This was never about football. The decision to bar Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending their Europa League match against Aston Villa is merely the latest symptom of something far more serious: a state retreating from its own territory.
One question has now become inescapable – who runs Britain? Is it our elected government, or sectarian extremists? Keir Starmer’s answer will shape not only Birmingham’s future, but Britain’s too.
Make no mistake, the ban is worse than a national disgrace, it’s an act of surrender. The government can dress it up however it likes, but this decision is not about protecting supporters – British or Israeli – it’s about appeasing the loudest and most aggressive faction in a city increasingly defined by sectarian politics.
The entire sordid episode stems from a campaign led by Ayoub Khan, one of the so-called ‘Gaza MPs’ and a man whose entire political career is built on a single foreign issue that has little relevance to his constituency of Birmingham Perry Barr.
Khan and his allies laughably present themselves as voices of conscience when, in truth, they represent something deeply threatening to the national interest: the rise of a toxic factionalism that replaces social cohesion with government by imported grievance.
Khan demanded Israeli fans be barred, claiming their presence would ‘inflame tensions’. Translation: don’t bring them here because people can’t control themselves if they see Jews waving flags. This isn’t about maintaining the peace, it’s blackmail. I know it. Starmer knows it. Everyone knows it. Yet the government has gone along with it. Why? Because they’re afraid.
Craven officials have tried to cover themselves by claiming it’s a safety issue. Really? Has British law enforcement suddenly discovered it can’t keep order in a football stadium?
Dyab Abou Jahjah, a former Hezbollah fighter, helped West Midlands Police justify the barring of Tel Aviv fans
Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters light flares in Amsterdam ahead of the club’s game against Ajax last year while holding up a poster depicting the hostages kidnapped by Hamas
Derbies soaked in enmity are a feature of the sport: Tottenham v Arsenal, Rangers v Celtic, Millwall v West Ham are all in the fixture list. The idea that West Midlands Police cannot keep 3,000 Israelis safe in Villa Park is laughable – unless the threat is so grave it calls into question the authority of the state itself.
If that’s the case, it’s not the Israelis who should be punished, it’s those making the threats. And now we learn that the man behind the so-called ‘community report’ that helped West Midlands Police justify this farce is none other than Dyab Abou Jahjah, a former Hezbollah fighter.
Not only was he once photographed brandishing a Kalashnikov, but has boasted that he downplayed his ties to the Lebanese terror group to fraudulently claim asylum in Belgium.
From there, he spent years glorifying October 7, holding mock funerals for deceased Hamas leaders, and getting convicted for spreading Holocaust denial. This is a man who European politicians have rightly called ‘a foreign agent directed from abroad’.
His Hezbollah-stained dossier ‘laid the foundations’ for the decision to exclude Israeli fans from Villa Park, claiming the mere presence of Israelis in ‘diverse Aston’ risked disorder. In any sane country, police would shred the report as propaganda – in today’s Britain, it’s treated as guidance.
The campaign to ban the Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters is not a spontaneous outburst of community concern. It is a deliberate power play. In fact, it’s worse – it’s a test of who dictates what happens in Britain’s cities.
And be in no doubt, right now, the extremists are winning.
If sectarian extremists can decide who attends a football game, they can decide what books are printed, what art is shown, what speech is permitted. The principle is identical: appeasement through fear
Earlier this year, I went to Birmingham and Leicester to report first-hand on the segregation there. I visited neighbourhoods where nearly half of adults speak no English, where restaurants hang curtains so women can eat unseen, and where religious warfare based on alliances imported from the Indian sub-Continent have warped local life. When communities live in such self-contained worlds, it’s no surprise that football fixtures become ideological battlefields.
Birmingham today is a warning of what happens when multiculturalism hardens into monoculture – and when tolerance is replaced by tribal veto.
We’ve seen this show before. Extremists test the line – a protest, a threat, a demand – and the establishment yields in the name of ‘community relations’.
First it’s flags, then it’s fixtures. Tomorrow it will be schools, universities, courts. Each time the line moves, we capitulate.
We’ve already seen this trend in action. A teacher in Batley, West Yorkshire, is still in hiding years after showing a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad to his religious studies class. Police in our major cities stand back while tens of thousands chant about the need to ‘globalise the intifada’. In Birmingham, it’s football’s turn.
Keir Starmer has a choice. He can pretend this is an isolated incident or he can confront the truth – that Britain’s civic life is increasingly led by bullying pressure groups who despise the very pluralism they exploit. Starmer knows the stakes. Why can’t he find the courage to act? He must declare that British law, not sectarian obsession, governs British cities; that police are there to protect, not to appease; that foreign conflicts do not dictate who may or may not attend a football match.
And he must make clear to the many Ayoub Khans and their cronies that if they cannot abide by the same civic rules as everyone else, they have no place in the governance of this country.
If sectarian extremists can decide who attends a football game, they can decide what books are printed, what art is shown, what speech is permitted. The principle is identical: appeasement through fear. And once rewarded, those who threaten never stop demanding.
Britain’s enemies have always known that our weakness is our decency. We cannot mistake tolerance for virtue if it becomes merely cowardice in disguise. Real tolerance requires limits – and the will to enforce them. When a city council, a police force or a government department caves in to sectarian threats, it doesn’t buy peace, it leases humiliation. And humiliation, like all bad landlords, keeps raising the rent.
If Starmer truly believes in the rule of law, he must restore it – now. That means reversing the ban, prosecuting anyone who threatened or threatens violence, and making an example of those who think British football stadiums are not sporting arenas but cauldrons of vendettas.
It also means confronting a harder truth: that decades of failed integration policy have left parts of British cities effectively unable to function because parallel civic and social systems have been allowed to flourish. There can be no ‘local accommodation’ with people who see Britain as alien, and coexistence as betrayal. Either the state governs – or it does not.
And if it does not, then the future of Birmingham, and of Britain, will belong not to its citizens, but to those who shout the loudest and threaten the most. Be in no doubt, Birmingham is now a front line – and nothing less than the future of Britain is at stake.
