Sport, Palestine, and Israel
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15 Sport, Palestine, and Israel Tamir Sorek Introduction the legitimacy of the other ’ s collective identity has been out of question. So far, the only time The sport dynamics in Palestine/Israel are char- when offi cial representatives of the State of Israel acterized by an interesting paradox. Among both and the Palestinian national movement have met the Zionist and Palestinian national movements, in the sport sphere was in the 1972 summer institutional sport has historically emerged as a Olympic Games in Munich, when members of nationalist project aimed to bridge intra-national the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and cultural/communal differences and to rehabili- eventually executed by Black September, an tate a collective self-image which suffered from organization affi liated with the Palestine Libera- humiliation and subjugation. However, the sport tion Organization (PLO). sphere in Israel/Palestine has rarely become an In one context Jews and Arabs do meet each explicit ethno-national battleground. It has not other on a regular basis. Jewish and Arab Pales- provided unforgettable moments of national tinian citizens of Israel (the latter number about confl ict, of the kind provided by India–Pakistan 1.3 million people, 17 percent of Israeli citizens) cricket, by the United States–Soviet Union hockey do share the same sport sphere. In this context, games during the Cold War, or by soccer games however, another dimension to the paradox is in the Basque and the Catalan regions in Spain. added. The more “warlike” and masculinist the There are two reasons for that; one is self- sport is, the more Arabs in Israel are represented evident, and the other needs much more elabora- and also successful in it. One would expect that tion and is the focus of this chapter. The obvious overrepresentation and success of a discrimi- reason is that because the level of hostility and nated minority in combative sports would lead to mutual denial between Israelis and Palestinians is the emergence of fi gures like the boxer Muham- so strong, sport encounters between formal rep- mad Ali, an opinionated and vocal athlete who resentatives of the two sides have been uncom- used his status to promote political protest mon. The Israeli–Palestinian confl ict is popularly ( Saeed, 2002 ). But this is not the case. A unique seen by both sides as a total and a zero-sum con- combination of social, political, and economic fl ict, and for many years the mere recognition of forces has “depoliticized” Arab–Jewish athletic A Companion to Sport, First Edition. Edited by David L. Andrews and Ben Carrington. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 258 tamir sorek encounters within Israel and partly isolated them context where Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestin- from the Israeli–Palestinian confl ict. The nation- ian citizens of Israel do encounter each other alist connotations are blurred, and rarely do these regularly in the sport fi eld, and therefore a more encounters become an explicit Israeli–Palestinian detailed analysis is dedicated to the ways sport has battleground. In this chapter I follow the his- shaped and refl ected the relations between Jewish torical development which has led to this and Arab citizens of Israel. Finally, I evaluate depoliticization and suggest a solution to the the possible contribution of sport for Israeli– double-layered paradox. Palestinian reconciliation. The Gramsci-inspired literature in the sociol- ogy of sport has highlighted the dialectic of sport as a political sphere. Sport is seen as a contested Sport in Zionism and the Palestinian terrain, which can be potentially used by both the National Movement state and by subjugated groups to promote their interests ( Hargreaves, 1986 ; Hartmann, 2000 ; “The confl ict” is an historical clash between the McKay, 1991 ; Sugden and Bairner, 1993 ). This Zionist movement and the Palestinian people. dialectic can also be found in the case of sport Respectively, both Zionism and the Palestinian among the Palestinian citizens of Israel. As a national movement have been shaped to a large general tendency, however, the potential for sport extent as a reaction to collective existential threats to be a stage of protest and resistance has rarely and collective humiliations. For Jews as a dis- materialized. criminated and persecuted minority in Europe In order to understand the political role of and the Arab Palestinians as a colonized popula- sport in Israel/Palestine, one should fi rst concep- tion, sport has been a way to rehabilitate their tualize the confl ict itself, a task which usually collective self image and especially to redeem exposes the political sympathy or affi liation of threatened manhood through nationalism. 1 the scholar. In this chapter, I refer to this confl ict The Zionist movement was a European Jewish as a struggle of a native population against a reaction to the emergence of ethnic national settler-immigrant movement and at the same movements in Europe in the nineteenth century. time a struggle between two national movements. The discourse of ethnic nationalism emphasizes From this point of view, Zionism is both a cultural homogeneity and the Jews found them- national movement (an aspect that is evident selves frequently as the “ultimate other” of these from its discourse and practices aimed to mobi- movements and suffered persecutions. Having lize national identifi cation among Jews) and a been rejected by the European nations, some Jews colonial movement (an aspect which is evident were looking for alternatives such as emigrating from its political practices toward the native pop- to the New World or adopting universalist ideolo- ulation of Palestine). Sport, as an institution that gies like Marxism. At the end of the nineteenth has been used both to mobilize national identifi - century a minority was attracted by the idea that cation ( Ehn, 1989 ; Houlihan, 1997 ; Lever, 1983 ) Jewish people should establish themselves as a as well as to stabilize and legitimize colonial separate nation and, following the emerging control ( Jacob, 2005 ; Mahlmann, 1988 ; Mandle, European model, to set up a national state of their 1979 ; Mangan, 2001 ; Nauright, 1997 ; Sugden and own – a solution that became known as Zionism. Bairner, 1993 ) is a sphere in the confl ict that is At least in Western Europe, this new develop- usually underestimated. ment was accompanied by a growing interest in Before dealing with the above-mentioned sport, as a tool for developing national conscious- paradox we need fi rst to briefl y describe the ness. As several scholars of Zionism and sexuality essence of the confl ict with a focus on the devel- have shown, the way in which early Zionist opment of sport until 1948. Since 1948 the Pales- leaders saw the body of the European Jewish man tinians have been dispersed in different countries refl ected a remarkable internalization of contem- and lived under different political conditions and porary anti-semitic stereotypes and pseudo- therefore the pre-1948 outline is followed by a scientifi c literature, which depicted the Jewish separate discussion for each of these contexts. male body as inferior and drew similarities The political role of sport is most evident in the between the physiology of Jewish men and female sport, palestine, and israel 259 bodies ( Biale, 1992 ; Boyarin, 2000 ). Therefore, government as a mechanism that might promote Zionism strove to redeem the Jewish man from inter-ethnic cooperation between Jews and Arabs his “femininity” by “converting” him into “an ( Ben Porat, 2001 ) and invited both Arabs and Aryan man.” The “sportization” of the Jew was Jews to join sports competitions they organized. seen as a cure to his non-masculine character. In Arab and Jewish athletes did play in the same his extensively quoted speech from 1898, the associations during the 1920s but separated in the Zionist leader, Dr Max Nordau, called for the early 1930s, a separation which served the nation- establishment of a “Muscular Jewry” and empha- alist agenda of both sides. For both Zionists and sized the link between national redemption and Arab Palestinians, sports organization at this masculine rehabilitation: “We shall develop a point served as an organizational as well as sym- wide chest, strong limbs, a courageous look – we bolic platform, which was especially important will become a people of valor. Sport is education- for a stateless national movement. ally signifi cant to us, the Jews, for not only do we The Arab Palestinian sport movement in the have to recover physically, but also spiritually” 1930s and 1940s was an integral part of the ( Israel and Forman, 1994 ). The names given to nationalist movement ( Sorek, 2007 ). The consti- Zionist sports clubs, for example, refl ected the tution of the Arab Palestinian Sport Association yearning for mythological muscular warriors established in 1944, for example, explicitly pro- found in the Jewish ancient past: for example hibited the participation of Jewish players. The Maccabi, Shimshon (Samson), Bar-Kokhba, and Zionist football association (offi cially named Pal- so on ( Kaufman and Bar-Eli, 2005 : 180). estine Football Association) kept inviting Arab Although Zionist thinkers considered several clubs to join its ranks, in order to keep its rec- territorial options for gathering Jews to establish ognition by FIFA as the offi cial representative their own state, traditional and religious motives association of the country. Like the Zionist sport drew the Zionist movement to Palestine (the movement, the nationalist-masculinist character “Land of Israel” in Jewish tradition). At the turn of the Palestinian sport movement was exempli- of the twentieth century, Palestine had a popula- fi ed through youth sports teams that were named tion of around 700,000, the great majority of after historically renowned Muslim and Arab which was Muslim Arab. Christian Arabs num- military commanders, such as Khaled Ibn al- bered around 72,000 and Jews around 60,000 Walid and Sallah al-Din al-Ayubi.