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UK Police Cave to the Mob, Ban Israeli Soccer Fans Over ‘Safety Concerns’
Maccabi Tel Aviv midfielder Sagiv Jehezkel and AFC Ajax Amsterdam defender Anton Gaaei play during the Ajax vs Maccabi Tel Aviv match at the Johan Cruijff ArenA for the UEFA Europa League in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on November 7, 2024. Photo: Stefan Koops – EYE4images via Reuters Connect
Street thugs across Europe are making Israeli athletes and their supporters unsafe. At the same time, bureaucrats are attempting to make Israelis unwelcome at international competitions.
Earlier this month, police in England, citing the potential for violence, barred Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending a key match against Birmingham’s Aston Villa on November 6.
As British Culture Minister Lisa Nandy pointed out in a parliamentary speech against the ban, it was the first time in 25 years that visiting fans have been barred from attending a game in the United Kingdom.
The British government — embarrassed by the effective exclusion of Jewish attendees on the heels of an attack by a radical Islamist on a Manchester synagogue that claimed two lives — attempted to reverse the decision, but Maccabi’s management opted to refuse their ticket allocation, regardless.
“The wellbeing and safety of our fans is paramount,” Maccabi Tel Aviv said in a statement, “and from hard lessons learned, we have taken the decision to decline any allocation offered on behalf of away fans.”
Violence between opposing fan bases is all too common in soccer. But fans of Italian sides Genoa and Sampdoria aren’t barred from watching games their teams play in England, nor are supporters of Spanish clubs Barcelona and Real Madrid. That’s despite the fact that all of these fanbases have participated in bloodcurdling brawls in the last year.
Israel, however, is held to a different standard.
In this case, Maccabi’s traumatic night in the Netherlands last year was cited as a reason to fear violence. In Amsterdam, local Islamist vigilantes, not fans of Ajax, whom Maccabi were playing, launched a “Jew hunt” against the traveling Israelis on various messaging apps, using the raucous behavior of a tiny minority of Israeli supporters — behavior familiar to all soccer clubs — as cover for what Yad Vashem, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust, called a “pogrom.”
Maccabi correctly grasped that a repeat experience might await their fans in Birmingham, where radical Islamism among the city’s large Muslim population has proliferated over the last decade.
Four Islamist members of the House of Commons who were recently elected as independents standing on a Gaza solidarity platform helped instigate the Aston Villa ban.
Their campaign rested on claims that Maccabi fans had sparked the violence in Amsterdam. This overlooked the Dutch authorities’ conclusion that the Israelis were not responsible for the violence despite the bellicose chants of some of them. The police also “ignored” the advice of the British government’s advisor on antisemitism, Lord John Mann, who said that responsibility for the violence did not lie with the Maccabi fans.
Indeed, Nandy pointed out that the ban “was a decision not taken [because of] the risk posed by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans; it was a decision taken because of the risk posed to them, because they support an Israeli team and because they are Jewish.”
In reaching their decision, local police are also said to have used a report by the extreme anti-Zionist Hind Rajab Foundation — run by Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Belgian-based Islamist with ties to Hezbollah — which predictably blamed all the trouble on the Tel Aviv fans. The foundation’s purpose is to hunt down Israelis traveling overseas to have them arrested on allegations of war crimes.
By banning Israelis from a public event, British authorities placated virulent anti-Israel activists rather than confronting them. This kind of response is hardly limited to soccer and is not unique to the United Kingdom.
Following the circus of demonstrators harassing the Israeli cycling team in a Spanish tournament in September 2025, a major Italian cycling tournament banned the Israeli team for “public security” reasons.
In 2024, Israeli competitors were similarly excluded from a climbing competition in the Netherlands and a hockey tournament in Bulgaria — though pressure from the NHL reversed the hockey ban. Even if officially presented as concern for their safety, sports organizers are punishing Israelis for receiving death threats rather than standing up to violent agitators.
If not for the ceasefire in Gaza, UEFA, European soccer’s top governing body, likely would have ejected Israel. The proposed move rested on activists falsely depicting Israel’s war against the terrorist group Hamas as genocide. The exclusionary move was the boardroom version of the Amsterdam Jew hunt — a tyranny of the majority that holds anti-Israel views. Both the bureaucrats and the street brawlers justify their discrimination and harassment as responses to perceived Israeli crimes.
But the reality is that the Maccabi ban is an extension of the so-called “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” (BDS) campaign that solely targets Israeli individuals and associations — and which is itself the outgrowth of an Arab League boycott of Israel instituted three years before the Jewish State came into being.
Cloaked in the language of human rights, BDS seeks to eradicate the Jewish State and harass its supporters.
Jews getting chased in the streets and forced into hiding in the same city where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis is obviously abhorrent. But the anti-Israel discrimination presented as safety concerns or human rights protection is more complicated to outside observers. Among Jews, as well as all those who understand the trajectory of antisemitism, both carry an unmistakable echo of the past: Jews are not wanted here.
Ben Cohen is a senior analyst and the rapid response director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where David May is a senior research analyst and research manager. For more analysis from the authors and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Ben and David on X @BenCohenOpinion and @DavidSamuelMay. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
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Israel’s Pager Attack Against Hezbollah Inspires New Spy Thriller With ‘Fauda’ Actors
An ambulance arrives at a hospital as thousands of people, mainly Hezbollah fighters, were wounded on Sept. 17, 2024 when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Israel’s operation last year that involved the explosion of pagers carried by Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon has inspired a new film by Bleiberg Entertainment, which will launch sales for the project at the American Film Market (AFM) next month, Deadline reported.
The spy thriller “Frequency of Fear” will star “Fauda” cast members Doron Ben-David, Itzik Cohen and Marina Maximilian, as well as Israeli singer and actress Daniella Pick Tarantino (“The Perfect Gamble”), who is married to filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. The film is currently in post-production.
Israeli-American actor, director, and producer Danny Abeckaser is directing and producing with a script by Kosta Kondilopoulos. The two worked together previously on films including “Inside Man” and “The Engineer.”
The “Frequency of Fear” cast includes Ariel Yagen (“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints”), actress and social media activist Emily Austin, Angel Bonanni (“Seven Days in Entebbe”), Herzel Tobey (“Damascus Cover”), Moran Attias (“Tyrant”), Aki Avni from Netflix’s “Beauty Queen of Jerusalem,” and Yarden Toussia Cohen from the Apple TV+ series “Tehran,” according to Deadline.
The AFM, held this year from Nov. 11-16 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, is an annual event where members of the international film and television industry can meet and collaborate.
The covert Israeli operation took place in September 2024 and targeted members of the Iranian-backed Islamist terror group Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon. The blasts took place over the course of two days, wounding thousands and killing more than 40 people. Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani was among those injured and reportedly lost an eye. The explosions took place across Hezbollah’s main stronghold in Beirut and in southern Lebanon. It was carried out following months of almost daily Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel and almost a year after the Hamas-led deadly terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023
Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad sabotaged thousands of explosive-laden communication devices, such as pagers and hand-held radios, before they were distributed to Hezbollah operatives. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Israel’s involvement in November 2024, telling his cabinet he had approved the operation.
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Documentary Festival in Amsterdam Bans Gov’t-Funded Israeli Film Institutions in Support of Israel Boycott
Illustrative: Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
One of the world’s largest documentary festivals has prohibited Israeli film institutions receiving government funding from participating in its event this year, in support of a Dutch and Belgian cultural boycott of Israel.
Every year, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) invites more than 300 independent films, 45 projects, and more than 3,000 professionals to the festival.
“These films and individual film professionals can come from any country, even if freedom of expression is under pressure in those countries or if human rights violations are committed in the name of governments,” an IDFA spokesperson explained to The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “Filmmakers and films with demonstrable ties to governments that contribute to serious human rights violations (for example, if a film or project has been financed by such government) will not be selected. Official government delegations or affiliated institutions from these countries are not eligible for official accreditation to IDFA.”
The festival will be held this year from Nov. 13-23.
The IDFA similarly explained its policy for next month’s event on its website under its “principles and guidelines.” The festival stated that it “does not claim to settle or resolve political debates, but rather to enrich them from an artistic perspective, thereby stimulating public debate and fostering understanding and individual growth.” Organizers also noted that the festival “cannot and does not want” to have a neutral position but instead hopes to be “a committed institution with a socially critical perspective.”
Despite participating in a boycott against Israel, IDFA further claimed that it aims to serve as a “safe space” for independent filmmakers, artists, and audiences, “where everyone feels welcome and respected and can express themselves freely even when perspectives differ.”
“At IDFA there is a plurality of voices, that established names and opinions can be critically questioned, that protests can be heard, and friction can exist to discuss social issues and contribute to change,” according to the festival’s website. “We must protect this open space, especially when things get complicated.”
IDFA organizers declined accreditation to Israel’s DocAviv Festival, the Israeli public broadcaster Kan, and the Israeli Co-Production Market because they receive partial funding from the Israeli state budget, according to Variety. Filmmaker and producer Michal Weits, who became Docaviv’s artistic director last year, released a statement criticizing global cultural boycotts of Israel. He called on colleagues in the international documentary filmmaking community not to “conflate the Israeli government with the state and its people.”
“This is the moment to strengthen liberal institutions and voices of dissent within Israel, and to ensure that they do not disappear,” he said. “The budgets allocated to cinema in Israel do not belong to the government; they belong to the public. They belong to the citizens, to the taxpayers. These resources enable us to amplify critical voices, to shed light on injustices, and to provide the broad platform we dedicate to filmmakers from across the world, offering audiences the opportunity to encounter urgent and meaningful cinema.”
The IDFA is among hundreds of Dutch and Belgian cultural organizations, artists, and cultural workers that recently signed a pledge to boycott Israel and Israeli entities that are complicit in alleged “grave human rights violations against the Palestinian people.” The signatories support boycotts of Israel in every field, including sports and music, like the Eurovision Song Contest.
“A cultural boycott alone cannot end the genocide, apartheid, or illegal occupation,” they said. “We thus echo longstanding Palestinian calls on the sports sector, academia, the economic sectors, and all spheres of politics to sever ties with complicit institutions.”
The group added that it is composed of “members of the Dutch and Belgian cultural sector, [who] wish to no longer remain bystanders to the ongoing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and what has been widely recognized by all authoritative institutions as a genocide of the Palestinian people.” Individual independent filmmakers and film professionals are not affected by the boycott.
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Harvard conservative magazine is shut down after publishing article laced with Nazi rhetoric
A conservative magazine at Harvard University was suspended by its board of directors Sunday amid scrutiny over an article published in September that closely resembled the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler.
In its September print issue, the Harvard Salient published an article by student David F.X. Army that read “Germany belongs to the Germans, France to the French, Britain to the British, America to the Americans,” echoing the words Hitler used in a January 1939 speech to the Reichstag in which he forecasted that another world war would lead to the annihilation of Jews.
The Harvard Salient piece also argued that “Islam et al. has absolutely no place in Western Europe,” and called for a return to values “rooted in blood, soil, language, and love of one’s own.” (The phrase “blood and soil” also echoes a Nazi idea that the inherent features of a people are its land and race.)
In a statement to the school’s newspaper, the Salient’s editor-in-chief, Richard Y. Rodgers, claimed that Army “did not intentionally quote Adolf Hitler, nor did any member of our editorial staff recognize the resemblance prior to publication.”
Rodgers continued, “The article was a meditation on how nations and cultures preserve coherence in an age of rootless cosmopolitanism and global homogenization. To confuse a defense of belonging for a manifesto on exclusion is a fault of the reader, not the writer.”
The print edition of the article was placed in undergraduate dormitories last month. Harvard installed Salient distribution boxes in dorms in February after the publication, which is independent from the university, complained that students could not easily access its work.
The uproar comes as politicians and other public figures on the right have faced allegations that their rhetoric echoes that of the Nazis. It also comes as Harvard and other universities face pressure from the Trump administration to show that they are not clamping down on conservative voices.
Last month, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration had illegally frozen more than $2.6 billion in federal funding to the school as a “smokescreen” for advancing its political agenda. The Trump administration had frozen the funds over allegations that Harvard was persecuting conservative ideology on its campus as well as fostering a climate of antisemitism.
The school’s mainstream student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, published three opinion pieces criticizing the rhetoric used in the Salient piece, to which Rodgers published his own article last week lamenting that “ordinary conservative thought is one headline away from criminality.”
“Together, the coverage forms a coherent script. The conservative scholar becomes the reactionary theorist. The traditionalist student becomes the bigot,” wrote Rogers. “‘Fascism’ is no longer a historical reference but a weaponized cliché, a way to place opponents outside the moral guardrails of the University.”
On Sunday, the Salient’s board of directors brought the debate over the Salient to a close and announced that it would suspend its operations pending a review.
“The Harvard Salient has recently published articles containing reprehensible, abusive, and demeaning material—material that is, in addition, wholly inimical to the conservative principles for which the magazine stands,” read the statement from the board, whose ex officio members include the prominent Jewish literature scholar Ruth Wisse.
“The Board has also received deeply disturbing and credible complaints about the broader culture of the organization. It is our fiduciary responsibility to investigate these matters fully and take appropriate action to address them,” the statement continued. “We are therefore pausing operations of the magazine, effective immediately, pending our review.”
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