No Israelis allowed: Pro-Palestinian cheering at Aston Villa vs. Maccabi Tel Aviv football game, Birmingham, England, November 8, 2025.
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When I was nine in Birmingham, England, my chums and I used to march around the schoolyard during breaks and cheer for our favorite football teams, Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion.
Sixty years later, I now live in Israel. Recently I learned that, had I wanted to return to Birmingham to cheer for my new favorite team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, at their game against Villa on November 8, the police there would have prohibited me from coming. The police stated they could not “guarantee the safety of Israeli fans” during the game.
Birmingham, a city of 2.7 million people (4.3 million in metro Birmingham) is 30 percent Muslim, with 200 mosques. Some neighborhoods are 90 percent Muslim. The primary school I attended is today filled with children primarily from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
It’s not just a fluke of the British Midlands, however. A man in London was arrested on August 29 for wearing a Star of David necklace because it could “antagonize” pro-Palestinian protestors at a demonstration nearby.
For two years, demonstrators across Britain repeated slogans ranging from “Globalize the intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” to “Resistance by any means necessary.” These threats of violence against Jews, of the destruction of Israel, aren’t even concealed. Officials do nothing to stop them.
The British government’s pandering to the demands of Muslims is unique. Could any Christian or Jewish group have gotten away with such incitement? Sending a private e-mail to a friend in which hostile words about Muslims are expressed has led to arrests and fines on the charge of “Islamophobia,” incitement and other offenses. Thousands of Britons have been charged.
But elected politicians need citizens’ votes to survive, and many Muslims are among them, so officials accept the provocations of the protestors. Officials don’t want anti-government riots on their streets. Better to silence the non-Muslims than have the violent alternative.
This leads to ever more brazen efforts by Muslim communities to take power. In London, Malmö (Sweden) and New York, for example, Muslim population growth and well-organized election campaigns have resulted in Muslim mayors.
As Malmö’s imam Basem Mahmoud prophesies, “Whether Swedes like it or not, in 10 or 15 years Sweden will be ours.” Half Malmö’s population is already Muslim (“In Islamized Europe, even Jewish films are banned,” Giulio Meotti, Gatestone Institute, October 22, 2025).
Muslims and their growing impact in non-Muslim countries are not the only concern. The Israeli ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, was asked what he felt was the greatest threat to Jews: “Even though Muslim antisemitism is a threat that has infiltrated the democratic order like a Trojan horse, we can learn to deal with it,” he replied.
“Far more dangerous is the antisemitism of the Left, because it hides its intentions. It always moves on the edge between freedom of speech and freedom to incite–and has clearly crossed the line….The limit of what is permitted to be said keeps moving” (Berliner Morgenpost, November 09, 2025).
The trajectory outside the Middle East is grim, but at least there is a calm between Hamas and Israel. Or is there? After US President Trump left Jerusalem on
Peace Summit 2025 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, October 13
October 13, he flew straight to Egypt for a Gaza Peace Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh. Thirty world leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, were there to witness the event. President Trump and several Arab leaders signed a declaration of peace, but no representative of Hamas or Israel was present to sign any deal.
Still, the declaration had enormous effect: As I write, 28 living hostages and 19 of the 20 deceased ones have been released by Hamas. In turn, Israel freed hundreds of Arab prisoners.
For Israel, there is great joy for every life saved, and for every body that can now be buried with sanctity and honor.
For Hamas and its admirers, however, there is celebration at the destruction caused on October 7, 2023. Terrorists often say, “You in the West celebrate life, but we celebrate death.” (Especially the death of others.) Though the suffering of Gazans has been great under the boot of Hamas, the terrorist group has been consistently popular in Gaza and in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) for the past two years.
So what’s next?
Will the remaining Hamas terrorists lay down their arms and withdraw, as required in phase two of the deal? Few people in Israel believe it.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father co-founded Hamas, warns that Hamas “cannot make peace with Jews….It’s the religion, it’s the Quran, it’s the Islamic ideology. So at best, Hamas can have a truce with Israel for 10 to 15 years. This is what the Islamic law allows them to have with kufar, with basically infidels, non-Muslims in a state of war…. They don’t make peace with their enemies….
“I don’t see [disarmament or deradicalization] happening in any foreseeable time frame. It’s actually very naïve to think that way…. They’re already rebranding themselves as the Gaza security guards or something like that. It’s just Hamas by another name…. Hamas is still in control of the fate of two million Palestinians…Hamas must be destroyed….[Gaza] is a breeding ground for all extreme movements or groups funded by Iran or funded even by Russia, funded by China…. This is not Israel’s fault. It’s the fault of the United Nations that kept people in darkness and gave the advantage to so many terrorist entities, especially Iran” (The Erin Molan Show, October 12, 2025).
Meanwhile, jihad (holy war) continues.
Iran is scrambling to rebuild its nuclear program. It is rearming itself and its proxies Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis and Iraq and Sudan (“Iran Seeking to Revive the ‘Axis of Resistance,’” Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, November 10, 2025). The Chinese and others are selling them arms at a feverish pace.
Michele Bachmann, dean of the School of Government of Regent University (USA), and former US congresswoman and attorney, stresses another aspect. She is troubled about the many nations carving up Gaza, which she considers God’s land and part of biblical Israel. Worse, the nations are pressing for Palestinian statehood (Pray Vote Stand Summit 2025, Family Research Council, October 18, 2025).
Quoting the Prophet Joel, Bachmann, a devout Christian, cautioned that God said He would gather the nations to the Valley of Jehoshaphat (lit. the valley of God’s judgment) and contend with them there “concerning My people and My possession, Israel, that they dispersed among the nations and they divided up My land” (3:1-2 [4:1-2]).
These sobering words of warning should not be ignored in a world under siege and in turmoil.