‘Scum’ barked at a Jewish man for the crime of taking a small Israel flag from his bag. ‘Get the f**k out of my city’ hollered at Jews. Masked men hanging signs saying ‘Zionists not welcome’. Posters inviting the public to phone the anti-terror hotline ‘if you see a Zionist’. ‘Baby killers’ yelled in the faces of Jews, as if it was the 1200s all over again and Jews are once more seen as the murderous drainers of innocent blood.
That Villa Park was overrun by frothing keffiyeh-wearers wishing death on the army of the Jewish state and damning peaceful Jews as ‘baby killers’ is a scandal
Can we ditch all the pretending now? Can we cut out the rubbish about last night’s angry gathering at Villa Park being an ‘anti-Israel’ protest or an ‘anti-Maccabi’ uprising? For all I saw was an orgy of the oldest hatred – a reactionary carnival of Zio-bashing targeted at Jews and their allies who had the temerity to show up to Villa Park. It was despicable, and it is incumbent on our political leaders, both in Birmingham and Westminster, to say so.
It was always going to be tense at Villa Park. The Europa League clash between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv had been the source of furious discussion for weeks. The decision of West Midlands Police to bar Maccabi fans from attending caused a global storm. In the end, Maccabi Tel Aviv itself said it would release no tickets for the match, so concerned was it for the safety of its fans.
How shaming for 21st-century Britain that a football club in the Jewish homeland felt its fans would face grave danger in England’s second city. And yet it seems they were right. Last night’s scenes were even worse than some of us had anticipated. British Jews and their allies who turned up to express support for Maccabi Tel Aviv’s right to play were ushered into a fenced-off basketball court near the stadium. A ‘Jew pen’, as some of them called it.
The ‘Jew pen’ was soon confronted by mobs screaming blue murder about the Jewish state. There were chants of ‘Death, death to the IDF’ – open calls, on the streets of Birmingham, for the violent demise of Jewish soldiers. There were bellows of ‘Allahu Akbar’ so that the occupants of the ‘Jew pen’ might know who really rules these streets. ‘Scum’, ‘Baby killers’, ‘F**k off’ – all this and more was spat at the Jews and their friends.
In the run-up to the game, signs were hung from local lampposts saying ‘Zionists not welcome’. We really need to park all the linguistic guff about how ‘criticising Zionism’ is not the same thing as ‘hating Jews’. A huge majority of Britain’s Jews feel an attachment to Israel. When mobs scream ‘No Zionists’, they are creating a no-go zone for most of the Jews who live on these isles. They’re saying those ‘bad Jews’ – the majority – should ‘f**k off’, or else.
We all know this. We all know what ‘Zio’ means. The mob itself knows it, you know it, I know it. And Jews certainly know it. That Villa Park was overrun by frothing keffiyeh-wearers wishing death on the army of the Jewish state and damning peaceful Jews as ‘baby killers’ is a scandal. It is 2025 and England’s Jews are once again having to negotiate fuming crowds accusing them of lusting after the blood of infants.
Watching all this, I felt a rush of relief that no Maccabi fans had come from Israel. Things would have come to blows. As for those leftists who’ve been saying that the threat of violence was entirely from the Maccabi fans themselves – they now stand exposed as the apologists for bigotry that they are. For last night’s agitation, with its bloodcurdling cries, confirmed it was the Maccabi haters who were hell-bent on whipping up hostility and menace.
Last night’s events were a microcosm of the scourge of Israelophobia. They confirmed the extent to which ancient hatreds have been snuck back into public life under the cover of ‘criticising Israel’. Wrap a keffiyeh around your mouth and drape a Palestine flag over your shoulders and you can get away with spouting medieval defamations like ‘Jews kill babies’ and ‘Jewish soldiers deserve death’. A lot of today’s hatred for Israel feels like anti-Semitism in drag – an old loathing dolled up in the Palestine colours.
We cannot surrender our streets to these mobs, to these masked men who have the absolute gall to tell Zios (Jews) to ‘f**k off’. Who do they think they are? ‘These are our streets’, the anti-Maccabi mob chanted. No they aren’t. They’re England’s streets. And in England, Jews are welcome. All Jews – British and Israeli. Someone in power needs to say that today, or we really are screwed.
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