190: Maccabi Tel Aviv's sorrowful ban from Aston Villa plunges football into darkness
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A chunk of my background, both personal and professional, has been washed away.
I didn’t think football was supposed to hurt like this.
Banning a mere thousand or less Israeli football fans from Villa Park for a Europa League tie is a cause for deep sorrow.
But not just for me, an Aston Villa fan through my Holocaust-surviving grandfather who setup his typewriter shop bang next to Aston Station on the Lichfield Road, but for this generation of Villa fans and those to come.
Because football is supposed to be a thrilling, entertaining source of pride.
Not a dispensary for anger and shame, of imported hate and community breakdown.
Is the Beautiful Game still beautiful?
My generation and those that came before had the best of it. We enjoyed league title wins, European glory and trips to Wembley.
But it would have meant nothing without the communal joy and camaraderie it spawned.
And for this Jewish kid, it was a high voltage plug-in to the prevailing, sometimes overwhelming culture of my city beyond my upbringing.
So accepting they were of me, that by the age of 21, I was reporting my beloved team from the press box for the radio station covering the West Midlands and Shropshire.
When I returned as a national reporter to the old Trinity Road box years later, the stewards, dear old men, bowled me over with their effusive welcome back. Like that beautiful Archibald Leitch-designed stand, their unvarnished spirit is gone.
So this is my own very personal sadness about what football and the city that helped shape me has become.
The English game shunned politics, now it’s buried by it.
Snarling Islamist boycotters - an elected MP is trashing what was good here. For what?
They think it’s all over. It is now.
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BONUS EPISODE: Yom Kippur tragedy in Manchester
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The anger we feel as British Jews has reached a head as we mourn the two congregants from Heaton Park, who were killed on Yom Kippur inside the synagogue.
This episode also includes the regrettable appearance of David Lammy, the deputy prime minister in front of a furious community in north Manchester.
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BONUS EPISODE: Netanyahu at the UN blasts "weak-kneed" leaders backing Palestine as Trump team presents Gaza peace plan
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Benjamin Netanyahu has called the recognition of a Palestinian state led by western nations 'sheer madness' - it shows 'murdering Jews pays off.' he added in defiant disgust.
All this as the United Nations General Assembly disgraced itself again as scores of so-called diplomats walked out en masse jeering, sounding more like a wrestling match than the highest chamber of world diplomacy - as Mr. Netanyahu began his address.
As you’ll hear Israel’s Prime Minister took apart the cowardice and appeasement which lies behind western leader’s recognition of Palestine.
Meanwhile, President Trump's 21-point peace plan for Gaza, unveiled at the UN to Arab and Muslim leaders, seeks a swift end to the October 7th war.
Listen to his first reaction to its unveiling and the Prime Minister's tough and uncompromising speech in front of the UNGA.
Jonny Gould’s Jewish State is supported by Dangoor Education and UK Toremet, promoting philanthropy.
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BONUS EPISODE: Starmer declares for Palestine
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As Jews prepared for Rosh Hashanah around the world, the leaders of the UK, Canada and Australia declared for Palestine.
Rounding up the reaction from London and Jerusalem on a day millions feared would come, here's a bonus episode.
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189: Tanya Gold: "Shameless: Exploiting the Holocaust". How the brutality of the Shoah is being whitewashed
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Tanya Gold’s provocative article, Shameless: Exploiting the Holocaust is in the Autumn 2025 edition of the Jewish Quarterly, the magazine of stories, ideas, and debates shaping Jewish culture and history.
Tanya takes aim at the state of Holocaust fiction — think Schindler’s List, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
She passionately argues these stories push Jewish victims to the margins all too often, centering on non-Jewish heroes or romanticized narratives that soften the Shoah’s brutal reality.
Why do these polished, mainstream tales dominate the raw, firsthand accounts of survivors like Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, or Zalmen Gradowski?
And with antisemitism surging and Holocaust
education under revisionist pressure from social media, what does it mean when these works are staples in UK classrooms?
Let’s explore the ethics of Holocaust storytelling, and ask: are we remembering the past—or rewriting it?
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Visit Jewish Quarterly here.
Jonny Gould's Jewish State is supported by Dangoor Education and UK Toremet.
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