The National Team of Sakhnin

“It seems to me a very old quarrel; I suppose it’s in the blood, and perhaps will only end with it”

– Franz Kafka, Jackals and Arabs

When Bilal awoke one morning from delirious dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a… fan of the Israeli national team, draped in a flag blue and white. “What has happened to him?” his wife thought, aghast. For Bilal, it was a dream. He had spent the previous night, March 26^th, 2005, at the cavernous National Stadium in Ramat Gan, watching Israel’s national team play Ireland’s alone among 40,000 Jews. Ireland scored early on, but the slightly drunk Bilal vainly proclaimed that Abas Suan, an Arab who at the time was Sakhnin’s captain as well as a national team substitute, would even the score. When he improbably did just that in the waning minutes of the game, the euphoric fans hoisted Bilal aloft in celebration, carrying him out of the stadium and into the night. Hours later, Bilal went to sleep with a new blanket and newfound hope for Israeli society.

He may have been less sanguine had he been watching the game along with soldiers of the Golani unit. Their celebration was short-lived, for when they realized who it was who saved their day, happiness soon turned to anguish and finally gave way to vehement cursing. The equalizer was no longer a source of pride, but rather an insult to their ethnic ego.

Bilal’s hangover lasted but a week. As with all dreams, his too was doomed to end. Only a week later he found himself sitting in Ramat Gan again, watching Sakhnin take on Beitar Jerusalem when the Jewish fans unfurled a banner that read, “Abas Suan, you do not represent us”. Ever since, national team games have been “just another game” to Bilal.

 

Looking back today on that week of wishful thinking, Bilal is mildly amused at his own naiveté. He smiles bitterly and says he owes a debt of gratitude to Beitar’s fans for waking him up. An Arab seeking to fit in to Israeli society, he explains, needs to do better than 100%. But in a moment of considerable honesty, Bilal also admits that if finding a job in Israel is not easy for an Israeli Arab, it’s not exactly Kafkaesque, either, and if Arabs are unable to find jobs other than teaching it’s partly because they don’t bother looking.

 

***

 

Actually, perhaps ironically, it was a job teaching that I was looking for in Sakhnin. It hasn’t worked out yet, and it probably won’t, not least because hardly anyone is doing any teaching at all in Israel these days. Middle and high-school teachers have been striking for nearly a month and a half now, and on the Saturday before last a huge demonstration was held in Tel Aviv in support of them. Not far away, in Ramat Gan, another sizable crowd was congregating in order to watch Israel face off against Russia in a qualifying game which held very little significance for Israel.

 

Demonstrations such as the one held in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv are usually held on Saturday nights, often clashing with coinciding soccer games and thus providing a compelling study in contrasts in Israeli society. One such conflict of interests took place slightly over twelve years ago, when Beitar Jerusalem and Maccabi Haifa scored two apiece while a peace rally took place in a square which in the aftermath of that night’s tragic turn of events would be renamed Rabin Square. Twelve years to the day, Beitar Jerusalem and Maccabi Haifa were back on the same pitch, playing to a scoreless tie in a game overshadowed by the overture of boos of Beitar fans observing a moment of silence in honor of the late Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin. Twelve years had passed, twelve years during which the violence had been transported into the stadium. The barbarian booing showed just how far Israeli society hadn’t come.

 

It was interesting, then, that Sakhninians turned out in droves to watch the game at Abu Abdo’s café. But then, in Sakhnin education often takes a back seat to soccer. Schools are quite willing to interrupt classes and bus students to the team’s games. Long before the current strike began, in only one city in Israel was the first day of school was canceled. The parents here were protesting the dire dearth of classrooms, though nobody seemed to notice the irony of the local soccer team playing its home opener on that same day in a stadium funded by tax-payers’ shekels.

 

Still, soccer is uncommonly important to Arabs, more so than to Jews, and is all the more important when it’s the national team playing. In their own way, they were showing solidarity with Israeli society, or at least expressing their desire to fit in to it. In a world in which nationality, as Tamir Sorek points out in his book Playing with Identities, is as much an integral component of one’s identity as gender, sports – what with all the striking similarities between nationalism and fandom – come closest to filling that need for those who have no nationality. When Suan scored his momentous equalizer against Ireland and Walid Bdeir tallied the tying score four days later against France, it served as proof that in soccer, if nothing else in Israeli society, Arabs are on a level playing field. As a national symbol uniquely devoid of religious symbolism, it is the rare symbol around which Arabs can rally alongside Jews, a symbol which in their eyes represents the hope of fitting in. And so it’s been with great consternation that they’ve watched Suan and Bdeir grow old and grow out of their national team uniform. When Israel played Croatia last month it was the first time in a long time that there was no Arab on the field, or even the bench. The national team loses 20% of its Arab fans when none of their own take the pitch, Sorek’s studies show.

 

But while Jews view the national team in the context of international competition, the Arabs’ perspective is focused inward, on the national team as an image of Israeli society. That difference was borne out in the complaint voiced by Abd Rabah, Sakhnin’s defenseman, who recently said, “It’s impossible that they couldn’t find in all the league one Arab player to represent us.” Competition, clearly, is secondary to him, and the incidental lack of Arabs worthy at the present time to be considered among Israel’s best irrelevant – respect and recognition were foremost in his mind. Wissam the grocer was similarly distraught, and he asked me to sit down beside him so he could provide me with a “parable”. The roster of the national team, he argued, should be assembled like Bnei Sakhnin’s – a blend of Arabs and Jews. I’m not sure that constitutes a parable, but it was indicative of how he sees the national team – and of how he feels wronged.

 

Judging by the reactions of patrons of Abu Abdo who came out to watch the national team play, they seem similarly conflicted. Against England, the café seemed oddly sterile and there was an awkward uneasiness in the air, only two weeks after I saw tempers flaring and hookahs flying during a Beitar game. Against Russia, fans to my right cheered Israel, while those on my left jeered. “Good for them” one man said as he got up to go, impressed with Israel’s sensational 2-1 victory over Russia.

 

But then, if Sakhnin seems less inclined than Arabs in other parts of the country to embrace the national team, it is quite understandable. They don’t need a national team with a Zionist anthem that alienates them, or with Jewish fans who shun them. After all, they have their own national team – they have Bnei Sakhnin.

Through the Looking Glass: Morning at the Museum

“Pardon my ignorance”, the inevitable question always begins, when people first hear where I live, “but is Sakhnin safe?” The tone they employ would seem to imply that Sakhnin is in Iraq or Afghanistan. Which, incidentally, is understandable, given that there are signs here pointing the way to Kabul, a nearby village. Seriously though, the apologetic question is easily understood – at least by me, since it was my first inquiry, too. The answer was affirmative – Sakhnin is safe, I was told, its people are warm and friendly and not at all dangerous. Just be prepared, I was forewarned, to deal with the prevailing suspicion that accompanies every Jew who seeks out Arabs, namely that he is either from the Mossad or the IRS.

 

I am neither, of course: after three years in the army, I haven’t the slightest interest in any topic remotely related to national security; and, likewise, the IRS hasn’t the slightest interest in me or in the meager income on which I subsist, which is not nearly substantial enough to be taxed. Yet while I pose no threat to them, living here is not an experience entirely bereft of hazards. The Israeli army never planted any mines in Sakhnin, but walking its streets can be no less dangerous than taking a stroll through the many mine-infested areas in the north of Israel – you can never be too careful. The locals are dangerous, in a way, too, though not for the reason you might expect. I’ve found that they’re less likely to hurt me as to be hurt by me, which has turned out to be a much stickier predicament. I always thought of myself as quite polite, but as with the traffic here – one must be on guard at all times.

 

I would expound on these dangers and others, and I will, but it seems hypocritical to debate the question of Sakhnin’s safety at a time when sports fans could only wish sports events were as secure. Israeli sports are a beach with no breakers, and waves of violence have come crashing down on them mercilessly over the past few weeks. First, fascist factions took hostage the fans of Beitar Jerusalem, Israel’s most popular team, making the most of a national television audience as a stage for broadcasting their reprehensible propaganda en masse. Next, a grenade was hurled onto a basketball court in Jerusalem, blowing up a guard’s hand. Finally, a handball game was cut short because of fans storming the court.

 

Which raised the question – who knew anybody cared about handball, let alone that much? The answer, of course, is that no one does. Certainly not Beitar’s fascists or the grenade-hurling petty criminal or the handball mob; they’re sports fans only to the extent that sports events are a convenient outlet for their violence. The violence running rampant through Israeli sports is merely an outgrowth of the violence that plagues Israeli society. There’s something ironic, then, in that the most popular profession of choice – or lack thereof – of down-and-out young Arabs is working as guards at sports events. To paraphrase the late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Jews attack Jews and Arabs save them from each other.

 

And so it was similarly fitting that it was Bnei Sakhnin, Israel’s lone premier Arab team, that came to Jerusalem this past Wednesday, along with their northerly neighbors, Hapoel Kiryat Shmona, to visit the Holocaust Museum and save face for the embattled world of Israeli sports. It was the brainchild of Kiryat Shmona’s admirably socially-aware owner, Izzy Sheratsky, who earlier this year arranged that both teams would visit different prisons in the area and play exhibition matches against their denizens. The purpose of this visit, he explained to the players assembled before him, was to witness firsthand the tragic repercussions of racism. Meanwhile, Sakhnin was setting a wonderful example not only for its fans, but also for the rest of a country torn between sects which are each caught up in their own suffering, showing how to show empathy for another people’s suffering.

 

Never mind that a museum is not a professional athlete’s home field. Some of them were clearly disoriented, perhaps under the impression that they were in Pamplona, Spain. That, in any case, was the impression some left – that of bulls rampaging through a china shop. But Spain is not only the site of the gory running of the bulls, but also of the glory of a Jewish golden age in the Middle Ages which was facilitated by Muslim rulers. (“How Islam Saved the Jews” is the title of an article penned by a prominent academic – well, my uncle). In that same vein, the tour of the museum wrapped up with a special exhibition of Albanian Muslims who, compelled by their code of honor of Besa, endangered themselves in order to save Jews during the Holocaust.

 

Still, while some struggled to maintain their composure, others showed respect and interest. The guide, for one, was not only pleased at the end of the tour – but impressed. “They soaked up everything I said”, she gushed, adding that she was surprised that there was no antagonism on their part. On the contrary, she was touched by the team’s sensitivity.

 

It’s a sensitivity rooted in their diverse makeup. As Sheratsky proudly put it while speaking to the players, a mishmash of Israeli Jews, Arabs and Druze as well as foreigners from Congo, Colombia, Poland, Armenia and the US – both teams are families. Never was that more poignant than on a bus ride to a game against Bnei Yehudah just over a month ago. Rumbling down the highway as the setting sun was swallowed up by a purple haze, preparations for breaking the Ramadan fast were in high gear. Armenian striker Yavorian was handing out spaghetti, and Sa’id the journalist was passing around dates. If everyone would play, everyone could eat, regardless of whether they were fasting or not. The different smells and diverse tongues and distinct looks and disparate backgrounds all blurred and dissolved into one for fifty-some players and coaches and other hangers-on, united only by soccer and food.

 

And then they got off the bus and entered a stadium set in the middle of the cruelly-misnamed Neighborhood of Hope. In the Neighborhood of Hope there is no hope, only shameless racism, which on this day was directed at a smattering of Sakhnin fans. Bnei Yehudah’s fans hardly corner the market on racism, though. Just a few weeks later it was fans of Sakhnin who were spewing their own indistinguishable brand of brazen racism in the direction of a minority of Jewish fans in Herzliya, a city named after the man who foresaw the State of Israel. Curiously, no one is willing to speak about the reactionary Arab racism, but of course Sakhnin’s fans play a part in the problem of violence in Israeli sports.

 

Nonetheless, far from being dangerous, Sakhnin is of great significance and importance to Israeli soccer, and, by extension, Israeli society, too. If violence and racism in sports mirror Israeli society on the whole, Sakhnin is the one holding up the mirror.

An Introduction: Anything Averroes Can’t Do – I Can’t Either

I’ve been living in Sakhnin for three months now, and for the past month and a half I’ve been recording my experiences here in a Hebrew blog. Upon reading it, one subscriber promised me that I would be famous if I translated it into English, while another assured me that an international version would draw a far greater audience. So I took a few shots at translation, and I missed them all.

Which should have come as no surprise, considering that I just spent three and a half years translating in the army. Which isn’t to say that I defrauded the Israeli Defense Forces – just that translation, as one of my teachers in the military would exuberantly exclaim, is itself a form of fraud, or at least an exercise in futility, as Borges showed in his famous Averroes’s Search. Besides, the army did much worse unto me. But anyway, the conclusion I came to was that if it is a future in writing that I aspire to, it is my past in translating that I must leave behind. And so it is from scratch that I begin.

Or rather, a clarification: it’s not fame that I’m after, nor an expanded readership – although the latter would be nice, and I’ll take this opportunity to cordially invite you to send this to anyone who may find it readable, especially anybody who could help me achieve the former. Rather, it’s Sakhnin’s soccer team that I’m following: Abna Sakhnin in Arabic, Bnei Sakhnin in Hebrew, or the Sons of Sakhnin in English. I do so while living in this Arab city in the north of Israel which has a population of approximately 30,000, comprised of a Muslim majority, a Christian minority, and one Jew, more or a less. Me, that is.

I moved here from Jerusalem three months ago today, with the intent of spending a year here. Why on earth would I do that while nearly every other Israeli Jew my age, recently discharged from the army and imbued with a drive to rediscover his freedom, sets out to find himself or herself – or, at the very least, drugs – in India or South America? I had three main goals in mind, none so delusional as the idea of finding myself, or as the drugs that so often accompany such a quest. Not that some people don’t think that I’m deluded for doing this. Some don’t even believe me, which is how I won a free meal off a friend who is still reluctant to accept that I do indeed call Sakhnin home.

If it’s proof that you want, well, you’ll just have to take my word for it – though you’re welcome to visit. As for an explanation – here it is. And here’s to hoping that after this I don’t get any emails asking what brought me to move to Sakhnin, because the corresponding Hebrew explanation apparently didn’t do the trick…

First of all, I wanted to get to know Arabs and their culture. When a friend, unabashedly liberal in his views, came to visit me here a couple of months ago he was struck by the stark differences between the Jewish Israel he knew and the Arab Israel which he did not. While he did his very best, he couldn’t help but begin every comparison between these vastly differing realities by saying, “In Israel…”. Nor could a Dutch girl volunteering in Sakhnin restrain herself, try as she might, when speaking of the relations between Arabs and Isra…er, Jews. The great Welsh striker Ian Rush is said to have said of his time in Italy that it was “like being in a foreign country”. (For his part, he denies saying that – but it’s a wonderful quote nonetheless). If being in Sakhnin does not feel exactly like being abroad, it also does not feel exactly like being in Israel. Not the Israel, at least, that I know. So while the experience of traversing India can be eye-opening and mind-blowing and valuable in many ways, I felt that spending time among Arabs is all that and more – it’s significant, and perhaps even critical, if at some point Jews and Arabs are to carve out a peaceful coexistence here.

Second, I wished to learn to speak Arabic, and make peaceful use of skills that I acquired for purposes which were less than peaceful. I’d gladly go vindictively on about the essential evil of the military, but at least for one thing the Israeli army deserves credit – for teaching soldiers Arabic. Regrettably, it does so far better than the schools. Six years of studying Arabic in school, which is all you can get, enable one to make out a few headlines in the newspaper, provided the syntax isn’t overly complex. Not many get even that far. My high school offered the choice of French as an alternative to studying Arabic, as if its relevance or importance were even remotely comparable. All of which adds up to a widespread Jewish ignorance of Arabic which is quite embarrassing, if not downright disrespectful. If not for its exquisite syntax, it seems to me that the next best reason to learn Arabic would be that in a country where one out of every five is Arab, having a passing knowledge of thy neighbor’s tongue is no more than common courtesy.

 

Finally, while all that sounds grand indeed, though not pompous or self-righteous, I hope – that’s not the real reason I moved to Sakhnin. That would be to follow the local team for a season and write about it. Sports literature has no existence as a genre in Israel. The few books written about sports in Hebrew are academic, bogged down by jargon that renders it all but unreadable. But while I struggle to explain to Israelis what it is that I’m trying to do, there should be no such problem with an English-reading audience. David Halberstam and David Maraniss, among many others, have provided eloquent examples of how sports writing can be not only eminently enjoyable – but also transcend the scoreboard. As the sublime Steve Rushin wrote: “Any dink can give you the score, but only a man of books… can reduce you to tears. Or laughter. Or both.” Or something to that effect – which is precisely the effect I’d like to have. I’ll do my best.

 

Pulitzer Prize-winning H.G. Bissinger’s name belongs in any discussion of great sports writers. It was his Friday Night Lights that first planted the seed of the Sakhnin idea in my mind some three years ago. In the late ‘80’s Bissinger moved to god-forsaken Odessa, Texas, for a year, where he documented the perverted, convoluted culture which enveloped the local high school football team and consumed it. Bnei Sakhnin struck me as something of an Israeli version of the story, with the Jewish-Arab conflict to boot. Were Sakhnin situated in the States, it would have long ago been overrun by authors eager to seize on this perfect storm of a story. As it is, Bnei Sakhnin has been the subject of two movies, two sociological books and countless articles, including one in Sports Illustrated.

 

For good reason. While Arabs constitute one-fifth of Israel’s population, two-fifths of its soccer clubs are Arab. Yet Sakhnin is the lone Arab club in the twelve-team top Israeli soccer division, just the third in nearly sixty years to make it to the top and the only one to survive for more than one season. They lasted three, during which they shocked the world by improbably winning the State Cup, and subsequently representing Israel in European competition, which was a sight not devoid of bitter irony. Now, after a painful relegation and a swift return, they’re back! Fittingly, they ensured their return to the top division on the same sunny spring day last April that Major League Baseball celebrated the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s barrier-breaking debut. But Sakhnin is fighting not only racism. The economic forces of Israeli soccer are arrayed against it, too, for Sakhnin is not merely the league’s poorest outfit, they are an economic anomaly. The rest of the league’s teams have long been privately owned, but Sakhnin alone remains a relic of days past when teams were run by political organizations. While the Israeli championship has for over 20 years been the exclusive property of teams hailing from one of the big three cities, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, Sakhnin is 178^th(!) among 210 municipalities ranked socio-economically. The defending champion and current frontrunner, Beitar Jerusalem, boasts a payroll 13 times Sakhnin’s, a figure which would make even George Steinbrenner blush. And yet, eight games into a 33-game season, Sakhnin impossibly sits atop the league standings, second only to their racist archrival, Beitar.

 

But their astounding success on the field is easily explained in comparison with the complex questions they pose off of it. It is those questions that I’ll attempt to tackle, while trying to paint the picture of a city and a culture far removed from anything I’ve known. I’m not sure yet of the format or the frequency of the posts, but I’ll go with the flow. Hope you do too. In any case, I’d be happy to hear what you have to say. I can only hope that you’ll do it while laughing or crying. There is enough in Sakhnin to warrant either - and both.