As soon as shabbat went out today I turned on my TV to watch the England vs Israel European Championship qualifier. [note to Americans: this is an important football match for both teams. Football is a sport that the rest of the world understands and thinks is really good. You, who believe that American Football is actually a sport, as opposed to a series of TV adverts occasionally interspersed with some big men bumping into other big men, are totally misguided.]
Anyway, this was the first time that I have really seen Israel play football, and they were really, really bad. You can take the Jews out of the ghetto and you can have them grow oranges in the desert, but let's face it, Jews are not good at sports. Even "new Jews".
So this gave me a great idea. The Arabs kicked Israel out of the Middle East qualifying groups when it came into existence. I think the original reason was because there was no room for the phrase "The Evil Zionist Entity" on the scoreboards in those days. But this was a big mistake. If the Arabs played the Jews at football, things would be a lot better in the Middle East. Egypt and Iran are pretty good teams. Make no mistake, they would wipe the floor with us. And this would make the Arabs feel a lot better. They would be able to say: "Well, the Evil Zionist Entity may have destroyed our armies, bombed our cities, stolen our territory, and ripped out our olive trees, but we beat them 3-0 last week! Hah!"
They say that pride is an important thing in the Middle East. If the Arabs would re-admit Israel into their football league, they would get a lot of it back, fast. Why has Tony Blair not thought of this?
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I was at the match (yes, sorry, even though it was "on Shoibbos"), and I found it to be a really positive experience. Not because the football - what the hell do I know about football? And not because "my country" won (although that would have been the case in any result!)
Rather, I was struck by the atmosphere and spirit that the Israeli fans displayed. Despite the majority of the British public being at best ambivalent, and at worst violently against, towards Israel in a political sense, the Israeli fans (many of whom were English Jews) were there, they were Israel supporters and they were not only unashamed, but were proud to be so. The chants of "el el Israel" and "Israel Milchama" were fantastic, and then when the fans started singing Israeli songs like "Kol ha'olam kulo, gesher tsar me'od", it was really cool.
And also, even though the British national anthem is one of the greatest in the world, the 1Hatikvah really does kick its ass.
I was really proud of both countries.
Alex, this reminds me of when you were at school. All the real sportsmen played rugby and the non-sporty played football (soccer).
However, there was an element of those not deemed good enough even for football, who were relegated to a lifetime of hockey sticks and third class sports citizenship.
Everyone, I would like you to know that Alex played hockey for the county.
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