The ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans is a moral outrage

There it is: an admission that Britain is no longer a safe place for Jews. A confession that the swirling animus for Jews and their homeland that has swept the UK these past two years has birthed a society where Jews cannot safely, freely go about their business. That’s what the sick ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending the Europa clash with Aston Villa reveals: that Britain accepts it has become a hostile environment for Jews. And, worse, that it thinks the best way to deal with this ancient sickness blighting a modern society is by keeping certain Jews at bay. For their own safety, you understand.

The prohibition on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending their team’s Europa League match with Aston Villa on 6 November is a truly shameful moment for this nation. The clash was due to take place at Villa Park in Birmingham. But the Safety Advisory Group – the body that hands out ‘safety certificates’ for football matches – has said no travelling fans should be permitted to attend the game. I’ll translate: no Jews from Israel. West Midlands Police have accepted the decision and said they would struggle to deal with ‘any potential protests’ at the match.

Got that? Because the usual suspects – the keffiyeh cocks, gurning Islamists, hard-right Jew haters who pose as ‘critics of Israel’ – might turn up and scream blue murder at these visiting devils from Israel, the Israelis themselves must be kept out. To placate those twisted sections of society that hate and boycott everything Israeli – its wares, its culture, its people – young Israeli fans will be kept out of the country. To offset the bloodlust of the Israelophobes, some of whom would love nothing more than to punch the scum from Tel Aviv, the Israelis themselves will be hidden away. ‘Nothing to see here. No Jews. As you were.’

This is worse than a slippery confession that certain Jews are no longer safe in Britain – it’s an acquiescence to that rancid, shaming fact. We are basically accommodating the frothing ideology of the Israelophobes rather than accommodating visiting Israelis. Officials in Birmingham have essentially bowed, in the most craven way, to the demented fury of the Israel haters, to the unhinged loathing for Israeli Jews that has blackened the souls of certain constituencies in this country. They have elevated the pacification of this mob of bigots over the protection of Jews visiting from Israel.

It will be unforgivable if we do not acknowledge what a serious situation this is. What an indelible black mark against Britain it will be if certain Jews are kept out in order to dull the rage of the filth who hate them. This is like saying the solution to anti-Jewish pogroms is to get rid of Jews. No Jews, no problem. Indeed, this decision has been shaped by the experience of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in Amsterdam in November 2024 when they were set upon by mobs of Jew haters. It was a jodenjacht in which gangs of mostly Arab men hunted down ‘cancer Jews’. Let’s ‘beat up some fucking Jews’, they said in their WhatsApp groups. And they did. Maccabi fans were assaulted, pushed into rivers, knocked down by motorcycles.

To witness a ‘Jew hunt’ like that and think to yourself ‘We can make sure it doesn’t happen here by keeping the Jews away’ – do people understand what a profound moral outrage this is? I can’t believe this needs to be said, but if there had been another ‘Jew hunt’ in Birmingham, the problem would not have been the Jews but their hunters. The pox on our society would not be the young Jews visiting from Israel for a day or two of footie and rowdiness but the elements within our society whose minds have been so addled by Israelophobia that they would have felt compelled to fume against those Jews. To ban Jews to try to calm those who hate them is a grotesque genuflection to the twisted logic of Jew hatred.

Here’s what I think: if it is not safe for Jews from Israel to attend a football match, then that match needs to be called off. There should be no event, no venue and no street in Britain where Jews, whether British or Israeli, are not safe from the hate and the blows of anti-Israel fanatics. Historically, you’ve been able to tell a lot about a society by how it treats its Jews. By whether it ghettoises them or lets them live freely. By whether it occasionally hunts them or leaves them alone. What we can tell about Britain from this nauseating decision is that we now prize the peace of Jew haters more highly than the rights of Jews – the sacrifice of Jewry at the altar of anti-Semitism.

Then there’s the despicable role played by certain MPs and the anti-Israel bigots of the left. They’ve been whipping up suspicion towards the visiting Maccabi fans for months. They’re thrilled by the ban. Ayoub Khan, a Birmingham MP, said he ‘welcomed the decision’. He wrote: ‘Sports entertainment should be enjoyed by all, regardless of their race, ethnicity and background. But….’ But! You don’t even need to know the rest of that sentence. There should never be a ‘but’ when it comes to the right of all people, whatever their ‘race’, to partake in the joy of sport. That there now is a ‘but’, and that it applies to one group alone, is proof of how thoroughly the Israelophobic mania has corrupted our country.

‘Kick racism out of football’ was the cry of Britain’s ‘progressives’ for years. Now it’s ‘Kick Jews out of football’. Now it’s ‘Kick Israelis out – for their own protection’. This cannot stand. Keir Starmer says the ban is ‘wrong’. ‘We will not tolerate anti-Semitism on our streets’, he says, and the police must ‘ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation’. Well, do something about it then. Put your money where your mouth is. Overturn this gross ban and deploy whatever forces are necessary to defend visiting Jews from racist violence. A nation where Jews from overseas cannot travel freely and securely is an anti-Semitic nation. Is that us?

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy