Congratulations to both of them. Hopefully, they'll have a better run at it than Hapoel Taibe did. http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/298788.html
Why? cause i want too And as for Beitar.. 0!! AND THEM PROUD OF IT!!!!!! We're the ultra-nationalistic team and we love our team, our country, and our players. We don't want any 'troubles' to brew... so let the leftist monkeys of Hapoel chooose those 'weak' players! *****Moderator Note***** Okay. listen up.I'm going to post this once and once only.Leave the name calling/border line racist remarks out of the discussion.Any more posts of this nature will be deleted and you may be carded
Why did you say "Hypocrisy?" As for the "leftist monkeys" both Hapoel and Maccabi outfits have done a heck of a lot better than Beitar. Nationalism is fine. Zionism = liberation in my book. Refusing to have Arabs on your team due to the "troubles" that might brew is just racist, however.
Re: Re: Two Arab teams win promotion You sound like a RACIST! Football is supposed to transcend these issues. Beacuse you're such an ultra-nationalistic team is probably why "troubles brew" in the first place.
Re: Re: Two Arab teams win promotion Thank you crewtoon your a good friend.. Let me tell you some stuff about Bney Shacnin... They chant "HAMAS, HAMS!" in there games, refuse IFA hatikva before games, use alot of misconduct, burn israeli flags, and force at some point people to pray (muslim prayer) in there games...thats what you don't know. Don't give me no unite and divesity in there game. I have a right to boycott there hypocrisy and hate against me!!! So, its like saying, if a white man boycotted a racist bigott like Louis Farkahnnan in USA, than he is automaticly Racist cause Louis is a Negro. That is how this is going.. some racist i am....
But the fact that people scream Hamas at one team's games doesn't make the fact that Beitar Jerusalem has never had an Arab player to be beaming with pride about. Of all things to do - reaching out to Arab-Israeli teams and welcoming them to the Premier league is a step in the right direction, albiet a small step, in Jewish-Arab relations, and it doesn't harm Israeli security one iota. Arabs aren't all joined at the hip - making the sin of one the responsibility of all.
Beitar not having arab players is rather coincidence than on purporse. We pick rather good players and talented! Just because someone is an Arab/Muslim, doesn't mean we pick cause we want a diversify our team. We're not a public company/entity..we're a team. And just for your info a Bosnian Muslim player named Hasanic played in Beitar for a couple of years...so there you go...we broke the spell...you happy...... But Bney Sachnin chants will have to be taken care of sooner or later. I, like always welcome all teams to the Liga, if they deserve to be..
How come that these arab teams have names like "Hapoel" and "Maccabi"? Where they founded by Israelis? I don't understand why arab teams would name themselves after Israeli sports organisations.
Also, Beitar's fans have a pronounced history of racist chanting directed at Arab players and teams. The most likely reason that they've never signed an Arab is that a player getting barracked by his own fans isn't ever likely to do well.
I was wondering the same thing. It is my understanding that Hapoel and Maccabi are umbrella organizations. Hapoel came out of the Labor movement, Maccabi pre-dates the state of Israel. My guess is that the organizations are ultimately open to all. Like Israel is as a state, they are Jewish organizations, but not exclusively so. That's not to say that there isn't some discrimination against Arabs, but there clearly is nothing like Apartheid either (notwithstanding the attempts by some detractors of Israel to make the comparison). I would like to hear KYHS's or another Israeli's explanation on Arab involvement with Hapoel and Maccabi in Israel.
Stop making stuff up about one of the greatest teams in Israel!!!!! Beitar doesn't need an Anti-Team player. We had muslims, we had foreigners and they played great. The Arabs are the ones, who started this whole thing back 40 years ago, when they always hated Beitar, so how can u have a player that hates a team on a team? HE WILL GET HATED CAUSE HE STINKS!! Beitar thinks better, and doesn't need to sign the foo'
Its not much of a story here..... When the IFA formed, they started putting applications for team to from. Back then, it was hard to form a team, just out of the blue and manage to make it run properly. Thats why umbrella teams came like Hapoel and Maccabi. Maccabi was actually the first one to create a sort of 'chain' clubs. Either way, theres in a city alot of clubs, but the foremost clubs are usually known as Hapoel and Maccabi. The rule has it that you cannot have 2 maccabi teams in one city...... So the same goes to the Arabs in Arab cities, they must pick a name like hapoel and maccabi. Many of them did and there is some that are just AC or AS or FC or just Bnei........ hard to answer that one though?
Very interesting article on Arab soccer in Israel. Generally, it appears that the Arab teams are NOT used as a bastion of anti-Israel sentiment, Palestinian nationalism or other nationalism. It will be very interesting to see if the author's thesis holds up during the upcoming season. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=302168 And the results of the New Israel Fund's monitoring of racist incidents in football in Israel. A while back, I posted an article about Hapoel Tel-Aviv, which has started a program to combat racism in football. Before anyone jumps on me for calling Israelis racist, let me just say that I admire the state of Israel very much, have relatives there, and also recognize that racist incidents at football matches are a worldwide phenomenon. European teams have established programs to combat racism in football, and I see the existance of programs like that of the New Israel Fund to be a demonstration of the country's tolerance and sense of justice, not an exposure of a weakness. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=302202
I didn't accuse any of those teams of being racist. NIF accused them of having the most racist incidents. This may just be a function of high attendance, I don't know. I didn't say that Bnei Sakhnin wasn't racist. Dr. Tamir Sorek, who has studied football and nationalism as a phenomenon, said that generally, Arab Israelis do not display anti-Israel nationalism at football events, even when Arab teams are involved. I don't know where you've received your "evidence" from. I didn't turn my back on it, I found an article about someone who wrote a friggin doctoral thesis on this issue. Sorry if the evidence doesn't conform to your stereotypes. Or are you telling me you regularly take in Second Division football matches at Arab teams to see for yourself.
I personally find it surprising it isn't MORE racism in Israeli football. If one compare with the problems in Europe it is amazing that the situation in Israel, were the tensions between Jews and Arabs are so high isn't worse. When there is talk about Arab teams and Jewish teams it is important to remember that most teams has supporters from both sides. Especially the teams from the bigger cities has a large minority of Arab supporters. My guess is that the reason Bnei Sakhnin is a Arab team is that most people in the city are Arabs, the Jews in the city that follows football probably also supports the team. Even an ultra-nationalistic club like Beitar has Arab supporters, although much fewer than the other big clubs. For example the leader of the militant Palestinian group Tanzim, Marwan Barghouti who is in Israeli jail suspected for terror attacks does for some odd reason support Beitar. When he was arrested some Beitar fans even started a petition for his release...
Barghouti a Beitar supporter? Funny, this article has him rooting for Hapoel Tel-Aviv. http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/levy/011112.html "I remember him from other times. A delegation to Europe that included Israeli Knesset members and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Barghouti made friends with everyone - Haim Ramon of Labor, Golan Heights settler Yehuda Harel, Yitzhak Vaknin and David Tal of Shas and Maxim Levy and Yehuda Lancry of the Likud. The only friction that arose was between him and Dedi Zucker: Zucker, a Maccabi Haifa fan, couldn't tolerate Barghouti's rooting for Hapoel Tel Aviv. On the last evening, Barghouti preferred the company of the Israelis to that of the wealthy Palestinians in Valencia, Spain, who had invited him over. Unbelievably, this was less than five years ago. Not even five years ago. Since then, he has become the scourge of the Israelis, considered by many to be our most dangerous enemy - perpetrator of the intifada as well as an international media star, whom even President Mubarak attacked several days ago for standing in Arafat's way." --- I did recently hear a nice story about Beitar. Apparently the police in Jerusalem found an unattended bag, which they destroyed as a potential bomb. It turned out the bag belonged to a young Arab boy and it contained his soccer ball. When his father and son went to the police station and found out that the bag had been destroyed, the kid was distraught. The police bought him another soccer ball, then got the whole Beitar squad to autograph a team jersey for him.
I might be wrong about Barghouti, I read it in a newspaper article a few months back but maybe they got it backwards. Nontheless my point was that things are a bit more complex then it might seem at a first glance. Things aren't as black and white as some would like to belive.
Read the hebrew press release (at least to the extent I can - my hebrew is still a work in progress) - this doesn't seem like a permanent link, but for now at least, you can find it here: http://www.nif.org.il/press_page.asp Chants heard at games include (DISCLAIMER: the press release does not specify how many fans were chanting this - as far as I know, all these chants could have been made by just 3 drunken idiots) "I hate you Salim Toma, I hate all the Arabs." Beitar Jerusalem was cited for having the following chants at their games: (same disclaimer - it doesn't say how many fans were doing the chanting) "Death to Arabs", "We don't want Arabs here", and "We are racists" (Anachnu Gza'anim, if I mistranslated that, correct me, but I'm pretty sure I've got that right) Hapoel Be'er Sheva, Hapeol Kfar Sava, and (not sure what mem, samech stands for) M.S. Ashdod come out pretty good - but as JP eluded to, this could be more a reflection of their attendance than anything else. Hapeol Haifa and Tel Aviv generally came out in the middle of the pack. As was said, having racism at Israeli soccer matches doesn't make it any different than any other country - but that doesn't make it right. And the fact that an organization like the New Israel Fund exists and conducted a report like this shows that many Israelis are very concerned with the situation. Not sure if there are European organizations going to games and recording racism detail by detail, but if they are, they are doing so in a much less violent climate than Israel. Europeans making racist chants against whoever probably didn't have their cousins blown up by a bomb placed by someone from that ethnic group earlier in the week. This doesn't excuse racism at Israeli soccer matches, but I'd imagine it's a factor. Haven't found the full report yet, but unless it's translated, I probably won't be able to get much out of it anyhow. EDIT: I want to reiterrate that the ommission of any details surrounding the chants - like how many people were chanting them - is a serious ommission. All it says (at least according to my reading of it) was that these chants were reported to be heard, not that there was actually a large number of fans participating in the chants.