When local authorities and police retreat in the face of extremists, it risks a spiral of fear and grievance. At all levels, national, devolved and local, the state needs to wake up
November 12, 2025 17:16
When I started planning a visit to Birmingham as part of my tour of Jewish communities across the UK, I has no idea that it would coincide with the now infamous Aston Villa-Maccabi Tel Aviv match. It revealed a city and a local Jewish community at a crossroads between pride and prejudice.
The scandal of the ban of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans has been well-rehearsed in these pages. Despite the arrests in Amsterdam around Maccabi’s match against Ajax being primarily for attacks on supporters of the Israeli team, the authorities opted to blame the victim. This outraged our Jewish community and politicians across the political spectrum who all called for the decision to be reversed.
In the event, it was not. The farce was laid bare when, despite the absence of the supposedly threatening Tel Avivians, the West Midlands Police needed to field 700 officers to provide safety. This confirmed what we had said all along. The threat here was not from the Tel Aviv fans, but to them. From Islamists and the far-left. Later, the far-right also sought to get in on the action.
Around the stadium, on matchday, masked Islamist gangs put up shocking posters saying #ZionistsNotWelcome. When, the following day, they were still up, we complained to Birmingham council. After repeated and extensive advocacy by us and the West Midlands Jewish Representative Council, the posters come down on Monday, after five days – clearly far too long.
Meanwhile, I was receiving videos of Islamist hate preachers stirring up their community against possible "Zionist” visitors. It is notable that these videos were not being shared with me by Jews – but by Muslim leaders who shared our concern.
When local authorities and police retreat in the face of extremists instead of confronting them, the problem goes far beyond allowing offensive symbols to go unchecked or turning parts of the city into “no-go zones” for Jews or anyone else. Once the public loses faith in the authorities’ ability to protect them, extremists step in – offering their own thugs as militias to “defend” frightened communities. Whether that’s the English Defence League or Islamist mobs, this risks a spiral of fear and grievance which will continually embolden and empower extremists. At all levels, national, devolved and local, the state needs to wake up!
This portrait of Birmingham, however alarming and dystopian, is not the full story. As I visited our three member synagogues, the Jewish school, and the University’s Jewish Society, a very different picture emerged: one of real pride.
As Rabbi Jacobs, the rabbi of the city’s "Cathedral Synagogue”, Singer’s Hill, said, “On the day of the ill-famed match, we should not forget that we also had Shacharis, ‘Coffee, Cake and Chat’, ‘Bar and Bat Mitzvah Club’, and at the weekend we filled our shul hall for AJEX Shabbat. Similar things were happening across the other Birmingham communities too”.
Members of the mighty Birmingham J-Soc, which counts up to 1,000 Jewish students across the city, packed into the home of the Chaplaincy couple Rabbi Fishel and Rebbetzen Esther Cohen for a delicious Friday night dinner. In their 42 years in the city, the Chaplaincy couple has attended the weddings of more than 100 former students, many of whom meeting at their table.
Earlier, at King David School, notable for being the only Jewish school in the country with a majority Muslim population, children of all faiths and none participated in a very cute Shabbat Assembly, together enthusiastically singing the Friday night melody "Shalom Aleichem”, which translates as “peace be upon you”.
Birmingham Progressive Synagogue is rightly proud of its Tikkun Olam programme, including its support for refugees – the majority of them Muslim.
At Birmingham Central Synagogue’s Kristallnacht event, the main speaker was not Jewish, but a Church of England Vicar, Reverend Tony Rindl, whose father had come over on the Kindertransport from Austria. From an assimilated family, the father had married a local Anglican woman. But Revd Tony was conscious of his Jewish roots and has become a lynchpin of Birmingham’s chapter of the Council of Christians and Jews.
Birmingham’s Jewish community has a proud history. It has given three Lord Mayors to the city and continues to punch well above its weight in its exceptional service to West Midlands society, economy, and culture. But for it to continue to thrive, it needs national and local leaders to confront the prejudice and extremism that they are facing.
This is now the frontline of the fight for the soul of our nation.
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