An erroneous report depicting Israeli victims as attackers fueled a ban on Maccabi fans and heightened Jewish community distrust.
British police used an inverted account of antisemitic riots in Amsterdam to justify banning Israeli soccer fans from a match in Birmingham, The Sunday Times of London reported on Sunday.
The inversion reportedly appeared in a confidential report, in which British police officers claimed that, according to Dutch counterparts, the Israeli fans had pushed “innocent members of the public into the river,” and that 500-600 of them “intentionally targeted Muslim communities,” requiring a deployment of 5,000 police officers.
Prominent British Jews said the new discovery further eroded their confidence in authorities at a difficult time, and when they are still reeling from the decision to allow anti-Israel protesters to picket a central synagogue on Sunday in London.
Gary Mond, the chairman of the National Jewish Assembly, told JNS that he “lost confidence in the police a while ago, like many in the Jewish community, and probably most.”
