force when they feel like they're being attacked. So I don't really buy any complaint from them claiming someone else is doing that.
This treatment is often doled out to clubs' fans. Even in Tel Aviv.
> This treatment is often doled out to clubs' fans. Even in Tel Aviv.
Sorry, what treatment are you talking about exactly? Your parent seems to be referring to the treatment of being "blocked from attending by the police/council". Is that what you mean is often doled out to clubs/fans?
For example, at any duel between Ajax and Feyenoord the away fans have been banned - since 2009. The Den Haag municipality banned away fans at ADO Den Haag - Ajax games for over 10 years. NAC - Willen II didn't allow away fans during the 2022 season. Fans misbehaved badly enough during N.E.C. - Vitesse games that they were threatened with a 10-year ban on away fans. Amsterdam banned the Italian fans at Ajax - SS Lazio in 2024, due to repeated antisemitism and racism. Lille didn't allow Ajax fans during their game last January. In 2023 the Amsterdam police seriously considered banning all away fans during all high-risk European games.
And that's just the first few results of a trivial search for a single country. I could probably find a hundred more without much effort.
It happens often enough in European football. Search "away fans ban uefa -maccabi" online. You can also look at official UEFA sites, but they often list partial bans (e.g., ban from a particular section of the stadium) in a way that I can't distinguish from complete bans.
https://www.uefa.com/running-competitions/disciplinary/stadi...
My general point is, if you think the surface level details of this case are indication of some outrageous singling out of Maccabi fans, then I think that's mostly due to ignorance (in the non-derogatory sense of lack of familiarity).
If you want to debate the details, that's a fine thing to do, and I'm aware of lots of those details too and would still generally find it quite plausible to desire an away fans ban for Maccabi in that case, but that's not the point I'm trying to make on HN right now.
I think you mean the match against Hapoel Tel Aviv, which happened before this furore. The Tel Aviv police naturally know and expect that there is often unrest at a derby match, let alone a derby match between teams who share a stadium. But why would there be particular reason to assume that there would be unrest at a match between fans from Tel Aviv and Birmingham who have no particular relation to each other? And even if there was, why not cancel the match or play it behind closed doors? Why punish Maccabi specifically?
As for a "particular reason"... the Amsterdam match! The report is a poor document, but it contains some valid reasoning, despite the outrageous AI hallucination and some legal linguistics errors (mistakenly saying "communities" themselves were targeted, instead of individuals from said communities).
Subsequently, after a Maccabi game in Stuttgart, UEFA gave Maccabi a (suspended) away fans ban. Is it really still in question whether it's plausible for a police force to say there are security concerns? https://archive.is/20251218110350/https://www.nytimes.com/at...
A match that happened 12 months prior? Maccabi had played several away matches around Europe in that intervening period.
> Subsequently, after a Maccabi game in Stuttgart, UEFA gave Maccabi a (suspended) away fans ban. Is it really still in question whether it's plausible for a police force to say there are security concerns?
It's not implausible! But bans of all away fans happens rarely.
Moreover, most of them have military training which makes the racist abuse, vandalism and assault that much more terrifying.
If an antisemitic football team was half that bad they'd be hauled off to prison never mind banned from football matches.
Individuals are often banned from football matches. Banning a team from bringing any supporters is rare.
Here's an example from a few months ago where Italy suspended their EU obligations to free movement to prevent hooligans entering from Germany.[1] This is a far bigger response, which affected all Germans entering Italy, not just the football fans. This is a far bigger response and of questionable legality.
[1] - https://www.visahq.com/news/2025-11-04/de/italys-one-day-bor...
Are you sure that all away fans were banned? Doesn't look like it. It looks like they imposed controls to forbid the travel of particular people, which, as I said, often happens.
> Airlines operating Germany–Italy routes were asked to verify passenger identities against watch-lists before boarding
This is a very common punishment for clubs that have hooligans for fans. Like Eintract. Like Maccabi.
It also looks like a UEFA ban is rare not common. One incidence in 2025 for Europa League matches.
Completely wrong - here is a list of recent stadium bans for various football fans:
https://www.uefa.com/running-competitions/disciplinary/stadi...
It used to be more common in the 90s iirc.
> threw an innocent member of the public into a river
whereas the BBC says
> It was, in fact, a Maccabi fan who was found in the river
"West Midlands Police did have "high confidence intelligence" that members of the local community in Birmingham were planning to arm themselves to attack Maccabi supporters."
https://news.sky.com/story/ai-evidence-a-fake-match-and-misl...
Because the police didn't want to upset the "local community" (which is predominantly Muslim), they hunted around for reasons to ban them as that was easier than EG enforcing the law and stopping people getting attacked by mobs.
It's just more two tier policing in the UK.
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/47336888/maccabi-tel-...
And their fans did a racist rampage again Palestinian Arabs just the other day:
https://www.newarab.com/news/maccabi-fans-attack-palestinian...
https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/clubs/57477--m-tel-avi...
Why is it only Birmingham that saw fit to ban them?
Huh? Amsterdam is also looking to ban them:
https://www.trtworld.com/article/86ebbfd8eada
The main European football association also found them guilty recently of anti-Arab racist chants and fined, gave them a "suspended one-match away fan ban":
https://news.sky.com/story/maccabi-tel-aviv-fc-given-fan-ban...
After months of widespread protests across the UK, the police in West Midlands looked at multiple intelligence reports and concluded that protests and violence would be inevitable if the match went ahead and fans from Maccabi Tel Aviv were allowed to travel to Aston Villa's ground. Their advice was that away fans should not be granted tickets to the event.
The issues at the core of this decision are about alleged antisemitism rising in the UK, presumed violence of a group of fans with an uncertain intelligence picture, and how decisions were made with these analyses trading off against each other.
He resigned because of that process leading to the Home Secretary no longer having confidence in him.
I don't think the misleading of the select committee would have helped him, but he gave an answer based on all that he knew at that point in time, with the best of intentions. The fact he hadn't been briefed isn't his fault. The fact he leaned into a decision that had wide-ranging political ramifications without first opening up the discussion to more stakeholders is his fault, and it's why he's no longer in the job.
Not according to the news reports. They say e.g. he "blamed what he described as the "political and media frenzy" for his decision to step down."
The body that made the recommendation, the "Safety and Advisory Board" met several times and changed their report multiple times. When it was finally released they redacted large parts of the decision making process including saying that:
* The police didn't want the match to go ahead (prior to any evidence for that)
* Two local Muslim councillors (Labour and Lib Dem) had been lobbying against it going ahead with one saying (quote) 'we are the voice of the people'
Additionally:
* They edited the report saying risk to local muslim residents went from Medium -> High
* They edited the report saying risk to fans travelling went from High -> Medium.
* They adjusted the number of police needed from 1200 -> 5000 in order to try and justify the decision.
When the full unredacted report was leaked, then they were put on the back foot and falsely threw out that they'd got the evidence (including of local muslim residents in Amsterdam being thrown in a river, which didn't happen) from a Dutch Police report, which wasn't true.
Anyone with a brain in the police should know that recommending cancellation or banning away fans from a Champion's League game is a major international news story. The chief of police needs to be on top of the details and 100% sure that the evidence is there.
It was pretty telling that this news story hyperfocused on the one AI image and didnt even address all of the actual evidence. Classic PR move.
They made clear that there were indiscriminate antisemitic attacks, and that WMP had made up claims that were not backed by what the Dutch police told them.
https://news.sky.com/story/ai-evidence-a-fake-match-and-misl...
> a section of the Maccabi fan base was filmed engaging in violence in Amsterdam in 2024 and chanting anti-Palestinian racist abuse. That required WMP to contact their Dutch counterparts, who also informed them of the antisemitic violence by locals in Amsterdam, hunting down and kicking Maccabi supporters, leading to the only five convictions.
> Dutch police disputed the accuracy of how their Birmingham counterparts used information about the 2024 unrest in Amsterdam, with clear contradictions only able to be highlighted due to leaked WMP documents.
> WMP's intelligence assessment claimed that Maccabi fans apparently intentionally targeted Muslim communities in Amsterdam, but the Dutch force told me: "We did not see large groups of Maccabi's (fans) going into Muslim populated areas to target Muslims."
> Claims that Maccabi fans threw "innocent members of the public into the river" were also not endorsed by the Dutch.
Last year, a man named Jihad Al-Shamie attacked a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur and killed two congregants before he could be stopped.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd63p1djgd7o
Antisemitic attacks have increased. Jews do not feel safe in Birmingham.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvdxrr0mxpo
Right next door to Aston Villa is Birmingham's Perry Bar ward, where they elected the independent MP Ayoub Khan, for what seems to be his support for the Palestinian side of the Israel-Palestine war.
The West Midlands police were keen to give the impression that they were even-handed and fair in banning Maccabi fans, claiming they consulted multiple faith communities in Birmingham, and besides Maccabi fans are rotters, look at what they did at this other match.
The other match did not exist. The Jewish community did not ask for the Maccabi fans to be banned. Those were lies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98ng15qmy9o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cev82g41vpdo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxw2nv6vzzo
> As the match was played last month, pro-Palestinian protesters, including Independent MP Ayoub Khan, gathered outside the stadium, waving flags and banners calling for an end to violence in Gaza.
In my view, the West Midlands police probably had partisan community leaders like Mr Khan tell them to keep Jewish/Israeli fans out of Birmingham or they'd cause a riot, and the police meekly went along with this, then concealed this true reason, and made up bullshit reasons for banning the fans... which they have been caught out on, because they used a chatbot that hallucinated falsehoods and they didn't even verify it before using it as justification to a Parliamentary select committee.
That is what is known as misleading Parliament. That's why the chief's position is untenable.
Do you condemn the army of an extremely racist state that committed what the UN describes as genocide?
Yes, without question. Those are racist provocations. I also condemn all other violent acts those hooligans committed.
I further condemn their local opponents who made random attacks on unrelated Jewish and Israeli people. I hope you would do the same.
> Or the army of an ultra racist state that committed what the UN has described as genocide?
I take no side on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israelis and Palestinians both have a right to exist, and to live in peace.
> officers had found this material through a Google search
> the erroneous result concerning the West Ham v Maccabi Tel Aviv match arose as result of a use of Microsoft Co Pilot
> his force used fictional output from Microsoft Copilot
What this says is that the material originates from Copilot.
I suppose you can read that and assume that they lied about the Google search, but if you assume incompetence over malice, the more likely interpretation is that they didn't properly verify their source found through Google. It could have been the source of the source of their source that used Copilot, not the officers themselves.
> In preparation for the force response to the HMICFRS inquiry into this matter, on Friday afternoon I became aware that the erroneous result concerning the West Ham v Maccabi Tel Aviv match arose as result of a use of Microsoft Co Pilot[sic]. Both ACC O’Hara and I had, up until Friday afternoon, understood that the West Ham match had only been identified through the use of Google.
My 3rd grader knows better than to do research based solely on a Google summary snippet, and even understands that just because a linked article under the search agrees with the search that this doesn't mean it's true.
I would have expected that if the chief's staff were investigating rumors of a riot in a stadium 3 hours away, they'd call their counterparts at the police station in that location to get police reports from the incident.
They have trivial access to those official reports. They shouldn't be reliant on journalists sensationalizing, and opining the events for their news articles. They shouldn't be reliant on a search engine that exists to sell ads for those news organizations. They certainly shouldn't trust "Co Pilot" to figure out what may or may not have happened! It seems obvious to me that the tool could happily generate a police report from whole cloth.
The judiciary are using it too: https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/overwhelming-support-...
In areas where we move away from humans doing work into humans checking the work of agents, we should be worried about an arrangement where the human is present only as an accountability sink for the mistakes of the agent.
His error in judgement may have been he hadn't investigated the problem sufficiently. Then falsely testified to the government. That's a big deal on its own.
The officer involved might have been fired or reprimanded, we don't know from that article.
> If the officer had used tools after
They didn't use tools. They did a Google search and assumed the results didn't originate from an AI tool.
The lesson from the article is that even if you don't use AI tools, AI content may still creep into your investigation.
> his force used fictional output from Microsoft Copilot
That doesn't mean they used Copilot; it only means that the content originates from Copilot. They apparently got it from Google search result:
> officers had found this material through a Google search
And apparently that source either used Copilot or the source of their source used Copilot, etc.
It’s not a strong message to line employees to use their brains.
I wonder if this was one of those Google AI "summaries" that people are so happy to trust.
"Microsoft Co Pilot" (sic) is being called out as the tool that was used.
Does Microsoft have anything similar to Google's AI summaries on Bing or inside other Microsoft products, like Windows?
Hey btw, how do "AI" summaries on Google search look? Exactly like honest [1] results, like they did with ads?
[1] If there are any honest results left on a Google search. My impression is everything is from content mills, be it "AI" or human slop.