I received a lovely WhatsApp on Sunday from my son in Perth, Australia, telling me that my two teenage grandsons had each won an award at their end-of-season football ceremony. One was voted Best Team Player and the other Best and Fairest Player.
One would think that there’s nothing particularly newsworthy about that – apart from a Zeide schepping nachas (grandpa being proud), of course.
However, my son also sent me a photo of the team receiving their winners’ medals, which I cannot show for legal reasons (they are under 18). What is noticeable, though, is that the team consists of two white Australian boys, two Egyptian boys, one from Syria, three of East Asian appearance, and one Jewish boy, wearing a large white kippah so it doesn’t fall off while playing.
All the boys of different ethnicities and heritages are seen applauding as the Jewish boy receives his award. Again, that shouldn’t be newsworthy. But sadly, it is in a week when Jewish people have been declared unwelcome, even banned, from attending a football match in Birmingham, England, because the visiting team happens to be Israeli.
From nachas to nausea
Maccabi Tel Aviv is scheduled to play Aston Villa in the Europa Conference League on November 6, but they may have to play with no support, as Birmingham’s authorities decided that fans of the Israeli club would not be permitted to attend. They cited “safety concerns,” but anyone with eyes – and a memory – can see what this really is: a cowardly surrender to intimidation and a further erosion of the rights of Jews in the United Kingdom.
The star arrest
Then came another story, even more chilling. A Jewish man in London was arrested for wearing a Star of David pendant. According to reports, the police decided the pendant “antagonized pro-Palestinian protesters.” Just pause on that sentence. In 21st-century Britain, the land of the Magna Carta and the birthplace of parliamentary democracy, a Jew was apprehended because his Jewishness offended someone else’s political sensibilities.
It is a grotesque inversion of logic: The symbol of the people who survived genocide is now treated as a provocation, while the symbols and slogans of the group that committed a pogrom are paraded freely down Whitehall. “From the river to the sea,” the chant calling for Israel’s destruction, is apparently acceptable speech. But a Star of David – the oldest continuous emblem of Jewish identity – is an arrestable offense.
If that isn’t the definition of moral collapse, I don’t know what is.
The Green Party’s shame
As if this were not enough, the leader of the UK Green Party, Zack Polanski – a Jew (whether he likes it or not) born David Paulden and raised, incidentally, in my own hometown of Manchester – has called for anyone who has served in Gaza to be arrested on charges of war crimes when they enter Britain.
Think about that. Hundreds of dual citizens, men and women who bravely defended Israel during reserve or regular army service, would find themselves treated as criminals upon returning to their own country. Imagine telling British Jews who fought to save hostages or prevent rocket attacks that they can no longer come home.
It is one of those moments where satire fails because reality has outstripped it. A Jewish politician, in a supposedly progressive party, demanding that Jews who fought to stop a terrorist group be put in handcuffs. George Orwell would have needed a new dictionary.
Pushback – and silence
To be fair, there has been pushback. British outlets like GB News have expressed outrage at the fan ban, and several columnists in The Telegraph and The Spectator have rightly described it as discriminatory. But from the BBC? Not a word of moral clarity. The same broadcaster that devotes entire investigative series to microaggressions in British classrooms can’t find its voice when Jewish safety is at stake.
The pattern is familiar. When antisemitism comes from the far Right, it is condemned unequivocally. When it comes from the far Left or from Islamist circles, it becomes “complex,” “contextual,” or “a matter of community relations.” Jews are expected to understand. To empathize. To accept that their exclusion from public life is for their own protection.
This is not empathy. It is appeasement.
The thin end of a very old wedge
Britain’s Jews have seen this movie before. It begins with the assertion that Jewish symbols “provoke.” It continues with the suggestion that Jewish institutions are “security risks.” It ends with the quiet disappearance of Jews from public spaces, university campuses, cultural events, and sports.
Football has always mirrored society. The terraces are where you can see what a nation is becoming. And right now, Britain is becoming a place where Jews must hide their symbols and their pride if they wish to avoid confrontation, and where the sight of Hebrew lettering on a scarf can trigger a police intervention.
In the 1930s, British Jews fought to establish Maccabi clubs precisely because they wanted to prove that Jews could play, compete, and belong, not as guests in someone else’s game but as equals. That ideal is being undone, one “safety measure” at a time.
A lesson from Perth
Which brings me back to that photograph from Perth. A group of boys – brown, white, Asian, Jewish – applauding one another’s success. They don’t know or care about the geopolitics of the Middle East. They know that someone played well, passed fairly, and deserved an award. That is all sports were ever meant to be: a shared language of respect and excellence that transcends background.
Why can’t the grown-ups take a leaf out of the kids’ book? Why can’t we cheer for one another’s skills instead of hating one another’s origins? Why can’t we keep the slogans and sanctimony out of everyday life?
A team of teenagers in Western Australia can manage it. But apparently, the officials of a major British city cannot.
The final whistle
What began as nachas from a grandson’s football medal has become a lament for a country that once prided itself on fairness. The ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters, the arrest over a Magen David, the calls to criminalize Jewish soldiers – these are not isolated incidents. They are warnings.
Britain is testing how much discrimination against Jews can be normalized before anyone notices. The answer, it seems, is quite a lot.
The boys in Perth know better. They know that you play fair, you applaud your teammate, and you respect the badge on every jersey. The adults, tragically, seem to have forgotten.
Perhaps it’s time they learned to play like children again.
The writer, a rabbi and physician, lives in Ramat Poleg, Netanya, and is a co-founder of Techelet – Inspiring Judaism.