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6 hours ago
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Well, at least we have Ayoub Khan in the house, Birmingham MP and a voice of tolerance, unity and de-escalation in these difficult times. “Sports entertainment events should be enjoyed by all regardless of their race, ethnicity and background,” Khan wrote on X on Thursday. One hundred per cent this. Heart emoji. Slay, king. This is not just the best part of sport. It’s the only real point.
“Now is the time to ease tensions, set aside political difference and focus on the football,” Khan concluded, scattering flowers of all shades, fluttering his fingers to release a cascade of butterflies, and opening his arms to embrace, personally, brothers and sisters of every caste and clime.
Except it turns out Khan also wants to ban supporters of an Israeli team from watching a football match in Birmingham. He wants to do this because in this case, and in this case only, it’s too much bother, and because this is all about love.
But wait. We’ve still got Zack Polanski, who released a video this week specifically about Birmingham, who believes in tolerance and diversity above all things, and who quoted sections from the Benjamin Zephaniah poem The British to make the point that Birmingham is not, repeat not, a no-go area for any group.
As Polanski says, it is instead time to “be cool”, to prioritise unity and understanding. So of course Polanski will now be speaking out urgently against the banning of Israelis, taking the opportunity to rise above division, because this is the absolute best of Britishness, the one non-negotiable principle of this mixed and porous island at the jumping-off point between the continents.
Except, it seems he won’t be doing that. The Greens’ Polanski has so far resisted this temptation, and is instead the only leader of a major political party not to question the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending the Europa League tie against Aston Villa at Villa Park next month.
In isolation this does seem jarringly out of character. What about the coolness? And the unity? Zack! Are you OK, Zack? Is the internet down? It is true that the video of love was not an entirely clear lens, containing a lingering closeup of only one flag, the flag of Palestine, because borders only divide us and unity is all.
And, yes, Polanski also appeared to believe at one point that you can make your tits bigger with a course of paid hypnosis, as first trailed in pick-up artist bible The Game, a book about how to say things people want to hear in order to get them to agree with you.
Either way, the decision is now out there. It remains at the time of writing unreversed. Supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv will be barred from watching their team play at Villa Park on 6 November due to safety concerns identified by West Midlands police and ratified by the Birmingham Safety Advisory Group. There may yet be a messy volte face, as the government brings its pressure to bear. It may emerge that the safety concerns override any other argument, that there is a genuine terror threat that makes the rest of this debate fade into nothingness.
But as things stand the British authorities have decided for the first time that overseas sports fans will not be welcome in this country, that it is simply too hard to police, and that this needs to happen in the name of peace and unity.
It shouldn’t really matter what your views are here, as long as your views are even vaguely consistent with the laws and principles of the territory. It doesn’t matter what you think about the bloodshed in Gaza, which presents its own distinct case for a transparent and properly leveraged sporting boycott of Israel, and of anyone else involved in violent acts of war.
This is just a terrible decision. Not to mention a depressing and alarming decision. And also an insultingly mendacious one as long as we’re going to pretend it’s about safety and nothing else.
On a sporting level it makes no logical sense. Who are we not going to ban now? How are the England team, source of vastly inflated police bills around the world, going to get away with showing their face anywhere if this is the standard? How about Paris Saint‑Germain, whose Champions League celebrations led to mass arrests and death on the streets? Or any trip to Napoli, a city-wide parkour of buttock-stabbing rage?
But no. We will instead draw the line at a few hundred Israeli supporters. This is based, as far as anyone knows, on some serious unrest last season during the trip to Ajax, where 62 people were arrested, 10 of them Israelis, 49 of them Dutch or residents in the Netherlands.
Even without hard evidence that Maccabi fans want to start trouble, the idea this could be seen as an act of de-escalation is basically nuts. What do we think is going to happen now, even if this act of peace‑keeping is reversed? That the game is going to pass in a doe‑eyed spirit of love for all? That it will be less, not more, contentious as a result of this act of heavy-handed prohibition?
It’s a terrible moment for Birmingham, which might be better off worrying about the huge rise in reported antisemitic hate crimes in the West Midlands, quite a feat given how few Jewish people actually live there. Most obviously it is an alarmingly feeble admission of inadequacy on the part of the British police, whose entire job description is to preserve order while upholding the law.
These are the same police who spend every weekend permitting, as they should, gatherings of all tones, who have in the past walked through flying bricks to preserve the right of a few hundred National Front supporters to march provocatively through south London, and done so as a mark of pride, because this is the thing about living in a liberal democracy.
Mainly it is just a terrible decision for the country, and for what we should now expect. It gives a horribly open door to those who want to plug their own line of political division, to claim that there really are mid-90s-Mogadishu-style no-go zones. This is votes in the bank, pure political capital. Is Nigel Farage going to conclude: “Hmm, no real need to appear in Birmingham in a union flag frock coat eating tripe out of a Beefeater helmet?” Or that he might on balance decide to show up and do that?
There are so many ways of making a statement out of this event if you want to. Stay away. Turn your back. Protest and be protected. Instead, here we have sport once again being marched about in a headlock, a propaganda Tannoy for the loudest voice, and wreathed as ever in the platitudes of tolerance and unity.
Sadly, Polanski’s video left out the key part of Zephaniah’s poem, the coda at the end that states “all the ingredients are equally important” and “treating one ingredient better than another will leave a bitter unpleasant taste”, an unfortunate piece of editing given the week’s events. For now the fix on the hoof for this particular note of division is obvious enough. Examine the details. Reverse it if possible. Police it robustly. And then go out there and model something better.
