shockedcanadian
Diamond Member
- Aug 6, 2012
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This type of cowardice is well known in some nations. Be it the Jew, Christian or downtrodden victimized in a caste system, where are men of character who stand up for those who are being persecuted and abused?
What a shameful society. It clearly extends well beyond Canada. One by one we will be silenced when good men don't protect the stymied.
olicing issues in the United Kingdomās third-largest urban area wouldnāt normally interest Canadians. But Craig Guildford, chief constable of the West Midlands Police (Birmingham being the biggest city under his watch) is currently in very hot water of a sort that some Canadian police chiefs should be, perhaps, as well. A Nov. 6 Europa League soccer match between storied Birmingham club Aston Villa and storied Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv, which was contested in front of roughly 43,000 empty seats, has become emblematic of Jews in the U.K. essentially being punished for their own persecution. And it happens here too.
The game was played in an empty stadium on the advice of West Midlands Police, who warned that Maccabi fans posed a threat to public safety, citing unrest they had allegedly caused at an October 2024 Europa League match in Amsterdam .
Fans committed āserious assaults including throwing random members of the publicā into canals, and targeted Muslims specifically, West Midlands Police warned, citing advice from their Dutch counterparts. If the match were to go ahead with fans, they said, they would need 5,000 officers on hand to keep the peace. So it would either be dangerous, or ruinously expensive, or both. Better to be safe and close the match to spectators than sorry, right?
It was a very unpopular decision at the time, including at 10 Downing Street . And since then, the police narrative explaining the decision seems to have fallen to pieces. Dutch police deny providing the aforementioned advice, and in fact dispute the entire version of events in Amsterdam on which the empty-stadium decision was supposedly based. (At least four people have been convicted and jailed for assaults committed against Maccabi supporters .)
An ad-hoc local committee considering what to do about the Aston Villa match kept minutes of its meetings. A House of Commons committee examining the issue, where Guildford testified on Tuesday, published those minutes. And curiously, the issue of violence in Amsterdam never appears in them. Odd!
Ahead of the empty-stadium match, amid near-universal political backlash, Guildford commissioned a review of the decision from Mark Roberts, head of the United Kingdom Football Policing Unit. It didnāt back Guildford up much at all. It wasnāt so much Maccabi supporters who worried police and informed their decision, Roberts concluded, but āhigh confidence intelligenceā that āreferences elements of the community in West Midlands wanting to āarmā themselves.ā
By āelements of the community,ā it obviously did not mean Jews. It meant people who hate Jews
What a shameful society. It clearly extends well beyond Canada. One by one we will be silenced when good men don't protect the stymied.
olicing issues in the United Kingdomās third-largest urban area wouldnāt normally interest Canadians. But Craig Guildford, chief constable of the West Midlands Police (Birmingham being the biggest city under his watch) is currently in very hot water of a sort that some Canadian police chiefs should be, perhaps, as well. A Nov. 6 Europa League soccer match between storied Birmingham club Aston Villa and storied Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv, which was contested in front of roughly 43,000 empty seats, has become emblematic of Jews in the U.K. essentially being punished for their own persecution. And it happens here too.
The game was played in an empty stadium on the advice of West Midlands Police, who warned that Maccabi fans posed a threat to public safety, citing unrest they had allegedly caused at an October 2024 Europa League match in Amsterdam .
Fans committed āserious assaults including throwing random members of the publicā into canals, and targeted Muslims specifically, West Midlands Police warned, citing advice from their Dutch counterparts. If the match were to go ahead with fans, they said, they would need 5,000 officers on hand to keep the peace. So it would either be dangerous, or ruinously expensive, or both. Better to be safe and close the match to spectators than sorry, right?
It was a very unpopular decision at the time, including at 10 Downing Street . And since then, the police narrative explaining the decision seems to have fallen to pieces. Dutch police deny providing the aforementioned advice, and in fact dispute the entire version of events in Amsterdam on which the empty-stadium decision was supposedly based. (At least four people have been convicted and jailed for assaults committed against Maccabi supporters .)
An ad-hoc local committee considering what to do about the Aston Villa match kept minutes of its meetings. A House of Commons committee examining the issue, where Guildford testified on Tuesday, published those minutes. And curiously, the issue of violence in Amsterdam never appears in them. Odd!
Ahead of the empty-stadium match, amid near-universal political backlash, Guildford commissioned a review of the decision from Mark Roberts, head of the United Kingdom Football Policing Unit. It didnāt back Guildford up much at all. It wasnāt so much Maccabi supporters who worried police and informed their decision, Roberts concluded, but āhigh confidence intelligenceā that āreferences elements of the community in West Midlands wanting to āarmā themselves.ā
By āelements of the community,ā it obviously did not mean Jews. It meant people who hate Jews
