4,000 police officers are supposed to secure the next game of the Israeli national soccer team. When the team is in on Thursday Paris meets France, an elite unit should even stay very close to the Israeli team. Israel’s National Security Council also called on its citizens to stay away from the Stade de France and avoid public sporting events. On Tuesday, only around 20,000 of the 80,000 tickets had been sold.
These measures are a response to Maccabi Tel Aviv‘s game at Ajax last week Amsterdam. Maccabi fans were threatened, harassed and beaten there. Some victims described the attacks, which appeared to have been planned on social networks, as a “pogrom.”
This violence makes it clear that anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attitudes are increasingly erupting in the emotional and supposedly anonymous environment of football. And in different ways: Israeli national players like Shon Weissman and Liel Abada report death threats against themselves. Attacks on the Jewish clubs of Maccabi have been documented in amateur football, most recently last Thursday in Berlin.
Jewish and Israeli footballers are held jointly liable for Israeli politics. Since October 7, 2023, since the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent military offensive in Gaza, there were demonstrations at numerous games. Fans of Celtic Glasgow and Athletic Bilbao wave Palestinian flags. A fan chained himself to the goal post at an international match between Israeli footballers in Scotland. The message on his T-shirt: “Red card for Israel.”
For months, 300 Palestinian sports organizations have been calling for Israel to be excluded from competitions. They point out that at least 400 athletes, coaches and officials are said to be among the more than 43,000 dead in Gaza. And they receive a wide range of support: for example from members of parliament FranceIreland and South Africa. But also from the BDS movement, which wants to isolate Israel economically and is classified as anti-Semitic by the Bundestag. On the Internet, BDS also promotes protests, sit-ins and “peaceful disruptions” at competitions.
Israel only plays in European football because the continent is considered safer for Israel’s athletes than the Middle East. Is this hope now finally lost? Israel once again feels marginalized. However, this is not a new development, but rather the result of decades of history with many failures.
Until 30 years ago, Israel was part of Asia not only geographically but also in terms of sport. But Lebanon had already banned its citizens from sporting competitions against Israelis in the 1950s. Arab states repeatedly boycotted games against Israel or demanded that games be moved to neutral countries. Israeli delegations were repeatedly excluded from sporting events, for example from the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta.
The Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973 further exacerbated Israel’s isolation in the Middle East. At the 1974 Asian Games in Tehran, representatives from Kuwait and Iraq organized a protest against Israel; the People’s Republic of China, Pakistan and North Korea joined. That same year, two years after the attack at the Munich Olympics, the Asian Football Association expelled the Jewish state. Before the 1978 Asian Games, Arab investors offered financial support to host city Bangkok. Their condition: the exclusion of Israeli athletes. The Japanese also supported this course at the time; they were too dependent on Arab oil exports.
4,000 police officers are supposed to secure the next game of the Israeli national soccer team. When the team is in on Thursday Paris meets France, an elite unit should even stay very close to the Israeli team. Israel’s National Security Council also called on its citizens to stay away from the Stade de France and avoid public sporting events. On Tuesday, only around 20,000 of the 80,000 tickets had been sold.
These measures are a response to Maccabi Tel Aviv’s game at Ajax last week Amsterdam. Maccabi fans were threatened, harassed and beaten there. Some victims described the attacks, which appeared to have been planned on social networks, as a “pogrom.”
