Anti-Semitism – Israel’s national team in Paris: It remained relatively calm

A stadium like a fortress. More than 5,000 police officers and stewards secured the international soccer match between France and Israel in Paris on Thursday. The guests from the Jewish state were closely accompanied by an elite unit. Israel’s National Security Council, however, called on Israeli citizens to avoid the game. Ultimately, only just under 17,000 of the 80,000 seats in the Stade de France were filled.

But the game went largely calmly. Two people were taken into police custody. One person was arrested immediately after fans clashed in the stadium stands, another was arrested after the game when video footage was viewed, the Paris police prefect said.

These high security measures were in response to Maccabi Tel Aviv’s game at Ajax Amsterdam last week. Maccabi fans had been threatened, harassed and beaten. There were 62 arrests. However, it turned out that Maccabi fans had also provoked with anti-Arab hate chants and a physical attack on a taxi driver. Some victims from Israel and a large number of politicians described the attacks, which were apparently planned on social networks, as a “pogrom.”

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The night of violence in Amsterdam 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. Attacks on Jewish clubs in Maccabi have been documented in amateur football, most recently in Berlin on Thursday last week. The police now want to be present there at all Makkabi games.

In addition to these brutal manifestations, Jewish and Israeli footballers are also held responsible for Israeli politics. Since October 7, 2023, since the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent military offensive in Gaza, numerous games have been overshadowed by demonstrations. Celtic Glasgow and Athletic Bilbao fans wave Palestinian flags. A fan chained himself to the goal post at an international match between Israeli footballers in Scotland. A message was placed 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 MPs from France, Ireland and South Africa. But also from the BDS movement, which wants to isolate Israel economically. she will from the Bundestag classified as anti-Semitic. On the Internet, BDS also promotes protests, sit-ins and “peaceful disruptions” at competitions.

Israeli football, which geographically belongs to Asia, has been anchored in Europe for around 30 years. The idea behind this relocation was that the safety of players and fans in Europe would be higher than at games in 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.

Already in the 1950s, Lebanon banned its citizens from sporting competitions against Israelis. Arab states repeatedly boycotted games against Israel or called for them to be relocated 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, with the People’s Republic of China, Pakistan and North Korea joining in.

Also in 1974, two years after the attack at the Munich Olympics, the Asian Football Association closed AFC 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; their dependence on Arab oil exports was too strong.

Fifa threatened to suspend the Asian football association, but the newly elected association president João Havelange (Brazil) did not want to risk conflict with Arab countries. Israel tried again to join the European game, but UEFA rejected this due to pressure from the Eastern Bloc countries. The Israeli footballers had to change structures several times and even played in Oceania at times.

Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1994 was Israel accepted as a full member of UEFA. And lo and behold: Israeli players increasingly moved to European leagues. In 2013, Israel hosted the U21 European Championships. Supporters in Israel founded Liverpool FC, FC Bayern and Real Madrid fan clubs.

But Israeli players were also reminded of their origins in Europe. Especially when the situation in the Middle East escalated. For example in 2014: 20 young people, mostly of Turkish origin, stormed a Maccabi Haifa test match near Salzburg. Or in 2015: Hooligans from CSKA Sofia threw bottles at players from the Israeli club MS Ashdod. Islamist and right-wing extremist anti-Semitism went hand in hand.

Soon afterwards it looked as if the situation could ease. In 2020, Israel established diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, among others, and also maintained pragmatic relations with Qatar and Saudi Arabia. These three countries are among the new power centers in football. And so sponsors from Israel and Abu Dhabi soon formed partnerships. In 2020, Dia Saba became the first Israeli national player to move to an Arab Gulf state, Dubai.

Since October 7, 2023, there has been no sign of this departure. In times of war, the Israeli national team plays its home games in Hungary, like this Sunday against Belgium. In the Europa League, Maccabi Tel Aviv moves to Belgrade. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić are politically close to Israel’s partly right-wing extremist government. Incidentally, Hungary and Serbia are also the countries in which the national team and clubs from Belarus have played their international home games since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a requirement of UEFA.

FIFA, which has historically rarely expressed a clear position on Israel in public, is once again holding back. Because she apparently wants to stay in touch with the associations in the Middle East that are critical of Israel, as well as with the USA, Israel’s most important partner and the next World Cup host in 2026 (together with Mexico and Canada).

And so politics and football in Israel seem to feel confirmed that they are fighting a lonely battle again. Israeli fan groups have expressed their frustration at stadiums. In Paris, too, around the international match against France, groups from Israel mobilized for rallies against anti-Semitism. Among them were right-wing extremist fans of the Beitar Jerusalem club. French President Emmanuel Macron was also in the stadium, with a “message of brotherhood and solidarity.”

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