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SvennoJ on 19 October 2025
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UK gov’t working to allow Maccabi Tel Aviv fans at Birmingham: Gov’t official

Ed Miliband, the UK energy secretary, has said the government is working towards ensuring that fans from the Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv are permitted to attend the match in Birmingham against Aston Villa.

The issue has stirred the UK for several days, with PM Starmer voicing his opposition to the decision by West Midlands Police to ban the away fans.

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are known for making offensive and racist chants. In a match against Ajax in Amsterdam last year, they were filmed chanting “Death to Arabs” and “No children left in Gaza”, among other things, and vandalising the city.

A YouGov poll last week found that almost double the number of people polled supported the ban on the Maccabi fans than opposed it.




Protesters march in Lisbon against genocide in Gaza


Protesters hold a large Palestine flag during the demonstration in the Portuguese capital

Ceasefire is NOT The End of the Gaza Genocide. Here’s Why


Just over two years after the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, and just days after the announcement of a ceasefire, Aaron Bastani spoke to three Palestinian writers in front of a live audience at EartH in Hackney.

Ahmed Alnaouq is the host of Palestine Deep Dive and the co-founder of ‘We Are Not Numbers’, an organisation that provides international mentors for Palestinian writers. Yara Eid is a war journalist, born and raised in Gaza, who has worked for Amnesty International and been published in The New Arab. Tareq Baconi is a journalist and academic and is the former senior analyst for Israel/Palestine and Economics of Conflict at the International Crisis Group, based in Ramallah, and the author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018).

Aaron spoke to Ahmed, Yara and Tareq about whether the ceasefire gives them hope, what really shifted on October 7th and how they’ve been changed by the genocide.