Sports, or how everything comes back to politics in this country

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I had an interesting conversation the other day with an Israeli. We were talking on the bus on Thursday (as the traffic gets all backed up because it is the start of the weekend) and had a lot of time to kill and got talking about sports.

We talked about what sports we liked and I got a chance to gush about MLS and the Philadelphia Union and how American soccer is actually pretty good and is getting better and better all the time. I also mentioned how I was really sad that I ended up in Tel Aviv a week after the season ended here. He gave me a strange look and asked me which team I would have supported. I told him I didn’t know anything about the different teams but I often favor the underdog.

He then went into a long and complicated explanation about how I had to root for Hapoel Tel Aviv as Maccabi Tel Aviv is a racist team. It just went downhill from there as another passenger chimed in, saying that that statement was a bunch of bullshit. I decided discretion was the better part of valor and choose not continue to take part in the discussion anymore.

Later, when I was back home, I decided to look up the teams and see if I could figure out anything myself. I learned that I was living in a nice fantasy world in the US, where team loyalty is based on regions or hate for another team, and not based on politics. Which is apparently how it is in the rest of the world.

I also learned about the Israeli teams and how politics plays out there. Apparently, when Israel was first created there were two different sports associations: the Maccabi and the Hapoel. Those who upheld socialist views and very Zionist beliefs founded the Hapoel association. The Maccabi association was created by Zionists with more centrist beliefs. And in today’s times that has translated into left and right, respectively. There was also another small sports association, the Beitar sports association which seems to be a whole new level of crazy. Beitar Jerusalem doesn’t allow Muslims or Arabs on their team.

So long story short, many of these teams are now privately owned and have dropped the Maccabi and Hapoel titles but still carry the same images that they first had. Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv are bitter rivals but Hapoel Tel Aviv hates Beitar Jerusalem the most while Maccabi Tel Aviv likes to consider themselves the “nation’s team” reminiscent of the Dallas Cowboys claiming to be America’s team.

Basically everything is this country is politicized and I shouldn’t be so surprised because sports are politically everywhere apparently… except the US. The fact that Israel has such politicized sports is sad to me, as I truly believe in the uniting power of sports. Events such as the World Cup and the Olympics can truly bring nations together.

Sorry this blog entry was so preachy but I originally wrote it for my school blog. And I do think it's a shame that everything is so political here. And don't get me wrong, I'm a poli sci major I know how much politics affects everything in life but this country just takes that idea and runs with it. On my weird shit o' meter of politics this country is a solid 11 out of 10. I'm not sure I could actually live here for an extended period of time without committing homicide.

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