Ezra Levant reports on Birmingham’s radical Muslims, who outnumbered a tiny Jewish counter-protest (under 100 vs. 2,500–5,000 pro-Palestinian activists) demanding Tel Aviv Maccabi fans be banned from an Aston Villa match. With only ~2,000 Jews left in a city where half the youth are Muslim, he warns of growing isolation, citing extremist politicians like Ahmed Yaqub and threats against synagogues. Meanwhile, a leaked BBC dossier reveals 500+ pro-terrorist segments on BBC Arabic, including calls to "burn Jews like Hitler," despite UK laws classifying Hamas as terrorist—raising questions about institutional bias. Police overprotected the larger, violent-leaning crowd while ignoring the counter-protest’s message: appeasement fuels division, and unchecked radicalization risks eroding free speech and minority rights globally. [Automatically generated summary]
And tonight, actually, I'm going to go out to the ostrich farm.
I know that the massacre was yesterday, and our friend Drea Humphrey covered it very well.
But I want to go out there and fly the flag and show our solidarity with the people and with the farm.
So that's where I'll be tomorrow.
But today, enjoy another dose of the UK with lessons for us here in Canada.
Before I do, I really want you to see what happened in Birmingham with these pro-Hamas rioters on the other side and the small counter-protesters.
You know, they were outnumbered 100 to 1.
To see it, obviously, you need Rebel News Plus.
That's our video version.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe, and $8 a month.
need that because that's how we pay our bills because we take no money from the government and it shows tonight i'm back in canada with stories to tell from the uk It's November 7th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Hi, everybody.
It's great to be back in Canada.
I think it was important that I went to the UK to cover Tommy Robinson's vindication under the Terrorism Act.
I think it's an important global story.
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.
And I agree with them.
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.
So it's a delight and a relief to have that kind of help from the world's most successful entrepreneur.
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.
He is being persecuted under the law for something that's political or that's journalism.
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.
It was actually an incredibly important, and I would say a turning point.
That was on Tuesday.
And then yesterday, Thursday, I went up to Birmingham for the Aston Villa versus Tel Aviv Maccabi game.
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.
What is it like when people in the last ditch are trying to stop mass immigration that has brought with us anti-Semitism and other social ills?
There was such a small turnout by the counter-protesters to the Hamas protesters.
You know, there was less than 50, I think.
And frankly, the average age amongst them was 65, 60, 65.
So it was not energetic, and it was actually sort of sad to me.
I was slightly demoralized by it.
But today we have some interviews with some of those folks.
And then I'm going to talk to Georgia Gilhouli, who will give us an update on a latest leaked document from inside the BBC about how that they have an Arabic language BBC, sort of a counterweight to Al Jazeera, but how they have platformed terrorist supporters in the BBC, Arabic.
He's worse than the CBC, if you can imagine.
Anyways, it's great to be back in Canada.
And tonight I'm hopping on a plane to go visit Drea Humphrey and Sidney Fazard at the ostrich farm.
You saw the shocking news.
I think the only word for it can be a massacre, the massacre of 400 healthy birds.
That's the important point that the regime media typically leaves out.
These birds are healthy.
And it's just a bizarre adherence to a regulation that said, well, if one bird in a flock is ill, they all have to be killed.
They got better almost a year ago.
And I think that madness, that insistence 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 denying the possibility of medical research from these birds.
It's just so astonishing.
I'm going to go out there just to see how things are in the aftermath.
So I'll be there tomorrow.
Jews Under Threat00:15:08
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, and it has an unhappy ending.
But that's an important thing for the world to know, too, don't you think?
Obviously, other great work going on in Canada here, whether it's from Alexa Lavoie, Sheila Gunread, or David Menzies, the rest of our team as well.
Anyways, without further ado, here is some more from my trip to the United Kingdom.
To find this counter-protest, um...
And it's this empty parking lot here.
There's actually no one here.
We met one lady wearing a British flag, Balaklaba, who said that the Islamification and the no-go zoneification of Birmingham is unacceptable.
And that's her opinion, and I'm glad she has that opinion, but it's also has been accepted.
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.
And that's just how it is.
She may rail against that.
She may bemoan it, but demographics are destiny.
And Birmingham is becoming ever more Islamified.
And I'm not just talking about individual private people practicing their own faith.
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.
This is the second largest city in the UK.
Now, I see a couple of people, if we just turn the mic around over here, I can see it has now grown to three people in a city of more than a million.
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.
And in fairness, there's still 15 minutes to go before the counter protest starts officially.
We came up here because I saw a tweet by a GB News presenter who's Jewish.
His name is Josh Howey, and he said, I'm going to go and counter protest and no one can stop me.
So obviously working with the police, they decided on this empty car park as the place for it.
I'm sure he'll be along soon, but there are a handful of journalists here.
There's a lot of private security here.
Rebel News has four private security, five actually, to make sure we're okay.
But other than one, two, three, four people, no one has come to stand athwart the Islamification of Birmingham.
Let me play for you the ad that was published by Islamists last night where they went around Birmingham putting up the Palestinian flag and putting up signs saying Zionists are not welcome.
If you see a Zionist, call the police.
You know, just incredibly, I won't say violent language, but threatening language.
And the tone and the style of this video is very much in the chanting style of ISIS videos.
I don't know if you remember when ISIS was tearing through the Middle East, they had incredible Hollywood-style propaganda videos with chanting prayers in the background.
That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this ad promoting Palestinian activism around this football game.
It reminded me stylistically and religiously of the ISIS recruitment ads.
Take a look.
I tell you, I thought that there would be hundreds of counter-protesters.
So far it looks like we'll be lucky to have 20.
I'll keep you posted.
I see you're holding a sign, act against hate before it's too late.
March against anti-Semitism.
Who are you and where did you come from?
I'm Jill from Hansworth.
How far is that away?
Oh, about half a mile, a mile.
too far now I'm just curious are you Jewish yourself or are you and so why are you here Are you worried about the state of Birmingham?
Well, I think it's appalling that Jews aren't allowed to come to a match.
They banned the Maccabi supporters, but they also banned Jewish people from coming.
So you can't have no-go zones in a British city.
Well, and you're saying that as...
You shouldn't have.
I was going to say you're saying that as an assertion, but it appears to be happening.
Yeah, and all these anti-Semitic posters everywhere.
Why don't you tell me who you are and why you're here?
Basically, I've been following the British Patriot movement for quite a while.
I support Jews fully.
You're not Jewish yourself?
I'm not actually Jewish myself, but I am in full support.
We're pro-Israel, so we're actually on that sound side.
We don't get on with the pro-Palestine lot because they're just anti-Semitic, racist, and they're here to cause trouble, basically.
And they've organised their protests, so we're just doing a counter-protest to say that it won't be tolerated in Birmingham.
And, you know, we will stand up to it.
How did you hear about this?
Why are you here?
What are you trying to do?
Okay, so I'm just trying to lend my support to the Israel football fans who can't be here for rather specious reasons in my view and to show them that they're not forgotten.
Well people are starting to trickle in which is good.
I was worried because I guess I was here about an hour early but the man who sort of told me about it, didn't tell me, told the world about it, is Josh Howie, a presenter at GB News who himself is Jewish and he decided to take a stand.
Josh Howie, thanks for coming to talk to us on Rebel News.
Absolute pleasure to be here.
Yeah, I didn't know it might just be us.
It might be me, but it's not.
It's slowly but surely a few more people, as you say, are coming here.
Not to make some grand statement and some huge protest, but just when, frankly, Islamists say Jews are not allowed in this part of the city or even to this city, I felt as a Jew, you know, I'm not into football or anything, I just thought I've got to come and stand here.
Now, they use language carefully.
They saw it's just Israelis, just Zionists, oh, and anyone who's ever served in conscription in Israel.
So they're trying carefully not to use the word Jew.
Yeah, but more and more it gets dropped.
You know, come on, Zionists, it means Jew.
There's no differentiation.
But where's the pushback?
I sense that in the UK there's a demographic tipping point that I think police, the media, politicians have just decided that there's safety in numbers and the Jewish community is tiny and the number of righteous Gentiles who support the Jews is just outweighed by the sheer demographics.
No, I think that there is a silent majority who I think the whole point about being British is it's about fairness and people can see and standing up to bullies.
So I think that this is what has happened today is that a group of extremists, bullies, a thuggish Islamist mob have done their best to make sure that Jews can't go and watch a football game and I think that that British people do see that and recognize it and even our own government do recognize it.
It's just sad that local government seems to have every step of the way here allowed themselves to be pushed back just because they wanted an easy life.
Okay yeah we'll ban the Israeli fans and oh yeah then we won't let any Jewish fans come either just to support them.
And so let's just make the trouble go away.
Well that that when you don't stand up to bullies they're gonna demand more and more.
I'm looking around I think there's probably about 40 people here of whom 20 are security or journalists.
Where's everybody?
Well they're coming up from London still probably.
I like your optimism.
It's not size it's quality.
But when it comes to politics it is quantity isn't it?
It's the number of votes, you know the demographics.
This isn't about votes tonight.
It's about making a statement.
Right but the reason Tel Aviv Maccabi was banned was because political power is being granted to people in a democracy and when you have people who are come here who are anti-Semitic, eventually they will flavour the political discussion in the country.
Yes they shouldn't though.
I mean the MP should run it, not individuals or sects of the population.
People get, they get, MPs get voted in to do the correct thing for the country.
But aren't there some MPs running on a lend your vote to Gaza platforms?
Yeah but that's that's that's some can't they've been voted in.
Got to accept it I'm afraid.
That's where we are.
But isn't that because the UK has had open borders immigration for 40 years?
Oh, not necessarily.
It's because perhaps the authorities over here, whoever's over here, wherever they've come from, they've been controlled probably by the authorities.
Whether people from within the country who've born here rightly be here, they've also behaved in, I think, not a great way.
So this is where we came in from about 45 minutes ago.
And we had to walk through a gauntlet of police trucks, police cars, and there's probably 100 police just to get off the road, find your way to this little back parking lot to find the muster place for the Jewish counter-protests.
It's 6.19 now, so I think most people who are coming will be here.
And it's well under 100.
I just wanted to show you the gauntlet that was needed in the police mind to protect these folks from a potential encounter with the pro-Palestine folks who are on the other side of the grounds.
There's absolutely no risk here, but there is a walkway, and people are going to the game, and someone shouted, fascist.
I'm not sure what that meant other than disagreement.
But so far, not a lot of action at the counter-protest here.
Now, you're holding a flag that is the Israeli Defence Force flag, and why are you doing that?
I've helped out in the last couple of years with Israel, supporting Israel, I've done volunteering, and I'm a proud British Jew, and I am not going to be stopped being able to go anywhere in this country.
Now, I was listening to a lot of the local politicians, including the MPs from the Lengaza, Your Vote, and Ahmed Yacoub, who's a bit of a rabble-rouser.
And I sense that they think the Israel Defence Forces are war criminals.
And I think that they would probably say this flag is Islamophobic and a crime.
That's their thinking that they've used to ban the Israeli team.
Are you worried that simply showing this flag could one day be illegal in the UK?
Well, not one to my watch.
This is not a terrorist flag.
This is an army flag.
We're defending our country, have a right to defend our borders.
You know, I am pro-Israel, I'm a Zionist, my daughter lived in Israel, and I'm proud to hold this flag anywhere.
I'm not, I don't think it will be banned.
I'm quite happy to say I've volunteered for the Israeli army, I've helped out.
You know, it's this government.
This government is a nightmare.
The national government?
Yes, Labour.
Isn't the demographics really the destiny here?
I mean, you may say you don't put up with it, but mass immigration and a radicalization, that tells me that the destiny of Birmingham is to become maybe a no-go zone for Jews.
Well, yeah, it's very dangerous out there for the Jews at the moment, which is disgusting because you've got all these pro-Palestine people pushing their agenda onto everyone else.
And it's just basically not acceptable.
And they're just like, they want to push their agenda onto everyone else, and that's not fair.
In a democracy, I mean, there are some non-negotiable freedoms, but politicians follow the herd.
Our Prime Minister supporting Palestine as a state.
Well, I mean, the foreign minister.
You know, being anti-Semitic.
And schools are.
I don't know about the police, but they let it go.
They allow people to shout anti-Semitic slogans in London every week, and they just let it go because they're scared.
And here, the people who, the counsellors who stopped the Maccabi people coming, one of the, they were Muslim, at least two of them were.
And one of them was in trouble because he was insisting on pre-pubescent little girls wearing a hijab when they didn't have to.
He wanted it in the school, so he's got, and our Ayub Khan is our local MP.
He's the one who said lend your vote to Gaza, right?
Yeah.
It's quite frightening.
Well, you're not Muslim yourself.
You look like an indigenous Brit, so to speak.
Muslim Politicians in Britain00:15:07
Is it over?
Like, is it just irreversible?
Well, with this government, I think, so they don't seem to want to do anything.
Kyrstam has said, well, this shouldn't be right.
We must stop it.
And they just allowed it to happen.
This is a great country.
And the British public will not be pushed around by radicals in any direction.
And most specifically, they are not anti-Semitic by nature or...
I know you're right morally, but, you know, I look around and I see all the arrows pointing in the same direction.
To me, the only thing that might stop it would be perhaps a change in the government.
Do you think Nigel Farage would change the course on some of these things?
Yes, I think he probably would, but that doesn't necessarily mean that one can support all his policies.
We can support Woodsering?
One can't necessarily support all his policies, even though he may change the body politic.
Well, I mean, this seems like a pretty existential issue, and it's one that I feel like there's a monopoly on the conversation.
Most of the mainstream media doesn't want to talk about it.
There's some exceptions, but I feel like a lot of the problems from mass immigration are downplayed for ideological reasons.
What do you think of that?
Yes, I think they have been, and I think they no longer should be.
They framed it like, oh, it's to do with Israeli football hooligans, even though there's been no incident on the past year.
And the incident that happened in Amsterdam was actually them being attacked by local Arabs in a pre-planned Jew hunt.
But you're right, the demographics are changing, and that's why it's important for people to take a stand now, because as soon as the Israeli fans were banned, it was like, oh, now we're going to ban the Israeli team.
Now we're going to ban all the Israelis.
Now let's ban all the Jews.
So this is what they want.
The posters have been put up around the city last night.
Zionists are baby killers.
I mean, this is not the first time we've heard that language.
We've heard it a thousand years ago where Jews were kicked out of this country.
And I don't want that to happen again.
I'm British and I'm very proud of that.
And I'm Jewish and I'm proud of that.
Here in Birmingham, I mean, the Muslim population is so large, and it seems to be catering to anti-Israel and anti-Semitic population.
Like the demographics in Birmingham are so overwhelming, aren't they?
I mean, there's only 2,000 Jews in the whole city, and it's almost 50% Muslim.
Isn't it really the demographic destiny of Birmingham to be a no-go zone for Jews?
Absolutely not.
There will never be a no-go zone for myself, for my Jewish people ever.
England will be a safe place.
We are rising up.
This is not 1939.
I will not be scared to walk the streets.
I am not afraid to be Jewish and I will walk proud as being an English Jew.
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.
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 and also what contribution that people make and how we then fit together as a society.
What we're talking about here is about cultural issues.
The thing about being British is that we are accepting and that there is this focus on fairness and tolerance.
But what we're talking about here are intolerant people, intolerant Islamists who are saying, no, we don't want Jews in our city.
Pew Research does surveys all over the world, polls.
And there are countries, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, places where there really aren't any Jews, that are 95% plus anti-Semitic.
So by definition, if you're bringing in people from rural Pakistan, from Bangladesh, from these, by definition, you're bringing in anti-Semites.
It's just a scientific statistical fact.
And I don't know if the Jews have had enough yet, because until the community says no more immigration, I think you're missing the first order problem.
Banning an Israeli team is a secondary problem rooted in the first problem.
Well, it's about having control of immigration.
And you're right, from certain parts of the world, it's a cultural issue where, let's just be real, they hate Jews.
I mean, that's the reality of it.
And there are terrible other social issues, misogyny, homophobia.
That is not what it is about within the UK.
That is not what being British is about.
Being British is about living that live.
And when you are importing certain cultures, then who aren't about tolerance, of course there's going to be a flashpoint.
And I believe tonight is one of those flashpoints.
I don't think that we're going to be allowed much closer than this.
And I think that's probably wise.
I don't know the size of the pro-Hamas protest tonight.
We have been corralled in different places for our own protection.
I believe that when the police say that, by the way.
I'm curious how many people Ahmed Yaqub and the other radicals were able to muster.
I can't really object too loudly and too strenuously to the police cornering us off and putting us behind a cage, really.
I can't really argue with that when I know the violence that could happen were the two sides to meet.
First of all, you know, the pro-Israel protests is tiny.
How big is the pro-Palestinian protest tonight?
Well, I've just got around this side and it's probably about 30, 40 times the size.
And that's me understating it.
So maybe like 5,000 people?
Probably about 2,000, 2,500.
2,500, okay.
Well, that's less than I had perhaps thought.
Are they violent or are they just noisy?
They've said some violent things to me today.
Have they targeted you?
Not targeted me per se.
I mean, I've kept my identity quite quiet, but they've made some violent threats to Jews coming here today.
Not just Israelis, just Jews.
Yeah, I spoke to someone earlier who said that if a Jew dares turn up at this match, then they're going to get in this new roadman dialect stamped.
Wow.
I mean, we're talking through this metal fence because the police have, I think, correctly estimated that if this small number of Jews comes into contact with that large number of pro-Palestine activists, there could be violence.
Yeah, the thing is, I know a lot of the people in this crowd through my work, and they're not going to be scared to go the other side.
I don't think they should.
So what do you mean by that?
So, I mean, I was just saying that the Tel Aviv Maccabi has no fans here today.
What do the old school Aston Villas fan think?
I think most of the old school Aston Villa fans are just a bit fed up that this is ruining their, this is ruining their game.
Turning their game into a football, so to speak.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
A football game turned into a football.
But I think they yeah, they're a bit fed up with it.
What do you think about the political quarrel tonight?
Oh, I ain't really fussed.
You're not fussed?
I just want to play the football man that's soon.
The game starts in about an hour.
Exactly.
Do you think the Tel Aviv team should be banned from coming to Birmingham?
No, you should come, man.
100%.
Do you think the politicians that got the petition to block the Israeli team?
Now, do you think that what do you think about the politicians who managed to get the Israeli fans kept out?
I don't understand why you haven't got in the stadium, to be fair.
Well, do you think that if some Jews or Israelis came, do you think they'd be at any risk?
No.
All right, a couple of actual Aston Villa fans.
I get the feeling.
Again, I don't know Birmingham at all.
This is my first time here.
I get the feeling that Ahmed Yaqub and some of the other lend your vote to Gaza politicians.
I'd be surprised if they've actually attended a single game in their lives.
And I think we need to drive a wedge.
We need to show that these people are stirring up trouble.
People like Ahmed Yaqub, these people, who do they represent?
They don't represent anybody.
And what they're doing is they're putting out social media posts, trying to drive division, tries to whip up the idea that somehow Jews and Israelis are the instigators of trouble, putting up placards and posters, which you've probably seen on the lab boss here saying Zionists, baby killers, all this kind of thing.
And they are the people that are driving the wedge.
And we need to call them out because they are the people causing trouble and they are the people that are creating division within our country.
You know, we often hear about two-tier in policing and with the government and amongst other institutions.
But I don't believe that it's two-tier.
I believe that it's a policy of appeasement.
Britain has failed to understand and learn from its history that appeasement never works.
In fact, it always leads to a very, very bad place.
Do you think the bulk of the fans have the sportsman-like attitude that you do?
Hopefully, yeah.
You know, we're here on Mayo every game, if you're having games of power.
You know, there's 42,000 hopefully under the roof cheering us on.
I was going to say, is it full or with the...
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't think it's too full today, but that's another comment about the ticket prices.
But yeah, hopefully everyone gets beyond the same.
And hopefully it's a big three points.
Sacrifice it to the top eight, I think it is, top eight.
Well, I think it's good.
We're going to win 3-0 tonight.
That's pretty, you know, in football terms or soccer, where I come from, that's a pretty big margin of victory.
Yeah, it is, yeah, yeah.
I'm confident.
Is Aston Villa that favoured in the odds makers?
I don't know about the odds, mate.
Well, yeah, definitely.
I think we'll do it tonight.
Now, how do you feel about the game proceeding?
I mean, listen, you play with teams from all over the world.
How do you feel about the match tonight?
Sports, sport?
It's just a guy, isn't it?
There's got to be 100 police officers that are now flanking the small pro-Israel, pro-Jewish crowd.
It's literally a wall of men, women, and steel, which is sad in a way.
One of our private security suggested to me that if there was going to be an issue, it would happen in this walk from the stadium out.
We heard earlier, oh, we're about to march along with the cops, let's do it.
What's the objective today?
We want to make sure people in the rest of the country realize that there's this very strong drive against Israel, a very strong drive to try and exclude Israel from sport, from culture, from politics.
And although people are presenting what's happened recently with Maccabi Tel Aviv as just about the fans and just about behavior, it's actually part of this whole drive to keep, to isolate Israel and to turn Israel into a pariah state.
So we want to make sure people know that.
And this is not how we do things here.
Now, what's the difference between activists on the other side who would say this isn't anti-Semitic, this is just against Israel's politics?
What would you say to that?
I would say that that very definitely is anti-Semitic.
I mean, number one, the most obvious point is Israel is the only Jewish state in the world, so it's a bit of a coincidence that they're choosing to target Israel.
But also, I think the consequence, the knock-on effect of all the things they're doing is to tarnish and tar Jewish and Israeli people and to, well, like I said earlier, to treat them as pariahs.
A simple example is one of the things that they're doing, you'll see on the placards that are up on the lampposts around here, they're targeting the IDF.
They're saying that the IDF is somehow...
Can we head to the right?
So the IDF is somehow a more dangerous and malign army than any other.
And what that does is it means that any person in Britain who has a relative who's in the IDF, any person in Britain who has a young relative who served in the IDF and maybe fought on October the 7th and defended people from invasion, is now suddenly classed as somehow a kind of a barbarian or something and a dangerous genocidal maniac.
And it's shocking because everybody is entitled to be proud of their army.
They're entitled to be proud of their flag.
So it is anti-Semitic because what they're doing is they're making a special case out of Israel and they're making a special case out of Jews and Israelis.
Whether there's a future for Jews in Britain, that's not for me to say.
I hope there is.
I'm not Jewish, I'm not Israeli, but I hope that we can keep fighting and ensure that people feel like there is a home for them here.
But the first half of what you said, though, I don't really agree with.
I think the people like the people like the politicians that Ayub Khan, for example, who reflects, who is one of the drivers for keeping Maccabi Tel Aviv out, I don't know if they do reflect the ordinary everyday Muslim in this country.
Some of the extreme views that they're promoting, I don't know if they do reflect.
Well, I've seen marches of 100,000 people saying shocking things.
I mean, that's at least 100,000 people.
I mean, I don't know if it's a million, but it's 100,000 people.
People shouting in unity.
I think the problem is that if you simply assume that everybody's thinking the same, then it does lead automatically to your second point, which is, well, why both are staying in Britain?
Whereas, if you say, look, these politicians are actually creating division, they're creating a sort of a widening gap between people, then at least there's a possibility there of finding the moderate Muslims who themselves are being victims of this extremist ideology.
Last question, and thanks so much for your time.
I understand that the police increased their deployment from 700 to 1,000 cops, and we're walking, there's more cops around us than there are protesters.
Isn't that a sign that if left to their own devices, this city would do violence to the Jews?
I don't know.
I mean, I didn't know that they'd increase to a thousand.
I knew that they would.
Even if it's 700, even if it's 700, isn't that shocking?
Yeah, well, it is shocking.
I mean, my take on it is that it shows that they could have facilitated the original plan, which was for the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans to appear here and to enjoy the game.
So they could have done it.
Obviously, if the will was there, they would have done it.
Enormous Police Effort00:09:15
Obviously.
Can you tell me your full name and the name of your organization?
Sure.
My name's Mark Burbeck, B-I-R-B-E-C-K, and our campaign is called Our Fight.
For the last 10 minutes or so, the crowd of, it can't even be 50 people, of counter-protesters, has been marched, walked block by block with the escort of probably 100 police.
They were keeping an eye peeled for youth mainly who might have been along the path.
A lot of the stores along the way had young Muslim proprietors that the police asked them to stand in the shops just to make sure that no one, you know, inadvertently had an interaction.
In a way, it's very sad.
The Jewish community in the city is quite small, and the number of non-Jewish allies who came out tonight is small as well.
I don't think the police would have had this many forces out if they didn't think there was a need for it.
I mean, part of it is a deterrent.
You see 100 cops like that, you're not going to start anything.
But I actually really think that they were necessary.
From what I could tell, there were no incidents, certainly between the counter-protesters and the main protesters.
I spoke to a Jewish journalist who had been with the pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian protesters.
He estimated the number at several thousand.
I think with the policing that they had here tonight, I don't know, maybe they could have held the line and not caved in to extremist elements that demanded that the Israeli team be banned from bringing their fans.
I don't know.
I mean, just look at this mass number.
This is an enormous effort, an enormous cost.
And it's not something that can be done all the time.
I think this was a symbolic evening for the police, but it's not something that could be replicated every week, let's say.
I think if there's a staring contest, an endurance contest between the radical activists who got the Israeli team fans banned and the city of Birmingham and their capacity to pay for this police, I think the radicals will win.
I'm going to guess tonight's policing costs more than a million pounds.
Anyways, it feels good to be so safe, but it's also tragic that you need this kind of safety.
Last comment.
Watch out here.
I was recently, a year ago, I was in Budapest, Hungary, which has a fair-sized Jewish community these days.
And I went to the largest synagogue in Budapest, and there was no guard at the door.
The door was open.
There was nothing there.
I also didn't see any anti-Semitic graffiti.
I didn't see any Palestine flags.
And I interviewed some kids who were outside the synagogue, and they said it's easy to be Jewish in Budapest.
I don't think it's easy to be Jewish in Birmingham anymore.
Well, it's just after 8 p.m. local time, which means the match between Aston Villa and Tel Aviv Maccabi has officially started.
And I think that gets lost in the shuffle.
It is a sports event, and obviously everyone who was there tonight, with perhaps a couple of exceptions of people who went as agents provocateurs, everyone there wanted to see the match.
If you didn't believe in the match, you wouldn't be there.
And so the only normal people who I encountered tonight were the Aston Villa fans.
Now, the rest of the evening was made up by a wall of police.
I understand in the end West Midlands police deputized more than 1,000 police to first of all counter the threat of the Islamic extremists who were whipped up by the Len Gaza Your Vote politicians who got Israel banished in the first place.
So I understand from talking to another journalist I encountered that there was maybe 2,500 of those Islamic extremists and the police were overwhelmingly on that side of things.
But I actually attended because I wanted to see what the anti-Hamas side had to say.
And the first thing I can report is that it was tiny.
There was less than 100 people.
If I'm candid, it was probably more like 50 people.
Some of them were Jewish, some of them were righteous Gentiles.
I'll say this also.
Demographically, the average age of the pro-Israel, anti-anti-Semites was probably 65.
I didn't see myself any of the pro-Islamic, pro-Palestinian side, but I'm going to guess the average age of them was 25.
And I say that because that's just the demographic reality where half of the young people in Birmingham are Muslim.
Now, I'm not just saying that to be Muslim is to be anti-Semitic, although my friend Tommy Robinson would point out that there are anti-Semitic parts of the Quran.
But when you have half a million Muslims in a city, even if only 1% of them are radicalized, well, you have thousands of people.
And it's just the path of least resistance to bend to the will of those thousands rather than the, I think there's 2,000 Jews left in Birmingham.
It is a case of demographic change.
I started off tonight by talking about this magnificent old church here.
But that's the past.
The future is mosques.
It wouldn't surprise me if within 50 years this beautiful church becomes a mosque.
That's happening across Europe.
Now, the football match is afoot, and it looks like there was no big riots.
The police managed to keep the small Jewish contingent physically away from the pro-Hamas side.
In fact, the two never even saw each other, let alone could meet.
You can see what I think is one, two, three, four, five, probably a dozen police vans with, I don't know, perhaps more equipment or more riot police on standby.
Luckily, as far as I know, they were never deployed tonight.
I made a decision to stay with the counter-protesters because when I saw some of the madness that has happened in Birmingham and when I saw some of the whipping up by some of the extremist politicians, I didn't know what to expect.
I wore my stab vest and I learned a few things about how to properly wear it and how not to.
Anyways, I just thought to myself, I'm not going to take any risks.
And we actually had in the end five security guards with us.
I don't think we needed it in the end because we had hundreds of police around us.
But you never know when you're in the UK.
I'm sort of sad with what's happened because the amount of effort the police put into allowing tonight's football match to happen was so enormous.
I don't think it's going to happen on a regular basis.
I just don't know if the police have the resources or the will.
I think they just put on a show to allow this one event to happen.
But I think in the future, between the exhaustion of the institutions and the growth of the Islamic demographic, I really think that Birmingham will be, I don't know, I keep thinking the word ethnically cleansed.
There are barely any Jews here to begin with.
But those that are, I think those that are young enough will probably move out or live really a closeted lifestyle.
I mean, I think the threat to the Jews can be acute, like the attack on the Manchester Synagogue a few weeks ago.
But I think it's actually the drumming, the constant berating and the constant demonization that if you are a Jew, you're evil.
If you're a Zionist, you're evil.
If you are a Jew, you have participated in genocide.
All these inversions.
It was the Jews who suffered a genocide under the Holocaust.
It was the Jews who sought refugee.
The irony is that some of the language used by the Islamic politicians who canceled the Israeli team's fans, they invoked the language of the Holocaust for themselves, implying that the Jews were somehow a threat to the Muslim people of Birmingham.
And I think that's the crazy part.
They won.
The Israeli team fans were not allowed, and yet the city still needed to deploy a thousand cops.
You know why that is, and I know why that is.
I'm glad I came here, but I'm sad.
I'm sad because my grandmother, by the way, was born in the UK, and I'm sort of glad she didn't live to see what's happening to the Jews of the UK.
And it's, listen, it's Jews first.
It's Gentiles second.
I mean, there are no Jews in many of the places in the world where anti-Semitism is at its highest peak.
There, radical Islam turns into anti-Christianism.
Whether it's the Christians in Nigeria or the waning Christians in Lebanon, the tiny number of Christians left in Palestine, it's often Islam that drives out those Christians.
Egypt used to be a Christian country.
Iraq used to be Christian.
Syria, Lebanon, they're no longer that way.
Heavy Conversations on BBC Reporting00:16:11
I don't know.
These are heavy things to talk about.
And maybe there's just so many wonderful things to enjoy, like a nice football match.
But at the end of the day, I think these are civilizational battles.
I'm glad I stayed out here.
I came to the UK to live tweet Tommy Robinson's trial, his judgment day on Tuesday.
I'm really glad I came, and I decided to stick around two more days for tonight.
I kept it quiet because I didn't want to telegraph in advance that I would be here in case we would be at risk from rioters.
But in the end, that risk didn't present.
Anyways, I'll keep coming to the UK from time to time and to Ireland from time to time and other places because what happens in these places now will happen in our country later.
To see all my reports on this subject, go to rebelfieldreports.com.
And until next time, from all of us at Rebel to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
Well, the BBC, if you think the CBC is bad, the British Broadcasting Corporation is worse in so many ways.
You know my personal stories about one of their reporters, Dominique Cashiani, literally reporting me to police because of my live tweets from court.
Just astonishing.
I mean, that is so next level.
Even Canadian journalists are not that bad.
But it's been a bad week or two for the BBC.
First, there was a crazy report that one of their flagship programs called Panorama, that's their version of 60 Minutes, that they were caught doctoring a video of what Donald Trump allegedly said on January 6th.
And they would cut and splice and hide their edits to use his real words, but take them and rearrange them.
An absolute scandal.
Here's a little bit of British coverage of that stunning event.
They played the following clip.
We're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you.
And we fight.
We fight like hell.
But Trump didn't, in fact, say this at all.
The BBC spliced together two clips that took place 54 minutes apart.
So let's go through it again.
We're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you.
Now, see there, between Capitol and that's a cut.
Here's what Trump actually said.
We're going to walk down to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.
It's different.
It wasn't until nearly an hour later that he then said the second part of the BBC's version.
We're going to walk down to the Capitol.
And we fight.
We fight like hell.
It's amazing to me.
It took four years for that fact to come to light.
The BBC, by the way, has a whole block of people they call BBC Verify.
These are the fact checkers.
For some reason, BBC Verify has not yet verified the lie on Panorama.
That's how the week started.
But now there's a dossier, a leaked internal dossier by the BBC that acknowledges serious editorial failures in BBC Arabic.
As you may know, the BBC operates in many languages.
Canada's CBC operates in English and French.
The BBC has a large foreign network in Arabic.
And you can only imagine who they've been hiring and how that has affected their coverage of Israel and Gaza over the last two years.
Joining us now from the UK to talk about this is a writer at Camera, which is the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
Georgia Gil Ulli joins us now.
Georgia, great to see you.
Thanks for taking the time to be here.
Thanks for inviting me.
Tell me a little bit about the dossier.
First of all, who wrote it?
I understand it's an internal critique of the BBC.
I'm surprised such a thing even exists.
Is there, like, who would be the whistleblower?
Who was trying to tell the world or who was trying to wake up the BBC to its own flaws?
So, of course, we don't know who leaked this.
However, it was authored by Michael Prescott.
And so he's advising the BBC.
However, he's not, you know, an employee of the BBC.
So he's someone who's obviously been trusted by them.
However, he's not, you know, your run-of-the-mill BBC executive.
And as you can see, you know, this memo is pretty damning of how those said executives behave.
And so in terms of BBC Arabic, Camera for decades has been researching how they behave.
So this memo covers the past two years.
So it's a very sort of minute portion of what's going on.
But I say minute, I mean this dossier detailed 500 plus appearances, sort of appearances from people without the context being given that they have made statements that are pro-terror.
How can these people be trusted to commentate impartially on very sensitive matters in Israel and the Middle East if we know that that's their angle and they're not pulled up on it?
It's shocking if you're not familiar with BBC Arabic, but if you are, it's bad, but you're unlikely to be surprised.
I mean, some research that my camera colleagues did this year showed a commentator that was put on to talk on BBC Arabic about the situation in Gaza.
Naturally, he sort of presented a very distorted view of the situation.
And we discovered that on social media, he had said the comment, we shall burn the Jews like Hitler.
And we flagged this with the BBC.
They said, you know, there's no space for anti-semitism in BBC, et cetera, et cetera.
And then guess what?
They used him again the same year.
So was this person who said we're going to burn the Jews like Hitler, was he only used on BBC Arabic?
Was he also on the main English language BBC channel?
I believe he was only used on BBC Arabic.
However, you often get sort of a cross-fertilization of English articles being translated into BBC Arabic, BBC Arabic articles being translated into English, less so.
So I think it's probably unlikely his content was cited, but I think it may have been.
I'd have to double-check that.
No, that's fine.
I'm just curious.
It's still a BBC brand.
Yeah, it's a BBC brand.
It goes up to the whole Arabic-speaking world, which is millions more millions of people.
Yeah.
I mean, it's supposed to be an antidote to the Al Jazeera of the world.
Al Jazeera is the state broadcaster for Qatar, which is a clearly pro-Hamas organization.
They were really, at the same time Al Jazeera was reporting on Hamas, the regime in Doha was hosting Hamas.
I don't think anyone believed that Al Jazeera was anything other than propaganda, but it sounds like BBC Arabic was sort of the same thing.
And actually, my question on whether or not this same commentator were used in English is sort of irrelevant.
I mean, in some ways, it's actually worse that he was on the Arabic channel because that, you know, people might look to the BBC, well, what's the Western point of view or what's the antidote or the counterweight to Al Jazeera?
And they're getting people who literally praise Hitler and call for the death of Jews.
It sounds like it's as bad as Al Jazeera.
In many ways, it can be.
And also, as you're saying, it is a little bit irrelevant as to whether the specific case, you know, was used in their English news service, because we've seen plenty of similar situations with people who work for the English branch.
Not necessarily the exact same comments, obviously, but people who liked post-celebrating October 7th massacre, et cetera.
That's a very common issue we've encountered.
And a lot of the time, those people, we can find no evidence that they were fired.
And I think that's one of the things about this BBC issue.
It keeps rolling on and on and on.
And I think people realize, I think, regardless of sort of their level of interest in the Israeli, you know, the Arab-Israeli conflict, I think they realize there's a lot of dissatisfaction around the coverage and there's a lot of errors.
And those errors, you know, they very much usually fall on the side of sort of making Israel look bad unfairly.
And I think that people never seem to think to find, you know, that people actually face consequences within the BBC.
You know, who gets fired over these things?
We never find evidence that anyone's fired.
That's a big problem.
Yeah.
Well, and just by the way, some of the pro-terrorist commentators, it's not like they were on once in a blue moon.
I'm looking at your report.
They were on 500 times, 200 times, 250 times.
So these were regular.
I can't even think of a commentator who's been on the CBC 500 times.
That's as much as a full-time staffer.
I mean, like, if you're only on once, only once a day, that's daily for two years.
So these are mainstays.
You know, I know that the BBC, like the CBC, has this bizarre policy of not calling Hamas a terrorist group.
They say that takes sides, even though legally it is a terrorist group in both the UK and Canada.
That is an accurate descriptor of what it does.
Like it's so uncontroversial.
It's controversial not to call them a terrorist group.
And yet, so they're not terrorists.
They won't go that far.
But the BBC, and I'm looking at your report here again, it will put scare quotes around, for example, the October 7th massacre at an Israeli town called Kfar Aza.
The BBC Arabic issue.
Which is something they haven't apologized for, I believe.
They haven't apologized.
So they'd say that's a disputed claim.
So they will not accept something that objectively, scientifically on film happened.
They'll call that a disputed claim, but they will run without question that Hamas are not terrorists.
It really sounds awful there.
Are there any Jews on BBC Arabic?
And what I mean by that is there's actually a lot of Jews from Arab lands who were kicked out of those Arab lands, became refugees, and went to Israel.
So there's actually a surprising number of Israelis, at least, who are Jewish and speak Arabic.
In fact, there's a whole host of Israeli commentators, both in the military and in political circles, who regularly go on Arabic language channels to debate and spar.
And I think it's probably a good idea.
Do you know if BBC Arabic ever has Arabic-speaking Jews or Arabic-speaking Israelis on for balance?
Have you ever heard of that?
I believe that it has happened, but I don't think it's as common occurrence as it really should be.
Especially as you're saying, you know, there's so many people in Israel who, you know, speak Arabic.
It might even be sort of their first language with their family.
And it's unfortunate they're sort of not, you know, being permitted to be sort of part of the Arabic-speaking world, which of course they are.
And I think even if they do allow those people a voice every so often, it's not good enough because they're still not reporting the facts.
Like this is a news service.
Maybe I should use their sarcastic quote marks around that, a news service.
And it's demoralizing because, as you're saying, there are people in the Arabic-speaking world who probably, as you're saying, look to the BBC as some kind of impartial service or something better than maybe what they're getting on Al Jazeera.
And maybe they're young people in, you know, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, who don't necessarily align with some of the anti-Semitic views that are quite common in those parts of the world.
And they want to kind of contribute to journalism.
Maybe they're interested in getting into that.
And they think the BBC is a good option.
Well, I've got some bad news for them.
It's probably not their best option, unfortunately.
And I think, as you're saying, with how these errors go and how the inaccuracy goes, I think it just makes you think of, you know, the waiter who's very bad at giving change metaphor.
You know, if he was genuinely really bad at giving people at the restaurant their change properly, probably some of the mistakes he made would be, you know, giving those customers more money than they deserve back.
But usually that doesn't happen because the waiter is probably actually stealing the money.
This is how I think about the BBC.
I feel like an error is implying that a mistake was made in good faith.
Whereas a lot of this, it seems to often be malicious.
As you're saying, Hamas, listed terror group in the UK.
And the British government helps fund BBC Arabic.
So why is that not a prerequisite for them getting money?
It doesn't really make logical or legal sense.
And I think that you'll have people there who maybe simply want to appeal to some of the views in that part of the world, unfortunately.
And I think that you also have a situation where the BBC is saying, as you're saying, in the BBC editorial guidelines, oh, we don't want to call Hamas terrorists because that's taking a side.
Okay, number one, they do refer to other terrorist groups.
Often, if there's a terror attack in Europe, they sometimes refer to a terror group, they sometimes don't.
So they're clearly capable of doing it.
And then you also have the point that, you know, why would you not want to take a side on saying that Hamas are a terrorist group?
I think that they pretty much have proved their point.
I don't think they would disagree with you, actually.
So given how many pro-Hamas people they've had on, you think the BBC would have actually, you know, gotten around to understanding that right now.
That Hamas know they're terrorists.
They actually don't care because they believe in it.
How can you have sort of, you know, a stark, you know, lucid view of the events going on in Gaza and the Middle East if you don't understand that about Islamist terror groups?
It's pretty straightforward.
My last question for you, Georgia, and thanks for your time tonight, is: will anything change?
I see online, people say they're going to refuse to pay their BBC license fee.
In Canada, the government just takes money through taxes and gives it as a grant to our CBC.
There's no separate license fee, CBC fee.
I think if there was, people would boycott it.
I know in the UK, individual people say they're going to stop, and the government sometimes prosecutes some of them.
Has there been any momentum between the Trump doctoring the Trump footage and this internal report on anti-Semitism?
Is there any movement for reform?
I mean, I'm sure that the Labour Party is standing by BBC, but is there any broader political mood afoot to defund or privatize the BBC?
So there's been a campaign pardon ongoing for several years called defunded the BBC.
And so their argument is, as you're saying, you know, stop this license fee, let the BBC stand on its own two feet.
It's hard to say sort of if any views have changed on that in the past week because we simply don't have the evidence.
However, you know, anecdotally speaking, for a long time, people have been very dissatisfied, including with the Israel and Gaza coverage.
So I think I wouldn't be surprised going into the next election if that's a question that people are asking politicians in their manifestos.
Can we sort of divest, so to speak, of the BBC?
And I think sort of the counter-argument to that would be that it can be reformed.
However, I don't necessarily see evidence of that.
Well, there's no need to reform it.
I mean, there's so many independent journalists.
There's so many private journalists.
You know, this idea, well, oh, don't shut it down, reform it.
I mean, I don't know why that privilege would attach to the BBC.
It doesn't attach to other failing enterprises that aren't part of the government.
Can We Divest from the BBC?00:03:22
Well, we're going to keep our eye on it closely.
Georgia, we're really grateful to have you.
We've been talking with Georgia Gilhouli of the Committee for Accuracy in Media Reporting and Analysis.
Take care, my friend.
Keep in touch.
Thank you.
All right.
Stay with us.
your letters to me next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
The first one is on my trip to Birmingham.
Alana Wolf says, at least the true football fans put the Islamists in their place.
Well done, fellas.
Yeah, you know what?
Think about it.
All the football fans who are there, soccer fans as we call it, if they're there by definition, really, they want to see football.
They want to see a match.
And, you know, it would be a really weird way to approach soccer games if you said, well, I'm only going to go see the match with the countries I really love or really like.
That's just a really weird, that's not the sportsmanlike way.
But think about it: if you're paying to buy a ticket to go and watch your team play, you want to watch your team play.
So obviously, the football fans who were there were happy to watch the game, and they didn't like their game being hijacked.
I was encouraged by my few conversations with actual Aston Villa fans.
On the Mam Danny win, Johnny Alberta says, this is just New York's Justin Trudeau moment.
10 years from now, Mam Danny or his successor will be telling New Yorkers to prepare themselves to sacrifice even more and live with a lower standard of living.
I'm going to disagree with you politely in a couple of ways.
I followed Justin Trudeau in his 10-year career as PM, but I also followed him before that for probably 10 years as well.
I remember doing it when Western Standard, the print magazine, when I was a publisher, ran a cover story on Justin Trudeau.
We could tell he was maneuvering 20 years ago.
And I think he is, he has some ideology within him, but really he's an empty vessel.
He really is a dramatic actor who can memorize a few lines and pull off a few cute moves.
I don't think he was particularly deep.
I know he was fairly lazy.
He wouldn't read his memos.
He once testified under oath to the ethics commissioner that when he met the Aga Khan, the head of the Ismaili faith, member on that billionaire island, that he couldn't have been in a conflict of interest because he didn't know any details on any files.
He would leave that to the smart kids and he would focus on the relationships.
I believe that.
That was his excuse.
He didn't wash for the ethics commissioner, but he literally pled, well, I don't know the details of the files.
Other people handle that.
I'm just the back scratcher, backslapper, handshaker.
No, I think that Mamdani is a deep ideologue.
Now, Mamdani, like Trudeau, has never had a real job.
Mamdani, like Trudeau, is a dramatic actor.
He switches accents.
But Mamdani is something that Trudeau is not.
He is a deep, deep ideologue.
His mother and father were deeply anti-American.
So is he.
He is from a very radical group called the Democratic Socialists, which is really full-out socialists.
So I see the comparisons.
He's young.
He's hip.
He's a theater kid.
He's an actor.
Deep Ideologue Mamdani00:01:44
I got you on that.
But I think that Zorhan Mamdani works twice as hard as Trudeau did.
And though he's never done anything, he is a deep philosophical Marxist.
I wouldn't say he's an Islamist.
I don't think he is.
His wife doesn't wear a hijab or anything.
But I think what Islam means in his life is just to be anti-American in general.
I think he's just a general anti-Americanism that manifests itself, of course, with anti-Semitism and, of course, opposing Israel.
But basically being against everything in America from borders to capitalism to firearms to the Constitution.
I think he's going to be a disaster.
But as Margaret Thatcher said, socialists sometimes run out of other people's money to spend.
And it could be that, you know, the billionaires simply move out of New York, across the river into New Jersey, or, I don't know, down to Texas or Florida.
If you had the top firms and their top earners simply leaving the city in a way you couldn't do pre-internet, I don't know if Mamdani would be able to sustain things.
And then there's the Trump factor.
He has basically said he's going to turn off whatever taps he can to stop the bad things Mam Danny wants to do.
These are some thoughts, sort of rambling thoughts, forgive me.
That's it for today.
I'm off tonight to Kelowna, and then I'm going to drive to the ostrich farm.
I know I'm a day late on the cull.
Our friend Drea was out there to catch the terrible moment.
But really, I'm going there to show our company's support to the farm and to the people out there and to personally thank Drea for her great work over these past months.