Fans of Hapoel Tel Aviv were barred from Tel Aviv’s Bloomfield Stadium on Saturday after showing up to a soccer match against Hapoel Petah Tikvah in t-shirts labelling the Israel Police, a rival soccer team and an outlawed political party “scum.”
Responding to the decision to prevent fans from entering the stadium, the Hapoel Tel Aviv fan club, Ultras Hapoel, called on all its supporters to boycott the game altogether, leaving much of the stadium empty during the match.
The fans had arrived at the stadium wearing red shirts that read: “Ultra Hapoel against the scum,” above the logos of the Israel Police, the banned Jewish supremacist Kach party and the Maccabi soccer club.
The shirts were deemed to be incitement against the police and fans wearing them were therefore blocked from entering, an officer told the Haaretz newspaper. According to the officer, supporters of Hapoel Tel Aviv were warned in advance that they would be barred from the game if they insisted on wearing the shirts.
Ultras Hapoel said in a statement, however, that its fans had only decided to wear the shirts after police announced last week that they would not be allowed to bring placards or flags to the game against Hapoel Petah Tikvah.
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Rather than immediately causing a ruckus over the issue, the fan club said its members decided to “bite our tongues” so as not to harm the team or the game, and had “arrived normally” at the stadium on Saturday.
אנשי מיליציית בן גביר מוציאים אוהדי הפועל תל אביב מהיציע בבלומפילד. הסיבה: הם לובשים את החולצה הזאת.
בושה וחרפה, שיא שלילי חדש אפילו בעבור העובדים של המחבל מהממשלה.
שאר היציע יצא החוצה – כי סולידריות היא הנשק הכי חזק מול פאשיזם ואלימות.#רקהפועל pic.twitter.com/qVrdUISpLU
— Haim Har-Zahav (@haimhz) December 6, 2025
“Apparently, there are new procedures in Jaffa,” it said, portraying the incident as one in which “anyone wearing a shirt that isn’t visible to the police is thrown out, beaten, arrested.”
“Signs, drums, flags, merchandise — everything is out,” the statement said, adding that the fan club “will not give a hand to this circus.”
Hapoel Tel Aviv, which won the match 4-0, said afterwards that it would have “really wanted to celebrate the victory with our entire community, but we are unfortunately in a terrible time when fans of a particular team are being abused and mistreated just because they are fans.”
It urged the relevant legal bodies to prevent police from ousting fans again in the future and to protect the game’s “independence and legitimacy,” saying that “this had nothing to do with football or sports, and we will not accept it, we will not put up with it, and we will not tolerate it.”
Pushing back against criticism, the Israel Police said the incident concerned a “handful of fans [who] arrived at the stadium wearing shirts with a print blatantly insulting Israel Police and another rival team.”
“The police’s action is in accordance with the law, and the police have the authority to prevent entry if there is a real concern about a breach of order to prevent harm to life and property,” the police insisted.
It is not the first time that Hapoel Tel Aviv and its fans have butted heads with law enforcement.
Police stand guard after the Israeli Premier League match between Hapoel Tel Aviv and Maccabi Tel Aviv was canceled at Bloomfield Stadium in Tel Aviv, on October 19, 2025. (Flash90)
In October, police canceled a much-anticipated derby match between the team and Maccabi Tel Aviv after a riot broke out ahead of the match, also in Bloomfield Stadium.
Police said fans threw objects at officers, lightly injuring them, and hurled flares and smoke bombs onto the field ahead of the game.
The following week, the soccer club threatened to boycott its cup final match after the police published a video comparing its fans to violent rioters in East Jerusalem.
The club accused police of incitement against its supporters and warned that it would not take part in the cup final amid “deliberate police violence against our fans.” It ultimately participated in the match, which it lost to Beitar Jerusalem.
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