sedan
07-01-2006, 01:19 AM
Posted on Sun, Jun. 25, 2006
Cup cult thriving in Israel
JOE POSNANSKI
The Kansas City Star
JERUSALEM | Here in the market, a few miles from the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Noble Sanctuary, twelve guys wearing Brazilian soccer jerseys sang in the streets. None of them was from Brazil.
“This is our religion,” said a young Israeli named Arie. “Football is our religion.”
We sportswriters in America, in order to put in perspective just how big the World Cup is around the world, like to write that it’s sort of like the Super Bowl. But when you go to one of these countries, you realize it isn’t like that at all. We don’t care that much about the Super Bowl. Yes, we watch the Super Bowl. We like the commercials. We bet on the game. We eat lots of chips. But that isn’t the same thing. People live the World Cup, even in countries like Israel that are not involved at all.
Arie was right. It is like religion.
Look: Israel has not qualified for the World Cup since 1970. Truth is, sporting accomplishments for Israel are very uncommon. Put it this way: On our vacation we were in a car in Tel Aviv with relatives Dana and Miriam Naor. We stopped at a red light. They both suddenly pointed excitedly at the car next to us.
“I definitely think it’s him!” Dana said.
“Who?” I asked.
“It is him,” Miriam said.
“Him,” turned out to be Ariel Zeevi. Who is that? Ariel Zeevi won the bronze medal in judo at the 2004 Olympics. Bronze medal. Judo. For that, women gaze and try to see his face through tinted glass windows.
Back to soccer. There’s no direct connection between Israel and this year’s World Cup. And yet even in Israel, even with all the tension — even though many people are afraid to ride buses and wait in lines and it seems like one out of every three people carries an AK-47 assault rifle — the World Cup means everything.
You can see it everywhere you look. Flags of World Cup countries — Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Italy — flap in the wind on the West Bank. Hundreds gather by the Mediterranean Sea to watch Ecuador and Costa Rica (Ecuador and Costa Rica?) play on a giant-screen television. Zakarihya Zubaidi, a man described in the papers as a “Senior Palestinian Militant,” called for a truce during the World Cup.
“We are a nation that encourages sports,” he said.
Before the World Cup began, Palestinians and Israelis alike rallied against the high pay-per-view prices. There were Internet campaigns with slogans like “Football should be free!” There was a consumer boycott. The Knesset — the Israeli parliament — got involved. The issue became so heated that, for a while, high World Cup television prices overshadowed everything, including hunger strikes that cancer patients were holding all over the country because of changes in national health care.
Meanwhile, soccer games were on free television in some of the occupied territory. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz ran a cartoon that showed Israelis sneaking over the security fence to watch free soccer. “We are all one family,” was the caption.
“We are always looking for common ground,” said Yehoyada Mande’el, a student in Jerusalem. “And not just between Israeli and Palestinian but also between Israeli and Israeli. We live in such a politically charged environment. It is hard to find anything that everyone can stand behind. But everyone loves the World Cup. People here will not even have weddings on the night of important World Cup matches.”
He was right. We attended an Israeli wedding while there. The couple had studied the schedule and held it on a night when no important World Cup matches were going on. It was the night the United States played the Czech Republic.
The soccer scene in Jerusalem was particularly striking. Jerusalem, of course, is an ancient city at the heart of three major religions. Yet on this night, when Brazil played Croatia, it might as well have been Rio de Janeiro. The coffee shops overflowed with people wearing yellow soccer jerseys, and they huddled around tiny televisions. Brazilian music played. Children with “Ronaldinho” and “Ronaldo” jerseys kicked a little soccer ball they got with their happy meals at Israeli McDonald’s. The twelve guys walking through the market stopped at various stores and tried to get customers to sing a vaguely Brazilian sounding song.
“Do a lot of people in Israel love Brazilian soccer,” I asked Arie.
“Of course, of course. People all over the world love Brazilian soccer.”
“Why?”
He thought about that for a moment. ‘Because they play beautiful football,” he said.
“It is maybe hard for Americans to understand because you have so much, you know, you have Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and Maurice Greene and Tiger Woods and so many stars. But here, we don’t have so many. We want to be connected to something beautiful too.”
I asked him then if he wanted to start rooting for the Royals as well, but he did not seem to know what I was talking about. He went back to his group and sang again. A man who juggled sticks outside a souvenir shop told me in halting English that he liked the German team. I asked him if he was German, and he shook his head.
“Why Germany?”
“How you say … tough,” he said.
The woman in the English book store rooted for England. The guy playing music for tips liked Argentina. And for these thirty days, these people live the World Cup, live for those countries they’ve never seen except on television. I thought of what Arie said. They wanted to be connected to something beautiful.
“You have to remember Israel is a very small country,” said Harley Stark, an archeologist in Jerusalem. “And there is always danger here, always tension. That is never too far away from us. So I think that has something to do with why people love the World Cup. We want to be a part of the world.”
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/14895989.htm
Cup cult thriving in Israel
JOE POSNANSKI
The Kansas City Star
JERUSALEM | Here in the market, a few miles from the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Noble Sanctuary, twelve guys wearing Brazilian soccer jerseys sang in the streets. None of them was from Brazil.
“This is our religion,” said a young Israeli named Arie. “Football is our religion.”
We sportswriters in America, in order to put in perspective just how big the World Cup is around the world, like to write that it’s sort of like the Super Bowl. But when you go to one of these countries, you realize it isn’t like that at all. We don’t care that much about the Super Bowl. Yes, we watch the Super Bowl. We like the commercials. We bet on the game. We eat lots of chips. But that isn’t the same thing. People live the World Cup, even in countries like Israel that are not involved at all.
Arie was right. It is like religion.
Look: Israel has not qualified for the World Cup since 1970. Truth is, sporting accomplishments for Israel are very uncommon. Put it this way: On our vacation we were in a car in Tel Aviv with relatives Dana and Miriam Naor. We stopped at a red light. They both suddenly pointed excitedly at the car next to us.
“I definitely think it’s him!” Dana said.
“Who?” I asked.
“It is him,” Miriam said.
“Him,” turned out to be Ariel Zeevi. Who is that? Ariel Zeevi won the bronze medal in judo at the 2004 Olympics. Bronze medal. Judo. For that, women gaze and try to see his face through tinted glass windows.
Back to soccer. There’s no direct connection between Israel and this year’s World Cup. And yet even in Israel, even with all the tension — even though many people are afraid to ride buses and wait in lines and it seems like one out of every three people carries an AK-47 assault rifle — the World Cup means everything.
You can see it everywhere you look. Flags of World Cup countries — Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Italy — flap in the wind on the West Bank. Hundreds gather by the Mediterranean Sea to watch Ecuador and Costa Rica (Ecuador and Costa Rica?) play on a giant-screen television. Zakarihya Zubaidi, a man described in the papers as a “Senior Palestinian Militant,” called for a truce during the World Cup.
“We are a nation that encourages sports,” he said.
Before the World Cup began, Palestinians and Israelis alike rallied against the high pay-per-view prices. There were Internet campaigns with slogans like “Football should be free!” There was a consumer boycott. The Knesset — the Israeli parliament — got involved. The issue became so heated that, for a while, high World Cup television prices overshadowed everything, including hunger strikes that cancer patients were holding all over the country because of changes in national health care.
Meanwhile, soccer games were on free television in some of the occupied territory. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz ran a cartoon that showed Israelis sneaking over the security fence to watch free soccer. “We are all one family,” was the caption.
“We are always looking for common ground,” said Yehoyada Mande’el, a student in Jerusalem. “And not just between Israeli and Palestinian but also between Israeli and Israeli. We live in such a politically charged environment. It is hard to find anything that everyone can stand behind. But everyone loves the World Cup. People here will not even have weddings on the night of important World Cup matches.”
He was right. We attended an Israeli wedding while there. The couple had studied the schedule and held it on a night when no important World Cup matches were going on. It was the night the United States played the Czech Republic.
The soccer scene in Jerusalem was particularly striking. Jerusalem, of course, is an ancient city at the heart of three major religions. Yet on this night, when Brazil played Croatia, it might as well have been Rio de Janeiro. The coffee shops overflowed with people wearing yellow soccer jerseys, and they huddled around tiny televisions. Brazilian music played. Children with “Ronaldinho” and “Ronaldo” jerseys kicked a little soccer ball they got with their happy meals at Israeli McDonald’s. The twelve guys walking through the market stopped at various stores and tried to get customers to sing a vaguely Brazilian sounding song.
“Do a lot of people in Israel love Brazilian soccer,” I asked Arie.
“Of course, of course. People all over the world love Brazilian soccer.”
“Why?”
He thought about that for a moment. ‘Because they play beautiful football,” he said.
“It is maybe hard for Americans to understand because you have so much, you know, you have Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and Maurice Greene and Tiger Woods and so many stars. But here, we don’t have so many. We want to be connected to something beautiful too.”
I asked him then if he wanted to start rooting for the Royals as well, but he did not seem to know what I was talking about. He went back to his group and sang again. A man who juggled sticks outside a souvenir shop told me in halting English that he liked the German team. I asked him if he was German, and he shook his head.
“Why Germany?”
“How you say … tough,” he said.
The woman in the English book store rooted for England. The guy playing music for tips liked Argentina. And for these thirty days, these people live the World Cup, live for those countries they’ve never seen except on television. I thought of what Arie said. They wanted to be connected to something beautiful.
“You have to remember Israel is a very small country,” said Harley Stark, an archeologist in Jerusalem. “And there is always danger here, always tension. That is never too far away from us. So I think that has something to do with why people love the World Cup. We want to be a part of the world.”
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/14895989.htm