Mick Hartley

Can this be true? Chilling, if so..

A former Hezbollah fighter is behind a report that campaigners claim ‘laid the groundwork’ for the police to ban Israeli fans from attending a football match in Birmingham, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The Hind Rajab Foundation, chaired by Dyab Abou Jahjah, helped the ‘Game Over Israel’ campaign compile an anti-Israel dossier which was handed to West Midlands Police ahead of a Europa League match at Villa Park next month.

According to the GOI campaign group, the document was integral to the police’s highly controversial decision to stop Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from going to the match.

The document commented on the so-called ‘systematic instrumentalisation of football culture in genocide’ as well as illustrating ‘why Israel’s place in global sport is indefensible’, according to its authors.

So, a piece of straight-up antisemitic hate propaganda, put together by a former jihadi.

A probe by the MoS has uncovered Abou Jahjah posing shirtless and brandishing a Kalashnikov machine gun. In July, he was all too happy to share the image with his online supporters, telling them that ‘being called a terrorist’ is a ‘badge of honour’.

It comes as after the barbaric October 7 Hamas attack, he took to social media to praise the massacre and argued it is not anti-Semitic to say ‘effing Jews’. 

He has also compared Jewish people to Nazis.

In Belgium, where he lives and where the Hind Rajab Foundation is based, he has held mock funerals for killed Hamas leaders, saying one ‘showed the way’, according to our research. He has also repeatedly venerated Hezbollah leaders online….

Abou Jahjah was banned from the UK in 2009 over his views on the Middle East.

We have no indication that the West Midlands police or Birmingham council actually paid any attention to this document, of course. There’s no reason why we should believe the group’s claim that their report was “integral” to the decision to ban Tel Aviv Maccabi fans. On the other hand, there is a bad smell about this whole business – and it does show the kind of pressure groups that are pushing for the ban.