Banning Maccabi fans from the Aston Villa match isn’t safety – it’s segregation

This week, I’m not sure she would recognise that same country.

The police’s job is to protect people from violence, not to surrender to it. Their duty is to uphold public order, not to give up on it.

By telling Maccabi fans to stay away “for their own safety”, West Midlands Police have sent a chilling message – that British Jews can no longer rely on the state to keep them safe in parts of their own country.

That is not safety. It is segregation.

Of course, this isn’t just about one football match. It’s part of a wider story – one that many of us in the Jewish community have felt building for months.

Since October 7 2023, Jewish students have been targeted on university campuses. Jewish schools have had to hire more security. Some have even told pupils not to wear visibly Jewish symbols on their way to and from school and to remove blazers embroidered with the Star of David.

We’re told repeatedly by politicians – particularly in the two since the Heaton Park shul terror attack – that Britain will “do whatever it takes” to protect Jews. Yet in practice, it increasingly feels like we’re being told to stay home and stay quiet.

The Prime Minister keeps repeating that promise: “Whatever it takes.” But in reality, he hasn’t done anything except announce more funding for the Community Security Trust.

That might sound reassuring, but it’s really an admission of failure: We can’t stop the people who want to kill you, and we’re not politically strong enough to try, so here’s some money to build higher fences and thicker doors before the next attack by those whom we’ve allowed to call for an intifada for two years.

If the answer to antisemitism is to exclude Jews from public spaces – to make Britain’s public life Judenrein – then we haven’t solved the problem. We’ve surrendered to it.

I don’t want Britain to become a country where the police issue travel warnings for Jews. I don’t want Jewish children growing up thinking that wearing a kippah, or being a proud Zionist, is dangerous.

And I don’t want this story, of fans banned from a football match, to become another quiet example of our national decline, shrugged off as “the new normal.”

Because for me, and for my family, this isn’t abstract. My great-grandmother saw what happens when hatred is allowed to spread unchecked, when good people look the other way, when authorities prioritise “keeping the peace” over doing what’s right.

She taught me that the measure of a country isn’t how it treats its majority, but how it protects its minorities.

Britain once set the standard for that. We prided ourselves on fairness, tolerance and courage. Those values are being tested now.

And I still believe we can rise to the occasion – if we have the courage to call this what it is. Not a “security issue.” Not “community tension.” But antisemitism, pure and simple, whipped up and encouraged by local sectarian MPs who should hang their heads in shame.

I still believe in Britain. I still believe in our capacity for decency, fairness, and courage.

But those qualities only mean something if we act on them.

Because this was never really about a football match. It’s about who controls the streets of Britain’s second largest city, and whether this country still has the will to stand up for its Jews.