Of safety and solidarity: on Maccabi’s visit to Aston Villa

JVL Introduction

Mukhtar Dar of the Birmingham Race Impact Group (BRIG) writes movingly about the forthcoming Europa League game where Aston Villa faces the racist Israeli club, Maccabi Tel Aviv on 6th Nov.

He starts with the simple fact:

“The ruling of Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) to exclude Maccabi Tel Aviv’s away supporters from the upcoming Europa League match at Villa Park was not prejudice but prudence. It was grounded not in ideology but in intelligence — in the careful phrase “current intelligence and previous incidents.”

This precautionary decision was immediately weaponised by Keir Starmer and others. Their totally irresponsible allegations of antisemitism have made the game – to be held in two days time now – a flashpoint.

We can’t put it better than Dar:

“When such bile travels under the banner of sport, safety becomes a moral duty. The SAG’s caution was neither antisemitic, as claimed by Keir Starmer, nor an act of cowardice, but conscience made procedural — the act of remembering Amsterdam not as spectacle, but as a warning. To ignore that lesson would be to invite its ghosts into Birmingham’s streets.”

Dar concludes:

“When the whistle blows at Villa Park — whether before a crowd or behind closed gates — the result that matters will not be measured in goals, but in whether Birmingham stood for decency when it was hardest to do so. Football, like politics, mirrors the soul of a society. Every decision reflects who we are: whether we defend life or spectacle, peace or provocation, conscience or compliance.”

RK

PS: You can read Mukhtar Dar’s story here.

This article was originally published by Birmingham Race Impact Group (BRIG) on Mon 3 Nov 2025. Read the original here.