❓WHAT HAPPENED: Fans of an Israeli soccer team were banned from attending a game in Birmingham, England, as police believe they cannot stop local Muslims from attacking them. Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan is defending the ban, branding the Israelis racist.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Israeli soccer fans, Muslims in Birmingham, and Mehdi Hasan.
📍WHEN & WHERE: October 16, 2025, on social media.
💬KEY QUOTE: “Israeli racist football hooligans ≠ ‘Jewish people’. It’s insane how many people need this to be told to them in this day and age.” – Mehdi Hasan
🎯IMPACT: The ban has sparked widespread backlash, with public figures including Reform Party leader Nigel Farage saying it “takes racial discrimination to a whole new level.”
Fans of the Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv have been banned from attending a game in Birmingham, England, because local police believe they cannot prevent local Muslims from attacking them. While most people are condemning the move as a de facto ban on Jews attending the game to appease violent Muslims, former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan is defending it.
Hasan argued on social media that it is, in fact, the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans who are “Israeli racist football hooligans,” adding that it is “insane” to suggest the ban is effectively anti-Semitic. He claims that, somehow, it is actually the people upset by the ban who are the real anti-Semites, because they are equating Israelis to Jews.
“The dishonest desperation by (often non-Jewish) supporters of Israel to make every incident involving Israel or Israelis about Jews and antisemitism will in the long-run only hurt the Jewish community and the fight against actual antisemitism,” he claimed.
Notably, Hasan has in the past characterized Jews—and all non-Muslims—as “cattle” who “live their lives as animals” in sermons at a British mosque.
Reminder that Mehdi Hasan thinks non-Muslims live their lives “as animals”. https://t.co/IxJNkG3dLI pic.twitter.com/z3K3AsLpvu
— Jack Montgomery (@JackBMontgomery) November 30, 2023
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