Fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv, the Israeli football club, have been banned from attending a Europa League match against Aston Villa in Birmingham next month after pen-pushers classed the game “high-risk”.

West Midlands Police agreed, a torrent of antisemitic bile​ swirled online, and condemnation ​swiftly followed from the Israeli government and, perversely, the prime minister who called the decision “wrong”.

On that he is right. Football should be free from politics, a spectacle safe from the meddling of states, and out of reach from the interference bureaucrats.

But if Labour’s decision to recognise Palestine achieved anything it has been to ​embolden antisemites.

After his intervention the PM was accused of backing “violent thugs” by Palestinian activists.

There is ​now a growing movement that believes Britain owes Palestine more​ than the recognition bestowed on it, suggesting unlawful occupation between 1917 and 1948 engineered violent divisions that exist today.

The UK’s formal recognition was prompted by Israel failing to meet conditions set out by Sir Keir, including agreeing to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

But in choosing to recognise the State of Palestine for the first time in 37 years, a seismic shift in UK foreign policy and a commitment to a manifesto pledge, Labour has chosen politics over peace.

The reality of the decision has been to fuel the fires of hatred further, marginalising British Jews, and adding to the belief it has failed to learn chastening lessons from antisemitism associated with the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s disastrous leadership.

The most distasteful irony perhaps is all this comes in the year in which the world commemorated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and with it Holocaust Memorial Day, saying as one, “never again”.

That is something not​ lost on frightened Jews who call Britain home believing it is a place of safety and sanctuary.

One such person is Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich, 95, incarcerated as a child slave at Nazi deaath camps Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen, and later awarded an MBE by the late Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of her work to educate people about humanity’s most evil crimes.

She​, like hundreds of thousands of fellow followers of her faith, must be disgusted at ​h​ow this country is tearing itself apart​.

In an interview with the Express only a few days ago, and in words that shame our country, she said: “I always felt safe here. And now, to see this kind of violence and hatred, here in the UK, is beyond words.”

Thousands of Jews – a race singled out for extermination – found a home in Britain after the Second World War.

But it is hard to imagine a more insulting act, in this year of all, than Labour’s decision to welcome Palestine in from the cold.

Since the murder spree carried out in Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, British Jews have been targeted – physically and verbally – as they walk the same streets where they were welcomed eight decades ago.

For two years keffiyeh-wearing Palestinian supporters have demonstrated in London against the retaliatory actions of Israel in rallies that have coincided with an alarming spike in antisemitism.