Imagine if a UK police force had information suggesting white supremacists were planning to attack black football fans from overseas. Imagine they suppressed that information. Worse, imagine if their solution to this sickening threat was to ban the black fans from coming here, effectively giving the menacing supremacists exactly what they wanted: a ‘black-free’ zone.

The Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal grows larger and more alarming every day

It would be one of the great scandals of our time. Leftists would be swarming the streets. The front pages of the press would fizzle with furious condemnation. There would be calls for an inquiry. Heads would roll. Well, the moral equivalent of the above has just taken place, and we’re seeing no such reaction. I’ll tell you why: because the victims in the real-world event are ‘just Jews’.

The Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal grows larger and more alarming every day. The latest discovery is that West Midlands Police were not being entirely truthful when they said concerns over ‘Maccabi hooliganism’ were the main reason they banned Maccabi fans from their team’s clash with Aston Villa in November last year. No, they were also aware of a sinister threat from within Birmingham itself against these Jews from Israel.

The force had been informed that elements within Birmingham’s Muslim community felt an intense hostility towards Maccabi fans, and what’s more that it was a bigoted hostility, based on the fans’ nationality. They were also informed that some of these Islamist bigots wanted to ‘arm’ themselves in order that they might bash a few of these Jews from afar.

And yet the police chiefs ‘failed to disclose’ this information. Unbelievably, they chose to focus on the threat apparently posed by the Maccabi fans themselves. They continually said ‘Maccabi hooliganism’ was the reason they barred these foreigners from Villa Park. This ignited a firestorm of Israelophobia on social media, with swarms of haters praising the police and denouncing the ‘racist’, ‘genocidal’ hooligans from the Jewish state.

It can feel hard to comprehend the seriousness of this. A British police force, in the 21st century, post-Macpherson, failed to disclose relevant information about a violent hateful threat against a group of people on the basis of their national heritage. They chose instead to emphasise, incessantly, the supposed threat posed by the targets of this animus that was bubbling up in Birmingham: the Maccabi fans, the Israelis, the Jews.

To respond to information about potential anti-Jewish violence by banning Jews is a moral outrage. It is to do the bidding of bigots. It is to conspire in the creation of the very thing these warped people dream of: a space without Jews. As Kemi Badenoch says, the cops in Birmingham ‘knew extremists were planning to attack Jews’ but their response was to ‘blame and remove Jewish people’.

This was cultural appeasement. West Midlands Police made a choice, consciously or otherwise. They decided that placating the bigoted fury of local Islamists was more important than guaranteeing the safety of visiting Jews. They prioritised the irrational feelings of extremists over the right of Israeli Jews to visit Britain. If they had done this in relation to any ethnic group, they’d already be out the door.

The mismatch between the size of this scandal and the limp response to it feels alarming. The Times has done a great job digging for the truth. Nick Timothy has been heroic in holding West Midlands Police to account. The Home Affairs Committee made a good fist of grilling the West Midlands chiefs on Tuesday. But where are the protests? Where are the angry thinkpieces in the liberal press? Where are the reports on BBC News at Ten?

Many are saying the police chiefs’ positions are untenable now. I agree. But this goes deeper than that. This scandal makes clear that the ideology of multiculturalism itself is untenable. It confirms that sectarianism is the bastard child of this divisive ideology that too often prioritises ‘cultural stability’ over truth and freedom.

Just as people in power turned a blind eye to the ‘grooming gangs’, lest they should unwittingly stir up multicultural tension, now it seems police downplayed a threat of potentially ‘armed’ violence against Jews in order to placate an Islamist mob. Any ideology that demands the suppression of truth, the silencing of working-class girls and the banning of Jews is an ideology worthy only of contempt. Those chiefs need to go, and so does the ideology that fuelled their scandalous appeasement.