The Maccabi Tel Aviv ban didn’t just upset the wrong people, it showed politicians can’t judge Israel without first picking a side. Right, so this isn’t just about a football match or a policing call that upset the wrong people, this is about Parliament showing, again, that when Israel is involved the rules bend, scrutiny softens, and the outcome is quietly pre-decided. The Home Affairs Committee has now made that unavoidable, because in trying to muscle the police over the Maccabi Tel Aviv ban it’s exposed who’s sitting in judgement, who they openly align with, and why for so many of them, that seems to be with Israel. An Israeli football team fans, the police who blocked them and a lot of friends of Israel are slamming the police – and whether that is for right or wrong based on the evidence, who can trust such people in their judgement, when conflicts of interest seem to be the norm? This also sadly isn’t new, and it isn’t accidental, it’s a pattern we’ve seen before if you know where to look, from lobbying networks to post-politics jobs to the way outrage suddenly materialises when Israel-linked interests feel inconvenienced. So stay with this, because once you line the record here up properly, what collapses here isn’t a police decision, it’s the last pretence that Parliament can still act as an honest referee on Israel at all. Right, so that was the Home Affairs Committee there, demonstrating why they as a group of people perhaps aren’t the best fit to have this discussion. Nevertheless, they have now sat in public to interrogate West Midlands Police and the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner over the decision to exclude Maccabi Tel Aviv away fans from that now infamous Aston Villa fixture in November of last year, it seems so much longer now, it is mad we’re still talking about a football safety event and we wouldn’t be if it wasn’t Israel of course, which is rather the point of this video, and the committee itself has of course made that a formal piece of parliamentary business under its football policing work here.