End this villainy
THE ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters watching their team at Aston Villa next month is yet another shameful episode for the British authorities.
Sir Keir Starmer has rightly moved to reverse the decision, in keeping with his promise to support Jewish people in the face of rampant antisemitism.
But how was it ever taken in the first place?
This was never about the potential for hooliganism at just another football match.
Rather, West Midlands Police turned it into a question of who controls the streets of Britain’s second city.
The force opted to surrender them to the Islamist hate clerics whipping up a pro-Palestinian mob across Birmingham.
Senior officers — and members of the city’s so-called Safety Advisory group — ducked all responsibility for keeping Israeli fans safe.
Instead, they took the easy option to ban them instead of tackling the hatred being allowed to fester in their own communities.
Even their justification — that Maccabi fans had been involved in violent clashes in Amsterdam — was wrong.
In fact, they had been subject to a “Jew hunt” organised on social media by Islamist thugs.
The result of the ban — as former Hamas hostage Emily Damari rightly pointed out — was to create a no-go zone around Villa Park for Jewish people.
To see that cowardice widely celebrated — including by hard-left MPs pushing dangerous sectarianism in our politics — is truly sickening.
York of shame
THE embarrassment heaped on the Royal Family by Prince Andrew has known no limits.
In the past week alone, the Prince was found by The Sun on Sunday to have lied about his toxic relationship with paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
And, in her biography from beyond the grave, sex trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre made disturbing claims about how she was treated by Andrew, who she described as “entitled”.
Meanwhile, it emerged the blundering Prince had met a senior Chinese spy handler on THREE occasions.
He is a liability and a disgrace.
So huge credit to the King for yesterday forcing his shamed brother to hand back his royal titles, including the right to call himself the Duke of York.
Graceless as ever, there was no apology from Andrew for his behaviour.
And, laughably, he claimed that he was putting his family and country first, “as I always have”.
If that were true, he would not be clinging on to his 30-room Royal Lodge mansion.
But at least he has paid some kind of price for his reprehensible conduct.
Now let’s hope he vanishes from public life altogether.
