EZRA LEVANT ｜ Birmingham's radical Muslims want to expel local Jews
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 6 minutes
Words per Minute
164.92934
Summary
Rebel News' Ezra LeVant is back in Canada after covering the pro-Hamas riots in the UK and the counter-protest in the streets of Birmingham. He also visits the ostrich farm in support of Drea Humphrey and Sidney Fouzard.
Transcript
00:00:00.140
Hello, my friends. I'm back in Canada now. I have a few more thoughts on the UK.
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And tonight, actually, I'm going to go out to the ostrich farm.
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I know that the massacre was yesterday, and our friend Drea Humphrey covered it very well.
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But I want to go out there and fly the flag and show our solidarity with the people and with the farm.
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But today, enjoy another dose of the UK with lessons for us here in Canada.
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Before I do, I really want you to see what happened in Birmingham.
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With these pro-Hamas rioters on the other side and the small counter-protesters, you know, they were outnumbered, 101.
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To see it, obviously, you need Rebel News Plus. That's our video version.
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And eight bucks a month, we need that, because that's how we pay our bills, because we take no money from the government, and it shows.
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Tonight, I'm back in Canada with stories to tell from the UK.
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It's November 7th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
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Hi, everybody. It's great to be back in Canada.
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I think it was important that I went to the UK to cover Tommy Robinson's vindication under the Terrorism Act.
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I see that X, formerly known as Twitter, actually put out sort of a press release of their own in the form of a post on X, talking about how important that case was for freedom around the world.
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Elon Musk, of course, took an interest in the case and paid Tommy's legal fees, which until this year was something that we at Rebel News crowdfunded.
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So it's a delight and a relief to have that kind of help from the world's most successful entrepreneur.
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Sure. Um, I think it was an interesting case in that not only did Tommy beat the rap for having broken the law by not giving police his password, it also was the first time I ever remember a judge saying Tommy is being singled out for his political views.
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He is being persecuted under the law for something that's political or that's journalism.
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The law is being twisted in a vendetta. The judge didn't use those exact words, but he repeatedly said he couldn't get out of his mind the fact that Tommy was targeted for his politics.
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It was actually an incredibly important, I would say, a turning point.
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That was on Tuesday. And then yesterday, Thursday, I went up to Birmingham for the Aston Villa versus Tel Aviv Maccabi game.
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And I don't think I got the news or the views that I had hoped for, because I decided to go and focus more on the counter protest.
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What is it like when people in the last ditch are trying to stop mass immigration that is brought with us in anti-Semitism and other social ills?
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There was such a small turnout by the counter protesters to the Hamas protesters.
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You know, there was less than 50, I think. And and frankly, the average age amongst them was 65, 60, 65.
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So it was not energetic. And it was actually sort of sad to me. I was slightly demoralized by it.
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But today we have some interviews with some of those folks.
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And then I'm going to talk to Georgia Gil-Hooley, who will give us an update on a latest leaked document from inside the BBC about how that they have a bit an Arabic language BBC, sort of a counterweight to Al Jazeera.
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But how they have platformed terrorist supporters in the BBC Arabic is worse than the CBC, if you can imagine.
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Anyways, it's great to be back in Canada. And tonight I'm hopping on a plane to go visit Drea Humphrey and Sidney Fouzard at the ostrich farm.
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You saw the shocking news. I think the only word for it can be a massacre, the massacre of 400 healthy birds.
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That's the important point that the regime media typically leaves out.
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These birds are healthy. And it's just a bizarre adherence to a regulation that said, well, if one bird in the flock is ill, they all have to be killed.
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And I think that madness, that that insistence on on punctiliously following a rule that makes no sense and abusing people's rights, their property rights in the farm, abusing people's privacy, threatening them, imposing a foolish and and denying the possibility of medical research from these birds.
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I'm going to go out there just to see how things are in the aftermath. So I'll be there tomorrow.
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I want to thank you for your support for Drea, who's been doing a great job out there really for months, probably done more than 100 stories on these birds.
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And it has an unhappy ending. But but that's an important thing for the world to know, too, don't you think?
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Obviously, other great work going on in Canada here, whether it's from Alexa Lavoie, Sheila Gunn-Reed or David Menzies, the rest of our team as well.
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So anyways, without further ado, here is some more from my trip to the United Kingdom.
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There's there's actually no one here. We met one lady wearing a British flag balaclava who said that the Islamification and the no go zoneification of Birmingham is unacceptable.
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And that's her opinion. And I'm glad she has that opinion. But it's also has been accepted.
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It is just accepted that Israeli and Jewish fans of a football team are not allowed in this city because they're Israeli and Jewish.
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And that's just how it is. She may rail against that.
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She may bemoan it. But demographics are destiny.
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And Birmingham is becoming ever more is Islamified.
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And I'm not just talking about individual private people practicing their own faith.
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I'm talking about the public policy of the city is to deny Jews access and to effectively have a boycott on anything Israeli at all.
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This is the second largest city in the UK. Now, I see a couple of people.
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If we just turn the mic around over here, I can see it is now grown to three people in a city of more than a million.
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And I'm not sure if that's because locals have just thrown their hands up in the air and said there's nothing we can do if people are genuinely scared of a riot.
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And in fairness, there's still 15 minutes to go before the counter protest starts officially.
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We came up here because I saw a tweet by a GB News presenter who's Jewish.
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His name is Josh Howey. And he said, I'm going to go and counter protest and no one can stop me.
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So obviously working with the police, they decided on this empty car park as the place for it.
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I'm sure he'll be along soon, but there are a handful of journalists here.
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Rebel News has four private security, five actually, to make sure we're OK.
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But other than one, two, three, four people, no one has come to stand athwart the Islamification of Birmingham.
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Let me play for you the ad that was published by Islamists last night where they went around Birmingham,
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putting up the Palestinian flag and putting up signs saying Zionists are not welcome.
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You know, just incredibly, I won't say violent language, but threatening language.
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And the tone and the style of this video is very much in the chanting style of ISIS videos.
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I don't know if you remember when ISIS was tearing through the Middle East.
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They had incredible Hollywood-style propaganda videos with chanting prayers in the background.
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That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this ad promoting Palestinian activism around this football game.
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It reminded me stylistically and religiously of the ISIS recruitment ads.
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We'll wait another 15 minutes and see what happens.
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I tell you, I thought that there would be hundreds of counter-protesters.
00:10:01.980
So far, it looks like we'll be lucky to have 20.
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I see you're holding a sign, Act Against Hate Before It's Too Late, March Against Anti-Semitism.
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Now, I'm just curious, are you Jewish yourself or are you...
00:10:28.220
Well, I think it's appalling that Jews aren't allowed to come to a match.
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They banned the Maccabi supporters, but they also banned Jewish people from coming.
00:10:42.760
So you can't have no-go zones in a British city.
00:10:49.060
I was going to say you're saying that as an assertion, but it appears to be happening.
00:10:52.360
Yeah, and all these anti-Semitic posters everywhere.
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Why don't you tell me who you are and why you're here?
00:10:59.820
Basically, I've been following the British Patriot Movement for quite a while.
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I'm not actually Jewish myself, but I am in full support.
00:11:12.780
We're pro-Israel, so we're actually on that same side.
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We don't get on with the pro-Palestine lot, because they're just anti-Semitic, racist,
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And they've organized their protests, so we're just doing a counter-protest
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to say that it won't be tolerated in Birmingham, and, you know, we will stand up to it.
00:11:43.340
Okay, I'm just trying to lend my support to the Israel football fans who can't be here
00:11:50.000
for rather specious reasons, in my view, and to show them that they're not forgotten.
00:11:57.640
Well, people are starting to trickle in, which is good.
00:12:00.560
I was worried, because I guess I was here about an hour early.
00:12:03.540
But the man who sort of told me about it, didn't tell me, told the world about it,
00:12:07.880
is Josh Howie, a presenter at GB News, who himself is Jewish, and he decided to take a stand.
00:12:13.920
Josh Howie, thanks for coming to talk to us on Rebel News.
00:12:22.880
It's slowly but surely a few more people, as you say, are coming here.
00:12:25.900
Not to make some grand statement and some huge protest, but just when, frankly, Islamists
00:12:33.940
say Jews are not allowed in this part of the city or even to this city, I felt as a Jew,
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They say, it's just Israelis, just Zionists, oh, and anyone who's ever served in conscription
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So they're trying carefully not to use the word Jew.
00:13:04.900
I sense that in the UK there's a demographic tipping point that I think police, the media,
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politicians have just decided that there's safety in numbers and the Jewish community
00:13:16.000
is tiny and the number of righteous Gentiles who support the Jews is just outweighed by
00:13:23.420
No, I think that there is a silent majority who, I think the whole point about being British
00:13:27.880
is it's about fairness and people can see and standing up to bullies.
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So I think that this is what has happened today is that a group of extremist bullies,
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a thuggish Islamist mob, have done their best to make sure that Jews can't go and watch
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And I think that British people do see that and recognize it.
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It's just sad that local government seems to have, at every step of the way here, allowed
00:13:58.260
themselves to be pushed back just because they wanted an easy life.
00:14:05.360
And oh, yeah, then we won't let any Jewish fans come either just to support them.
00:14:11.640
Well, when you don't stand up to bullies, they're going to demand more and more.
00:14:17.400
I think there's probably about 40 people here of whom 20 are security or journalists.
00:14:24.120
Well, they're coming up from London still probably.
00:14:29.520
But when it comes to politics, it is quantity, isn't it?
00:14:34.260
It's the number of votes, you know, the demographics.
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But the reason Tel Aviv Maccabi was banned was because political power is being granted to
00:14:51.040
And when you have people who come here who are anti-Semitic, eventually they will flavor
00:15:00.940
I mean, the MP should run it, not the individuals or sects of the population.
00:15:07.480
People get, they get, MPs get voted in to do the correct thing for the country.
00:15:12.200
But aren't there some MPs running on a lend-your-vote-to-Gaza platform?
00:15:16.660
Yeah, but that's, that's, that's some, they've been voted in.
00:15:22.320
But isn't that because the UK has had open borders immigration for 40 years?
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It's because perhaps the authorities over here, whoever's over here, wherever they've
00:15:37.720
come from, they've been controlled properly by the authorities.
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Whether people from within the country who've born here, rightly be here, they've also behaved
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So this is where we came in from about 45 minutes ago.
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And we had to walk through a gauntlet of police trucks, police cars, and there's probably
00:15:58.100
a hundred police just to get off the road, find your way to this little back parking lot
00:16:04.480
to find the, the muster place for the Jewish counter-protest.
00:16:09.420
It's 619 now, so I think most people who are coming will be here, and it's well under
00:16:17.080
I just wanted to show you the gauntlet that was needed in the police mine to protect these
00:16:28.260
folks from a potential encounter with the pro-Palestine folks who are on the other side
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There's absolutely no risk here, but there is a walkway, and I, the people are going
00:16:46.940
I'm not sure what that meant, other than disagreement.
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But so far, not a lot of action at the counter-protest here.
00:16:52.580
Now, you're holding a flag that is the Israeli Defense Force flag, and why are you doing that?
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I've helped out in the last couple of years with Israel, supporting Israel.
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And I'm a proud British Joe, and I am not going to be stopped being able to go anywhere in
00:17:13.580
Now, I was listening to a lot of the local politicians, including the MPs from the Len
00:17:20.500
Gaza, your vote, and Ahmed Yakub, who's a bit of a rabble-rouser, and I sense that they
00:17:26.700
think the Israel Defense Forces are war criminals, and I think that they would probably say this
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That's their thinking that they've used to ban the Israeli team.
00:17:39.240
Are you worried that simply showing this flag could one day be illegal in the UK?
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We're defending our country, have a right to defend our borders.
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My daughter lives in Israel, and I'm proud to hold this flag anywhere.
00:18:06.440
I'm quite happy to say I've volunteered for the Israeli army.
00:18:10.760
I've helped out in the, you know, it's this government.
00:18:19.480
Isn't the demographics really the destiny here?
00:18:22.180
I mean, you may say you don't put up with it, but mass immigration and a radicalization,
00:18:28.620
that tells me that the destiny of Birmingham is to become maybe a no-go zone for Jews.
00:18:33.580
Well, yeah, it's very dangerous out there for the Jews at the moment, which is disgusting,
00:18:38.260
because you've got all these pro-Palestine people pushing their agenda onto everyone else.
00:18:49.340
And they're just like, they want to push their agenda onto everyone else, and that's not fair.
00:18:53.320
In a democracy, I mean, there are some non-negotiable freedoms, but politicians follow the herd.
00:19:00.120
Oh, well, our prime minister banning, supporting Palestine as a state.
00:19:18.480
I don't know about the police, but they let it go.
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They allow people to shout anti-Semitic slogans.
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And they just let it go, because they're scared.
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And here, the people who, the councillors who stopped the Maccabi people coming,
00:19:42.060
one of the, they were Muslim, at least two of them were,
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and one of them was in trouble because he was insisting on prepubescent little girls wearing a hijab
00:20:04.200
He's the one who said, lend your vote to Gaza, right?
00:20:24.380
Uh, Keir Starmer said, um, well, this shouldn't be right.
00:20:34.880
And, um, the British public will not be pushed around by radicals in any direction.
00:20:40.820
And most specifically, uh, they are not anti-Semitic by nature or...
00:20:49.360
But, you know, I, I look around at, and I see all the arrows pointing in the same direction.
00:20:56.320
To me, the only thing that might stop it would be perhaps a change in the government.
00:21:01.300
Do you think Nigel Farage would change the course on some of these things?
00:21:05.240
Yes, I think he probably would, but that doesn't necessarily mean that one can support all his policies.
00:21:12.660
One can't necessarily support all his policies, even though he may change the body politic.
00:21:16.860
Well, I mean, this seems like a pretty existential issue.
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And it's one that I feel like there's a monopoly on the conversation.
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Most of the mainstream media doesn't want to talk about it.
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But I feel like a lot of the problems from mass immigration are downplayed for ideological reasons.
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They framed it like, oh, it's to do with Israeli football hooligans, even though there's been no instance of the past year.
00:21:46.880
And the incident that happened in Amsterdam was actually them being attacked by local Arabs in a pre-planned Jew hunt.
00:21:53.480
But you're right, the demographics are changing, and that's why it's important for people to take a stand now.
00:22:00.680
Because as soon as the Israeli fans were banned, it was like, oh, now we're going to ban the Israeli team.
00:22:10.400
The posters have been put up around the city last night.
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I mean, this is not the first time we've heard that language.
00:22:18.260
We've heard it a thousand years ago where Jews were kicked out of this country.
00:22:24.980
Here in Birmingham, I mean, the Muslim population is so large, and it seems to be catering to any Israel and anti-Semitic population.
00:22:35.740
Like, the demographics in Birmingham are so overwhelming, aren't they?
00:22:39.160
I mean, there's only 2,000 Jews in the whole city, and it's almost 50% Muslim.
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Isn't it really the demographic destiny of Birmingham to be a no-go zone for Jews?
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There will never be a no-go zone for myself and my Jewish people ever.
00:23:03.940
I am not afraid to be Jewish, and I will walk proud as being an English Jew.
00:23:09.220
A lot of Jews would not be here if countries hadn't opened their borders 100 years ago, or we would have died in the Holocaust.
00:23:17.680
So, of course, there's going to be a sympathy for it, but it's about who do you control to come into your country,
00:23:23.780
and also what contribution that people make, and how we then fit together as a society.
00:23:29.660
What we're talking about here is about cultural issues, about the thing about being British is that we are accepting,
00:23:37.080
and that there is this focus on fairness, and tolerance.
00:23:44.060
But what we're talking about here are intolerant people, intolerant Islamists who are saying,
00:23:53.860
Pew Research does surveys all over the world, polls,
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and there are countries, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, places where there really aren't any Jews,
00:24:06.860
So, by definition, if you're bringing in people from rural Pakistan, from Bangladesh,
00:24:11.720
by definition, you're bringing in anti-Semites.
00:24:19.140
And I don't know if the Jews have had enough yet,
00:24:21.740
because until the community says no more immigration,
00:24:26.000
I think you're missing the first-order problem.
00:24:29.320
Banning an Israeli team is a secondary problem rooted in the first problem.
00:24:34.120
Well, it's about having control of immigration,
00:24:40.640
From certain parts of the world, it's a cultural issue where, let's just be real,
00:24:47.420
And there are terrible other social issues, misogyny, homophobia.
00:25:03.020
And when you are importing certain cultures then who aren't about tolerance,
00:25:11.620
And I believe tonight is one of those flashpoints.
00:25:14.560
I don't think that we're going to be allowed much closer than this,
00:25:19.480
I don't know the size of the pro-Hamas protests tonight.
00:25:23.460
We have been corralled in different places for our own protection.
00:25:26.780
I believe that when the police say that, by the way.
00:25:29.060
I'm curious how many people Ahmed Yakub and the other radicals were able to muster.
00:25:36.560
I can't really object too loudly and too strenuously to the police
00:25:40.020
courting us off and putting us behind a cage, really.
00:25:44.300
I can't really argue with that when I know the violence that could happen
00:25:49.660
First of all, you know, the pro-Israel protest is tiny.
00:25:54.760
How big is the pro-Palestinian protest tonight?
00:25:57.940
Well, I've just got around this side, and it's probably about 30, 40 times the size.
00:26:23.200
I mean, I've kept my identity quite quiet, but they've made some violent threats to Jews
00:26:32.760
I spoke to someone earlier who said that if a Jew dares turn up at this match,
00:26:36.820
then they're going to get in this new roadman dialect stamped.
00:26:42.800
I mean, we're talking through this metal fence because the police have, I think, correctly
00:26:46.840
estimated that if this small number of Jews comes into contact with that large number
00:26:51.100
of pro-Palestine activists, there could be violence.
00:26:55.320
Yeah, the thing is, I know that a lot of people in this crowd through my work,
00:26:59.760
and they're not going to be scared to go the other side.
00:27:07.320
So, I mean, I was just saying that Tel Aviv Maccabi has no fans here today.
00:27:11.980
What do the old school Aston Villa's fan think?
00:27:15.240
I think most of the old school Aston Villa fans are just a bit fed up that this is ruining
00:27:22.000
Turning their game into a football, so to speak.
00:27:27.500
Yeah, but I think they, yeah, they're a bit fed up with it.
00:27:30.660
What do you think about the political quarrel tonight?
00:27:36.740
I just want to play the football, man, that's it.
00:27:38.460
Yeah, have you, the game starts in about an hour?
00:27:42.020
Do you think the, do you think the Tel Aviv team should be banned from coming to Birmingham?
00:27:49.560
Well, do you think the politicians that got the petition to block the Israeli team?
00:27:55.080
No, do you think that, what do you think about the politicians?
00:28:00.640
What do you think about the politicians who managed to get the Israeli fans kept out?
00:28:06.760
I don't understand why you haven't got in the stadium, to be fair.
00:28:10.500
Well, do you think that there, if some Jews or Israelis came, do you think they'd be at
00:28:16.180
All right, a couple of actual Aston Villa fans.
00:28:19.160
I get the feeling, again, I don't know Birmingham at all, this is my first time here.
00:28:23.020
I get the feeling that Ahmed Yacoub and some of the other lend your vote to Gaza politicians.
00:28:28.760
I'd be surprised if they've actually attended a single game in their lives.
00:28:35.300
We need to show that these people are stirring up trouble.
00:28:40.900
People like Ahmed Yacoub, these people, who do they represent?
00:28:49.020
And what they're doing is they're putting out social media posts, trying to drive division,
00:28:53.640
trying to whip up the idea that somehow Jews and Israelis are the instigators of trouble,
00:28:59.920
putting up placards of posters, which you've probably seen on the lab post here, saying
00:29:04.100
Zionists, baby killers, all this kind of thing.
00:29:07.020
And they are the people that are driving the wedge.
00:29:09.160
And we need to call them out because they are the people causing trouble.
00:29:12.940
And they are the people that are creating division within our country.
00:29:17.620
You know, we often hear about two-tier in policing and with the government and amongst
00:29:23.360
other institutions, but I don't believe that it's two-tier.
00:29:31.700
Britain has failed to understand and learn from its history that appeasement never works.
00:29:38.240
In fact, it always leads to a very, very bad place.
00:29:42.400
Do you think the bulk of the fans have the sportsmanlike attitude that you do?
00:29:47.800
You know, we're here, I'm here every game, every home game, same as the power here.
00:29:51.280
You know, there's 42,000 hopefully under the roof cheering us on.
00:29:58.360
I don't think it's too full today, but that's another comment about the ticket prices.
00:30:01.980
But, yeah, hopefully everyone gets behind the team and hopefully it's a big three points.
00:30:07.040
A step closer to the top eight, I think it is, top eight.
00:30:14.460
That's pretty, you know, in football terms or soccer, where I come from, that's a pretty
00:30:22.280
Is Aston Villa that favourite in the odds makers?
00:30:28.880
Now, how do you feel about the game proceeding?
00:30:30.220
I mean, listen, you play with teams from all over the world.
00:30:41.120
There's got to be 100 police officers that are now flanking the small pro-Israel, pro-Jewish
00:30:48.100
It's literally a wall of men, women, and steel, which is sad in a way.
00:30:55.260
One of our private security suggested to me that if there was going to be an issue,
00:31:00.000
it would happen in this walk from the stadium out.
00:31:04.940
We heard earlier, oh, we're about to march along with the cops.
00:31:13.960
We want to make sure people in the rest of the country realise that there's this very
00:31:20.300
strong drive against Israel, a very strong drive to try and exclude Israel from sport,
00:31:30.360
And although people are presenting what's happened recently with Maccabee Tel Aviv as
00:31:34.720
just about the fans and just about behaviour, it's actually part of this whole drive to
00:31:40.200
keep, to isolate Israel and to turn Israel into a pariah state.
00:31:46.860
Now, what's the difference between activists on the other side who would say this isn't
00:31:52.060
anti-Semitic, this is just against Israel's politics?
00:31:56.600
I would say that that very definitely is anti-Semitic.
00:31:59.180
I mean, number one, the most obvious point is Israel is the only Jewish state in the world.
00:32:03.700
So it's a bit of a coincidence that they're choosing to target Israel.
00:32:09.240
But also, I think the consequence, the knock-on effect of all the things they're doing is
00:32:14.220
to tarnish and tar Jewish and Israeli people and to, well, like I said earlier, to treat
00:32:23.080
So a simple example is one of the things that they're doing, you'll see on the placards that
00:32:28.200
are up on the lampposts around here, they're targeting the IDF.
00:32:32.360
They're saying that the IDF is somehow, should we head to the right?
00:32:35.960
So the IDF is somehow a more dangerous and malign army than any other.
00:32:43.780
And what that does is it means that any person in Britain who has a relative who's in the
00:32:48.400
IDF, any person in Britain who has a young relative who served in the IDF and maybe fought
00:32:55.520
on October the 7th and defended people from invasion, is now suddenly classed as somehow
00:33:01.400
a kind of a barbarian or something and a dangerous genocidal maniac.
00:33:06.960
And it's shocking because everybody is entitled to be proud of their army.
00:33:13.900
So it is anti-Semitic because what they're doing is they're making a special case out of
00:33:17.900
Israel and they're making a special case out of Jews and Israelis.
00:33:21.360
Whether there's a future for Jews in Britain, that's not for me to say.
00:33:28.280
But I hope that we can keep fighting and ensure that people feel like there is a home
00:33:34.240
For the first half of what you said, though, I don't really agree with.
00:33:36.760
I think the people like the politicians, Ayub Khan, for example, who reflects, who is one
00:33:46.740
of the drivers for keeping Maccabi Tel Aviv out.
00:33:49.440
I don't know if they do reflect the ordinary, everyday Muslim in this country.
00:33:54.760
Some of the extreme views that they're promoting, I don't know if they do reflect them.
00:33:59.300
Well, I've seen marches of 100,000 people saying shocking things.
00:34:07.580
I mean, I don't know if it's a million, but it's 100,000.
00:34:10.620
I think the problem is that if you simply assume that everybody's thinking the same, then
00:34:15.580
it does lead automatically to your second point, which is, well, why are they staying in Britain?
00:34:19.600
Whereas, if you say, look, these politicians are actually creating division, they're creating
00:34:27.500
a sort of a widening gap between people, then at least there's a possibility there of finding
00:34:33.780
the moderate Muslims who themselves are being victims of this extremist ideology.
00:34:39.540
Last question, and thanks so much for your time.
00:34:42.080
I understand that the police increased their deployment from 700 to 1,000 cops, and we're
00:34:48.280
walking, there's more cops around us than there are protesters.
00:34:51.880
Isn't that a sign that if left to their own devices, this city would do violence to the Jews?
00:35:00.000
I mean, I didn't know that they'd increased to 1,000.
00:35:04.320
Even if it's 700, even if it's 700, isn't that shocking?
00:35:08.140
I mean, my take on it is that it shows that they could have facilitated the original plan,
00:35:13.800
which was for the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans to appear here.
00:35:21.240
Obviously, if the will was there, they would have done it.
00:35:27.040
Can you tell me your full name and the name of your organization?
00:35:35.640
For the last 10 minutes or so, the crowd of, it can't even be 50 people, of counter-protesters
00:35:41.660
has been marched, walked, block by block with the escort of probably 100 police.
00:35:49.040
They were keeping an eye peeled for youth, mainly, who might have been along the path.
00:35:54.780
A lot of the stores along the way had young Muslim proprietors that the police asked them
00:36:00.800
to stand in the shops just to make sure that no one, you know, inadvertently had an interaction.
00:36:10.980
The Jewish community in the city is quite small.
00:36:15.820
And the number of non-Jewish allies who came out tonight, it was small as well.
00:36:22.840
I don't think the police would have had this many forces out if they didn't think there was a need for it.
00:36:31.680
You see 100 cops like that, you're not going to start anything.
00:36:34.920
But I actually really think that they were necessary.
00:36:39.460
From what I could tell, there were no incidents,
00:36:42.580
certainly between the counter-protesters and the main protesters,
00:36:45.820
I spoke to a Jewish journalist who had been with the pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian protesters.
00:36:53.840
I think with the policing that they had here tonight,
00:36:56.900
I don't know, maybe they could have held the line and not caved in
00:37:00.100
to extremist elements that demanded that the Israeli team be banned from bringing their fans.
00:37:13.480
And it's not something that can be done all the time.
00:37:17.100
I think this was a symbolic evening for the police,
00:37:20.540
but it's not something that could be replicated every week, let's say.
00:37:24.140
I think if there's a staring contest, an endurance contest,
00:37:27.140
between the radical activists who got the Israeli team fans banned
00:37:32.120
and the city of Birmingham and their capacity to pay for this police,
00:37:40.100
I'm going to guess tonight's policing costs more than a million pounds.
00:37:47.340
but it's also tragic that you need this kind of safety.
00:37:52.940
I was recently, a year ago, I was in Budapest, Hungary,
00:38:00.700
which has a fair-sized Jewish community these days.
00:38:05.220
And I went to the largest synagogue in Budapest,
00:38:23.880
And I interviewed some kids who were outside the synagogue,
00:38:26.720
and they said it's easy to be Jewish in Budapest.
00:38:30.060
I don't think it's easy to be Jewish in Birmingham anymore.
00:38:34.620
which means the match between Aston Villa and Tel Aviv Maccabi
00:38:37.940
has officially started, and I think that gets lost in the shuffle.
00:38:41.680
It is a sports event, and obviously, everyone who was there tonight,
00:38:47.080
with perhaps a couple of exceptions of people who went as agents,
00:38:50.600
provocateurs, everyone there wanted to see the match.
00:38:53.300
If you didn't believe in the match, you wouldn't be there.
00:38:56.040
And so the only normal people who I encountered tonight
00:39:02.160
Now, the rest of the evening was made up by a wall of police.
00:39:06.260
I understand, in the end, West Midlands police deputized
00:39:16.720
who were whipped up by the Lend Gaza Your Vote politicians
00:39:23.580
So I understand from talking to another journalist I encountered
00:39:26.480
that there was maybe 2,500 of those Islamic extremists,
00:39:30.300
and the police were overwhelmingly on that side of things.
00:39:33.560
But I actually attended because I wanted to see
00:39:39.740
And the first thing I can report is that it was tiny.
00:39:44.540
If I'm candid, it was probably more like 50 people.
00:39:53.660
Demographically, the average age of the pro-Israel,
00:40:00.800
I didn't see myself any of the pro-Islamic, pro-Palestinian side,
00:40:07.540
but I'm going to guess the average age of them was 25.
00:40:10.820
And I say that because that's just the demographic reality
00:40:13.340
where half of the young people in Birmingham are Muslim.
00:40:17.440
Now, I'm not just saying that to be Muslim is to be anti-Semitic,
00:40:20.400
although my friend Tommy Robinson would point out
00:40:22.560
that there are anti-Semitic parts of the Koran.
00:40:24.440
But when you have half a million Muslims in a city,
00:40:40.780
rather than the, I think there's 2,000 Jews left in Birmingham.
00:40:48.140
I started off tonight by talking about this magnificent old church here.
00:41:06.820
The police managed to keep the small Jewish contingent
00:41:31.680
I made a decision to stay with the counter-protesters
00:42:16.900
I don't think it's going to happen on a regular basis.
00:42:49.760
I mean, I think the threat to the Jews can be acute
00:43:09.260
If you are a Jew, you have participated in genocide.
00:43:41.460
And yet the city still needed to deploy 1,000 cops.
00:44:11.560
There, radical Islam turns into anti-Christianism.
00:44:24.200
the tiny number of Christians left in Palestine,
00:44:27.380
it's often Islam that drives out those Christians.
00:44:41.600
And maybe there's just so many wonderful things to enjoy,
00:44:50.400
I came to the UK to live-tweet Tommy Robinson's trial,
00:44:58.700
And I decided to stick around two more days for tonight.
00:45:02.000
I kept it quiet because I didn't want to telegraph
00:45:10.560
Anyways, I'll keep coming to the UK from time to time
00:45:12.600
and to Ireland from time to time and other places
00:45:46.660
about one of their reporters, Dominique Casciani,
00:46:05.100
that one of their flagship programs called Panorama,
00:46:14.060
of what Donald Trump allegedly said on January 6th.
00:46:18.260
And they would cut and splice and hide their edits
00:47:25.760
that he then said the second part of the BBC's version.
00:47:40.580
It took four, four years for that fact to come to light.
00:47:44.000
The BBC, by the way, has a whole block of people
00:47:50.960
For some reason, BBC Verify has not yet verified
00:47:57.940
But now there's a dossier, a leaked internal dossier
00:48:02.720
by the BBC that acknowledges serious editorial failures
00:48:09.340
As you may know, the BBC operates in many languages.
00:48:46.920
I understand it's an internal critique of the BBC.
00:48:53.580
Is there, like, who would be the whistleblower?
00:48:58.220
or who was trying to wake up the BBC to its own flaws?
00:49:08.760
However, he's not, you know, an employee of the BBC.
00:49:11.280
So he's someone who's obviously been trusted by them.