On the 6th of November 2025, English football side Aston Villa faced off against Maccabi Tel Aviv in a UEFA Europa League Match. West Midlands police banned Israeli and Jewish supporters from attending the game, with the police claiming that the community surrounding the stadium wasn’t safe for fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv.  Local politicians later admitted in January of 2026 that Jewish and Zionist fans would be targeted if they attended the game, and there was pressure from the Muslim community to call off the game entirely. 

 Pro-Israel Students at the nearby University Of Birmingham hadn’t felt safe weeks leading up to the match precisely because of how authorities both inside and outside the university have enabled antisemitism dressed as “critique of Israel.” 

Anti-Israel groups published articles encouraging protests around the city leading up to the game, which naturally caused students around the City and the University of Birmingham to feel unsettled. The police have shown that they are simply unable to protect Jews and Israelis. If they struggled to contain and knew certain groups want and are willing to attack Jews for simply being themselves, how are they able to protect Jewish Students on campus? 

The Aston Villa Vs Maccabi Tel Aviv game showed that hatred towards Zionists and Jews isn’t going away anytime soon. Social media was used as a tool to help promote protesting all around the city, including on campuses. 

This sort of toxic behaviour has become the norm in UK schools, where any behaviour said to be conducted in the name of freeing Palestine is supported, while pro-Israel activism is suspect. The idea that to keep the peace, authorities need to rely on false and AI-generated evidence to justify discriminating against Jews because local Arab anti-Zionists are essentially treated as an unalterable force of nature is a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

The longer our community leaders enable this behaviour, the longer this problem will persist. Jewish students are simply fed up, with us simply wanting answers from the University on how we can deal with situations such as the toxic behaviour that we see on campus. Games such as the Aston Villa vs Maccabi Tel Aviv game are meant to be games that bring people together, but instead spread anti-Israel and Jewish hatred onto campuses such as the University of Birmingham. 

The idea that a football game can do so much damage to a student’s life is frightening, and rallies from such attacks have not been dealt with. University is meant to be a place where students can express themselves but fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv, where some are Students on campus, are not able to show their true colours, making the beautiful game not so beautiful anymore. 

Since the October 7th attack that took place at the Nova Music Festival and Kibbutzim in the South of Israel, Jewish students have experienced increased hatred on campus. Make no mistake, those incidents weren’t perpetrated by neo-nazis.  

 The failures of the West Midlands police show that students who believe in the existence of the State of Israel are not safe in Birmingham, with students becoming less likely to show off their identity because of the resources that Jews and Zionists are receiving on UK campuses.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)