Zarah Sultana says Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are 'racist hooligans'

Your Party’s Zarah Sultana has slammed Keir Starmer’s Labour for its shameless defence of Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans. These racists have a long record of violently provocative behaviour. And by trying to facilitate their entry into our communities, Sultana said, Britain’s genocide–enabling government is stepping up its complicity in Israel’s crimes:

Zarah Sultana says Labour is “bending over backwards” to support racist hooligans at Maccabi Tel Aviv

Speaking to the Canary, Sultana insisted that the “racist football hooligans” of Maccabi Tel Aviv “have brought violence to communities that they have visited before”:

And the fact that this Labour government is bending over backwards to facilitate them coming to Birmingham and to incite violence and hatred onto our streets, which is what is going to happen, is incredibly dangerous.

There have been intensifying calls to ban Israel and its teams from international competitions due to the state’s apartheid system, illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, and genocidal war crimes. But corrupt officials at the top of the football world have hypocritically refused to do so.

Starmer’s regime has not only continued to arm, welcome, and support Israeli war criminals throughout a genocide, Sultana stressed. He’s now “bending over backwards” to help bring racist genocide–supporters into British communities:

Instead of actually severing ties with Israel (and that includes its cultural institutions and football teams, because that’s what we need to do: uphold the whole cause of BDS), this government is entrenching, increasing its complicity of genocide. So it’s not just sending arms, it’s not just welcoming war criminals with a red carpet, it’s not just providing diplomatic cover, it is now allowing their racist football fans to come into our communities and to cause even more violence, hatred and division. And it’s disgusting!

Starmer’s government is a danger to all of us

As the Canary reported last week, the police and Birmingham City Council decided it was not safe to let Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans into the city. But Keir Starmer antisemitically sought to paint the ban as an attack on Jews as a whole. Fellow right-wing politicians, from Reform to the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, echoed that. Jewish Voice for Peace previously insisted that:

Contemporary expressions of antisemitism include treating Jewish people as a monolithic group

One way to do that, of course, is to suggest that racist hooligans are somehow the same as an entire religious group.

Jewish professor David Graeber previously called out the cynical weaponisation of antisemitism accusations as:

a campaign… so cynical and irresponsible that I genuinely believe it to be a form of antisemitism in itself. And it is a clear and present danger to Jewish people.

By defending Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans and falsely accusing their critics of antisemitism, the political establishment is further empowering fascism. Far-right agitators, for example, racistly targeted Zarah Sultana over her support for the ban by calling for her deportation. But she’s not alone. Because the public agrees with the ban too.

The fact that Israel’s own police just called off a match because of “endangerment of human life” doesn’t exactly help the British establishment’s case either. The cancellation of the 19 October match between Maccabi and Hapoel Tel Aviv (which also glorifies genocidal violence) was due to “public disorder and violent riots”, resulting in numerous injuries to both civilians and police officers.

Keir Starmer’s government is dangerous. Apart from seriously abusing the concept of antisemitism for cynical political reasons, it’s also risking human life to try and appease the right. This needs to stop.

Featured image via the Canary