At FC Karame, trust is also built up through sport and contacts are made.
Photo: Image/Anthea Schaap
Berlin Moabit on Sunday afternoon: The footballers of FC Karame agree with their game with a loud clap. It is time again to push the sad news into the background, at least for ninety minutes. “Football is distraction,” says Mohamed, and rightly puts his shin atries. “We have known each other for years and we speak the same language.” Karame is an Arabic word for “dignity” and “pride”. The colors of the Palestinian flag are included in the emblem – as a sign of the origin of many families of the club members.
New life
FC Karame plays in the district league A and plays his home games in Moabit in the time -honored Poststadion, near the Berlin Central Station. “We are not concerned with great success,” says Mohamed, who does not want to give his last name. “The club is like a family. We mainly support people who want to build a new life in Berlin. “
More than 200,000 Palestinian-born people live in Germany, a good quarter of which in Berlin. It is one of the largest communities outside the Arab world. And football plays a remarkable role in their networking. This became clear at FC Karame, founded in 1978, as one of the oldest migrant sports clubs in Germany. Club founder Mohamad Zaher spends a large part of his free time with youth work: drawings hang on the walls in the Moabiter in the youth center, and trophies are also lined up. Young people take part in a workshop in the back yard, many of them wear football jerseys. “With the help of sport, we can quickly make contacts and build up trust,” says the sports teacher: “That’s how it is today and it was more than forty years ago.”
New association
Zaher was born near Haifa in 1949, a year after the foundation of Israel. His Palestinian family fled to Syria and then into Lebanon. He learned football in a refugee camp. In 1970 he came to Berlin for studying. “Many young people with similar biographies wanted to play football in Berlin at the time,” says Zaher. »But they weren’t welcome in the clubs. So we built up our own club. “
FC Karame grew slowly. Zaher was committed to refugees and kept in touch with the Palestinian areas. Again and again he invited coaches from Gaza for tournaments and workshops to Berlin. With this knowledge they returned and built up a sports academy in Gaza. Some of these colleagues were now killed during the war. “I keep calling there,” says Zaher. “We would like to send material there, but that is not possible at the moment.” And: The Gaza War also has an impact on working at FC Karame. Some members feel in the vicinity of the terrorist organization Hamas.
New conflicts
Zaher takes time for her worries, for her anger. He tells them that Israel should not be equated with the Netanyahu government and not with the military. And he warns the young people of demonstrations in Berlin, in which Islamists and right -wing extremists could also take part. “Even some politicians say we are all radical,” says Zaher. “But that’s not true. We want more support from politics and sport. “
Since October 7, 2023, since Hamas’s attack on Israel, anti -Semitism has increased in amateur football. The Berlin Football Association BFV supports prevention and security measures for Jewish teams like that of Makkabi. This is correct and important, says Özgür Özvatan, Vice President of the BFV: »But we have to say that in such an intensity we did not talk about Palestinian players. We can do that better. “Özvatan emphasizes that this conflict is not a football game in which one only occurs for one side:” We are committed to human rights, for Jewish and Palestinian life. “
New escalation
Muslim hostility has also increased. In Berlin, the alliance against Islam and Muslim hostility last year registered 650 antimusable attacks and discrimination, around 70 percent more than in the previous year. The number of unreported cases is likely to be much larger, but in amateur football there were hardly any anti -Muslim incidents reported to the BFV, says Özvatan: »Many people do not know that they can report anonymously on our website. But it may also be that they do not trust the association. ”The social scientist is committed to a low -threshold reporting of discrimination cases in his volunteering at BFV. And he also wants to strengthen the work of trust in Palestinian footballers.
FC Karame and his chairman Zaher would be happy. Regularly, he says, they also organize workshops about National Socialism and the history of the Jews in Germany in the youth center in Moabit. Most of the members of Karame grew up in Syria and Lebanon, with grandparents who had fled from Palestine. “But we are actually not an Arabic association,” explains Zaher: “We are a club from Berlin.”
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