A lesson from Mokum for Birmingham
TetleysTLDR: The Summary
Once again our waste of space politicians have rushed to defend the genocidal state and its racist football thugs instead of the people trying to protect their city. When Maccabi Tel Aviv fans rampaged through Amsterdam chanting “Death to Arabs”, the West called it antisemitism when locals pushed back. Now, because Birmingham has rightly said 'no thanks' to hosting the same mob, the political class has lost its mind. Kemi Badenoch, Starmer and the rest have cynically blurred the line between being Jewish and being a far-right Israeli ultra. But this isn’t about Jews, it’s about fascism hiding behind a flag. Birmingham’s ban wasn’t prejudice; it was moral clarity. Letting Maccabi play would normalise genocide under the floodlights. Our leaders are on the wrong side of history again, but Birmingham, true to its working-class soul, has shown the courage they lack.
TetleysTLDR: The article
What in the name of Shatner is wrong with our politicians? Every last one of them seems pathologically incapable of doing anything other than jumping to the defence of a genocidal state: no matter what the issue. Israel bombs hospitals, they call it self-defence. Israel slaughters journalists, they call it a 'tragedy' and when a bunch of racist football thugs from Maccabi Tel Aviv swagger into European cities chanting "Death to Arabs” politicians don’t condemn them, they condemn the locals who dare object. They side with the perpetrators every single time. There’s a sickness at the heart of Western politics: a reflex to equate Zionism with virtue, and to brand anyone who refuses to play along as an extremist. It’s cowardice dressed up as principle and it’s turning entire countries into moral wastelands.
Joana Cavaco, a Dutch jew from an organsiation caled Erev Rav, wrote a fantastic article about this, in it she said 'Mokum': A Yiddish word meaning safe place, and one of Amsterdam’s oldest nicknames is a city that’s long been a refuge for wanderers, exiles, and those who simply couldn’t breathe anywhere else. Cold on the skin, but for generations it’s been a warm nest for outsiders. A city built on contradictions, open-minded yet scarred by colonial brutality; progressive on paper, but with its poorest still shoved to the margins. A capital that can’t decide if it wants to be a beacon of messy humanity or a mirror of the far-right poison spreading through Europe. She berates it's leaders for cowardice not intervening when MTA played Ajax.
She stated that since 7 October [2023] the Netherlands like so many Western 'liberal democracies' has bent over backwards to stand with Israel. Money, weapons, moral cover all handed over without hesitation. It hasn’t mattered how many hospitals have been levelled, how many children have been murdered or how loudly the people of Amsterdam have shouted “Not in our name.” The Dutch state’s line has been unwavering: Israel good, Palestinians expendable. So when Maccabi came to town for their match at the Johan Cruijff Arena, the hypocrisy hit new heights. Playing in Tel Aviv would’ve been too risky and too tasteless, given the genocide raging in Gaza, so they brought the circus to Mokum instead. And yet, no one can tell anyone City Hall didn’t see this coming. Amsterdam’s mayor and her bureaucrats have been all too keen to clamp down on Palestine solidarity marches, but somehow the arrival of an Israeli team known for nationalist thuggery didn’t raise an eyebrow. Risk assessments? Security briefings? She calls them out for insulting her intelligence. She goes on to state that from the moment Maccabi’s fans landed, the city’s so-called 'safe haven' began to shake. Marching in mobs through the streets, they screamed “Death to the Arabs” and sang about razed schools and slaughtered children, acts of barbaric glee met with police indifference. Palestinian flags were torn down. Windows were smashed. Videos show Dutch police standing by like security detail for fascism, ensuring the racists weren’t disturbed by any inconvenient protester with a conscience.
With the clarity of a diaspora Jew looking critically at the so called only Jewish state, she lamented that for those fans, this wasn’t shocking it was patriotic. In Israel, such hatred is mainstream. It’s rewarded, but when locals eventually pushed back physically, the Western press had their story ready: “A pogrom in Amsterdam.” Suddenly, Maccabi’s supporters weren’t aggressors; they were victims. And every Jew in Mokum, so the narrative went, was now in mortal danger. The moral sleight of hand was pure Hasbara: flip the script, weaponise Jewish fear and call it antisemitism. Never mind that the provocation came from Zionist ultras. Never mind that it was locals defending their streets from imported hate.
Joana's group, Erev Rav had planned a Kristallnacht memorial that same week. The event was cancelled, not out of fear of the locals, but because the city allowed Maccabi’s hooligans to roam free. Joana and her comrades wear Palestinian symbols deliberately to remind the world that the main lesson of the Holocaust gave us was not to cheerlead the next one. Their statement said it plainly: Jewish fear is being weaponised to justify Islamophobia, racism, and state repression. She went on to say that "the bitter truth is that too many Jews, traumatised by centuries of persecution are being manipulated into supporting the very structures that will destroy us all". Erev Rav and those who stand with them refuse to let Mokum, this ancient city of refuge, be turned into a stage for fascism. They’re fighting for the soul of the place. For peace, for justice, for the right to scream “Never again” without being branded extremists: because as Joana Cavaco so powerfully reminds us: no one is free until we are all free.
And now the same circus rolls toward Britain, towards Birmingham of all places. Britains most diverse city. A city with grit, heart and history. A city that’s weathered everything from BNP Marches in the 70s, Thatcher’s destruction of industry to EDL marches, from racist policing to post-9/11 hysteria. If anywhere understands how fragile peace is, how quickly community fractures when hatred is given permission, it’s Birmingham.
So when Maccabi Tel Aviv were set to play here, people rightly asked: what the hell are we doing? Why on earth would we invite a club whose fans behave like a paramilitary mob? Why would we give them the same moral legitimacy that apartheid South Africa once tried to launder through sport? Let’s stop dressing it up: Maccabi Tel Aviv is not some plucky underdog team. It’s the sporting arm of a state that is, at this very moment, engaged in the deliberate annihilation of Gaza. Many of its players and supporters serve or have served in the IDF, the same army that’s flattening hospitals and refugee camps. When they put on that shirt, they’re not representing football, they’re representing occupation and repression. To let them play here would be to normalise genocide under the floodlights, and to allow their fans to travel would be to risk the same chaos we saw in Amsterdam, only this time, in a city that’s home to one of Britain’s largest Muslim populations. The idea that Birmingham, a place defined by multiculturalism and working-class solidarity should become the backdrop for Israeli nationalist chanting is obscene.
Banning Maccabi supporters wasn’t an attack on Jews nor was it an attack on free speech, it was an act of civic sanity. UEFA bans fans for racist chants all the time, including British ones, so why should these ones be exempt? Because it's Israel apparently. That’s the standard now. A state can bomb children by the thousand and still be treated as a victim. It can export racism disguised as patriotism, and we’re told it’s cultural pride. No. Birmingham drew a line, and it was the right line, because when apartheid South Africa faced sporting boycotts, it wasn’t about mixing politics with sport. It was about morality. You don’t shake hands with the architects of ethnic cleansing. You don’t host them, you don’t humour them, and you sure as hell don’t let them swagger through your streets screaming for more dead Arabs. The ban in Birmingham was an echo of that proud tradition of moral clarity.
Predictably, the British establishment went berserk. The same politicians who cheer every arms sale to Tel Aviv suddenly discovered freedom of expression. The same pundits who cheer when police kettle students or arrest protestors started weeping crocodile tears about 'the right to support your team'. FFS Spare us. Our politicians don't give a flying fuck about rights, they only care about control: because the moment ordinary people show solidarity with Palestine in their millions, the machinery of the state goes into panic overdrive: Protest bans, censorship, the Prevent programme it’s all part of the same apparatus: a desperate attempt to keep the public from seeing the blood on our own government’s hands. Letting Maccabi Tel Aviv play here will be a gift to that machine. It will tell every Palestinian in Britain that their suffering is entertainment. It will tell every anti-racist activist that moral consistency no longer exists and it will tell every thug in blue and white that they can terrorise European streets with impunity.
So now our politicians are losing their shit because Birmingham has the sheer audacity to not want the out of control racist fuckers that follow Maccabi Tel Aviv in their city. Everyone from all parties has been wheeled out for this and of course they are screaming antisemitism again when of course it is nothing of the sort. Kemi Bad Enoch, someone who has probably never been to a football match in her life jumped on the bandwagon and chirped in with “Will he [Starmer] back those words with action and guarantee that Jewish fans can walk into any football stadium in this country? If not, it sends a horrendous and shameful message: there are parts of Britain where Jews simply cannot go”. This deliberately conflated being Jewish in Britain with being a far right football thug from Israel. And Kemi by the way, Jews go to football matches every fucking week, Jews from North London - why do you think Spurs shout 'Yid Armeee'. But Jews in Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow too - not one of them is impeded from visiting a football match if they want to, and quite frankly stirring the shit Kemi, you should made to lick the spoon - if you weren't so lacking in self awareness, you'd realise your statement was in itself fucking antisemitic.
But Birmingham, all power to it, said no. The club said no, the Council said no and even the police said no. No to fascism in football scarves. No to complicity disguised as hospitality. No to the idea that genocide can ever be business as usual. Sport is never neutral, it’s political by nature, especially when the teams involved are funded and shielded by a state committing war crimes.
Kier Starmer is trying to overturn this ban. Well, he would wouldn't he? If MTA are allowed to go to Birmingham and they behave in the way they did in Amsterdam, swaggering through the streets, chanting racist slogans, committing acts of violence and generally being a bunch of cunts they’ll find Brummies aren’t having it. They'll have a rude awakening: expect a swift, uncompromising backlash from locals: organised community resistance, supporters and residents putting themselves between mob and neighbourhoods, and direct confrontations that will make clear who’s the aggressor. That’s not a plea for violence; it’s a prediction born of a city that’s defended its own before and won’t tolerate imported thuggery. And you can bet Keir Starmer and his crew will swoop in delightedly, spinning any disorder into proof that Birmingham is somehow uniquely antisemitic and that the Left condones violence, the perfect political dead cat narrative to drown out why people are fucking angry in the first place.
If there’s any justice left in the world, Maccabi Tel Aviv should be kicked out of European competition entirely until the bombs stop falling, until Gaza breathes again, until Israel faces the same sporting isolation that helped end apartheid in South Africa and if our politicians can’t stomach that if they’d rather keep wringing their hands while clinging to the coattails of Washington and Tel Aviv, then the people will have to do what they’ve always done: take a stand themselves. On the terraces, on the streets, and in the face of the same moral rot that’s turning Western democracy into a pantomime of cowardice.
The truth is simple: when you let fascists treat your city like their playground, you lose more than peace. You sell your soul. And Birmingham, for now at least, is refusing to sell its.
As usual our tone deaf Politicians are on the wrong side of history. As for Birmingham - Bostin'
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