Comment by amiga386 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by amiga386 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The local community near Aston Villa's grounds, Villa Park, is predominantly Muslim.

Take a look at this map of data from the 2011 census. The dark green lumps in the north-west (>70% Muslim) and the green lumps surrounding them (45%-70% Muslim) are Perry Barr. The whitish lump (0%-5% Muslim) immediately to the east of a dark green lump is Aston.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Islam_Birmingham_201...

May I introduce you to the local MP?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/oct/17/keir-s...

> But the decision has been welcomed by Ayoub Khan, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, the constituency where the match will take place. He organised a petition calling for the match to be either cancelled, relocated or held behind closed doors [...]

> Khan is one of the five independent MPs elected at the last election wholly or partly because of their outright opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza and his petition suggests that his opposition to the match going ahead is motivated as much by the desire to make a political point about Israel’s conduct as by concerns about the risk of violence. The petition cites three reasons why the match should not go ahead. One is the “track record of violence by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans”, but the others are the “ongoing genocide in Gaza” and the “wider European context”. The petition says:

> As Israel continues its assault on Gaza, killing thousands and devastating civilian infrastructure, sporting fixtures involving Israeli teams cannot be separated from the wider political context. Hosting such teams sends a message of normalisation and indifference to mass atrocities.

With this in mind, perhaps you can see there was as much a political and sectarian religious element to WMP's decision as there was a security element.

Don't know what the "wider European context" is, but a public official campaigning to boycott and sanction a country carrying out a genocide is not in any way bad. That the UK authorised that match to happen instead of sanctioning Israel is the shameful part, not Khan's conduct.

And your opinion about there being a "religious sectarian element" is very subjective even though it's presented as fact. People from Arabic/Middle-Eastern countries (who are majority Muslim) are indeed especially sensitive to Israel's apartheid/killings, but that has much more to do with their own marginalisation and history than with their religion I'd wager. As evidence, I'm sure these matches were happily going along before Israel started killing 100 people per day, no?

In short, that a public official did the right thing when his country's government couldn't is, again, laudable.

This is I think the third reply I make to you, not because I follow you around, but because every time I read a post full of "implications" and concern for the innocent citizens having to deal with evil people, it happens to be you posting it...

You seem to have chosen one specific viewpoint, and are lauding those that you already agree with.

Birmingham's Jewish community is under attack. That's not coming from nowhere, it's coming from people riled up about Gaza, finding an excuse to attack innocent people in the UK:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvdxrr0mxpo

I have no love of football hooligans. But I'm not blind to the implications of a police force favouring one group of people over another. It's WMP's duty to protect all citizens, including from each other. They clearly failed in their duty here, especially because they were caught out with a hallucinated post-hoc justification for their decision.

I'll repeat what I said earlier: If you're angry about Israel and Palestine, don't take it out on Jews in the UK. Don't assume Jews support Israel or the IDF, don't assume Muslims support Palestine or Hamas. Thanks.

First: before speaking about the Jewish community, go to a protest, you'll find plenty of them there. The Jewish community is not under attack, the tired "antizionism/antigenocide = antisemitism" trope doesn't fly much nowadays. I'd be extremely certain that a lot of those who voted for that mayor, and who campaigned for the football match to be cancelled, and who got ready to bash the fans if need be were Jewish people (haven't been to a single protest without Jews being represented and very vocal about their protest of the genocide).

Second: believe it or not, but for hours after writing that comments, it kept popping up in my head until I realised what I was doing.

I'm arguing with someone who:

- during an ongoing genocide harps on about the great injustice done to genocide-celebrating football fans

- plays the moderate by saying we should all defer to the public authorities (the good ones, those that don't do anything, not the public authorities like Khan, who is a dishonest guy who wouldn't even have gotten elected if there hadn't been a genocide around in the first place)

- mentions that indeed, it's complicated, there are problems on both sides, etc. The sides you're equivocating being a group of pretty much Nazi football fans and the (gasp) the Muslamists!

- jumps into a comment about Muslims being the problem whipping out a Muslim map of Birmingham. Imagine any other discussion about risks of violence and someone helpfully jumping in with a "Jew map" or "Chinese map" and making dark innuendos about the Jewish mayor. And then has the gall to squeak out "and don't you dare be an islamophobe"!

- is all over the discussion, making disingenuous, weaselly arguments.

Again, stop reading opinion pieces on WP and looking at Muslim maps, go to a protest, you'll see you're imagining things.

The irony of anti-“Zionists” making Jews feel unsafe and unwelcome in the UK is that those Jews are then more likely to immigrate to Israel.

The people of Gaza are a bit like a somebody that climbed into a cage with a lion, hit it with a cricket bat, and then start crying when it retaliated.

If the people of Gaza actually possessed the inclination to create a functioning state with a football team, that team would obviously have been banned after the mass rapes and murder on October 7th.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com