{"id":304423,"date":"2026-02-22T12:59:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T12:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/304423\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T12:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T12:59:07","slug":"uk-parliament-slams-police-for-israeli-fans-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/304423\/","title":{"rendered":"UK Parliament slams police for Israeli fans ban"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The UK Parliament\u2019s Home Affairs Committee on Sunday published a report criticizing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/diaspora\/antisemitism\/article-870701\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">the decision to bar<\/a> Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending the Europa League match against Aston Villa at Villa Park in Birmingham in November 2025, saying the process was driven by flawed evidence and poor coordination across government.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The committee said West Midlands Police (WMP) relied too heavily on \u201cinaccurate and unverified\u201d material, including information partly based on false <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/business-and-innovation\/tech-and-start-ups\/article-887054\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">AI-generated content<\/a> that painted a misleading picture of violence surrounding a previous fixture involving <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/article-849960\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Maccabi in Amsterdam<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">According to the report, evidence that reinforced pre-existing assumptions about the risk posed by Maccabi fans was accepted readily, while contradictory information from authoritative sources was not given proper weight. The committee said a lack of due diligence meant gaps in evidence-gathering went uncorrected, even after the matter came under parliamentary scrutiny.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The committee also noted that WMP\u2019s evidence-gathering is now subject to an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.<\/p>\n<p>While the committee found no evidence that the police response was motivated by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/diaspora\/antisemitism\/article-887453\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">antisemitism<\/a>, it concluded that WMP failed to take appropriate steps to engage with Jewish communities in Birmingham, particularly when compared with its consultation with other groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">In January, West Midlands Chief Constable Craig Guildford apologized after acknowledging a fictitious reference to a West Ham-Maccabi Tel Aviv match in a report about the force&#8217;s decision had been generated by Microsoft&#8217;s Copilot AI tool.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">He had previously said artificial intelligence was not used in preparing the document.<\/p>\n<p>Mathilda Heller contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK Parliament\u2019s Home Affairs Committee on Sunday published a report criticizing the decision to bar Maccabi Tel&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[111,343,42,107,34257,43,40,38,41,39,1298],"class_list":["post-304423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-antisemitism","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-headlines","tag-israeli-sports","tag-maccabi-tel-aviv","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk-parliament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}