Israeli League, Israel Football, and Israel Soccer News

One of the rea­sons that I love inter­na­tional soc­cer is that the feel­ings of com­pe­ti­tion and rivalry are even greater than those in the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. When two coun­tries play each other, they are con­duct­ing war by other means. Imag­ine the pas­sions that would arise if Eng­land and Ire­land, France and Ger­many, or Israel and Iran were to play each other.

How­ever, the inter­na­tional for­mat of the Beau­ti­ful Game also neces­si­tates polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions. Take the his­tory of Israel’s team. It was a mem­ber of the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion (a sub­set of FIFA*) until 1974. Israel was not a mem­ber of a fed­er­a­tion again until it joined the Union of Euro­pean Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tions in 1991.

Sym­bol­ism is impor­tant in pol­i­tics, even more so in the Mid­dle East – and the sym­bol­ism of Israel play­ing foot­ball in a Euro­pean league is not help­ing the country’s image. Anti-Israel activists on the left and the Arab pub­lic, both of whom swal­low the pro­pa­ganda that they are con­tin­u­ally fed, believe that the found­ing of Israel was an act of Euro­pean “impe­ri­al­ism.”

This alle­ga­tion, of course, is ludi­crous. Impe­ri­al­ism is defined as “the pol­icy of extend­ing the rule or author­ity of an empire or nation over for­eign coun­tries, or of acquir­ing and hold­ing colonies and depen­den­cies.” Israel is an inde­pen­dent nation-state, and the coun­try was never founded and con­trolled by the gov­ern­ment of another coun­try. It was founded inde­pen­dently by Jews. End of story. (In fact, Great Britain, which occu­pied Pales­tine after defeat­ing the Ottoman Empire in World War I, tried to stop Jew­ish emi­gra­tion to the region.)

How­ever, I can under­stand the rea­sons that peo­ple would believe the myth of Euro­pean impe­ri­al­ism. Most, if not all, of the early Zion­ists who set­tled in Pales­tine and then re-founded Israel were Ashken­zai Jews from from Europe and Rus­sia. (Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews gen­er­ally emi­grated later.) Ashke­nazi Jews, of course, have a lighter skin tone, so they look less Mid­dle East­ern — and more Euro­pean – than other Jews. The vast major­ity of Israel’s top gov­ern­ment offi­cials have been Ashke­nazi Jews. Israel also receives a great deal of U.S. assis­tance. (Then again, so has Egypt.) Arab, Mus­lim and left­ist pro­pa­ganda cites these facts. This per­cep­tion becomes their reality.

The mod­ern State of Israel has always dealt with con­flict­ing iden­ti­ties as part of its cul­tural com­po­si­tion. Is it a sec­u­lar or reli­gious state? Will it resem­ble a Euro­pean or Mid­dle East­ern coun­try? How can it bridge the divide between its Ashke­nazi or Sephardi Jews? Israel needs to make these deci­sions, and it needs to make them now. The gov­ern­ment is work­ing on a con­sti­tu­tion, but the coun­try as a whole needs to throw its lot in with Europe or the Mid­dle East.

I pro­pose that Israel choose the Mid­dle East. After all, Jews and Judaism orig­i­nated in the Mid­dle East. We lived there for thou­sands of years before the exile into the Dias­pora. The Euro­pean fla­vors that Ashke­nazi Jews added to Judaism were devi­a­tions from the his­tor­i­cal norm. Of course it was nat­ural for Jews to assim­i­late par­tially into the peo­ple sur­round­ing them and to adopt some of their cul­tural prac­tices, but it is time for Israel and Israelis to return com­pletely to their Mid­dle East­ern roots.

Israel would finally develop a deep-and-lasting sense of iden­tity by com­pletely view­ing itself as a Mid­dle East­ern state and pro­ject­ing its image accord­ingly. As a result, the neigh­bor­ing Arab and Mus­lims coun­tries would become less hos­tile towards Israel. Per­haps they would then real­ize that the all of the Mid­dle East­ern states need to work together for regional sta­bil­ity and pros­per­ity. But the first step would be for Israel to move from the UEFA to the AFC — and for the Arab and Mus­lim coun­tries to accept it. The pos­i­tive sym­bol­ism would help Israel tremendously.**

*For Amer­i­cans who are unfa­mil­iar with soc­cer, think of FIFA as Major League Base­ball and each con­fed­er­a­tion as a league.

**Israel’s national team would also per­form bet­ter because the AFC is weaker than the UEFA.

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