The attempt to put such and other political charges on the football game is not new - neither in the academic field nor in the literary field.
Football, which in many cases is an accurate seismograph for such and other social processes, is often used as a hanger for academic theories, which try to turn the game itself into something that is beyond net sports.
On the Israeli bookshelf, sports research is on the margins, waging a struggle to get under the wings of the mainstream.
Therefore, every performance of a book is a joyous occasion for some of the football-loving audience that is greatly influenced by European culture, where literature in particular and culture in general are part of the love for the game and the industry around it.
In our country, although the Minister of Sports and Culture is one, there is almost no connection between sports and culture, but on the contrary - sometimes it seems that the two are at two opposite ends within the arena in which they operate.
What is the difference between the "La Familia" organization and the "Batsheva" band?
And yet, the book "Standing at the Gate" has received support from the ministry, and for that one can certainly rejoice.
If you want to create a sports culture here, this is exactly the kind of action that helps.
This time the author, Dr. Omer Einav from Tel Aviv University and director of the Mandate Researchers Forum in Israel, chose to take the Israeli reader towards the early history of local football, and examined the years 1948-1917 through the eyes of the beautiful game in the world. In Israel, this is an academic work that has received a literary adaptation. We have seen this in the past in the books of Dr. Amir Ben Porat, in various projects of Prof. Moshe Zimmerman and other researchers who used their academic work to wink at the literary world.
Even in the case of Einav, it is difficult not to pay attention to classical academic writing, which does not flow as a literary plot but is presented from the beginning as a purely academic work, with a research question and an answer that comes immediately in the next chapter.
Einav was edited in this book by Eli Shaltiel, so it would not be an exaggeration to add next to his name the "mythological" description in everything related to historical literary editing in Israel.
The thing is that Shaltiel himself is also an academic, and therefore failed to expand the canvas and try to produce a literary product that does not cling to didactics, which is sometimes boring despite the all-too-interesting subject matter.
Shaltiel's son, Uri, was a sports editor in the past, and perhaps a touch of a sports editor would have given the book a less heavy garnet, which manages to break through the university walls that impose strict rules.
Perhaps he would have managed to summon football fans from all walks of life to read, and not just a small group that would most likely be exposed to the book.
Advertisement for a game between an Arab team and Hapoel Tel Aviv in the Hapoel field, 1929 // Client from the Afmara Collection, National Library),
Although in the past researchers such as Dr. Hagai Harif have dealt with the history of sports before and near the establishment of the state, Einav manages to produce a credible and fascinating picture of the British attempt to use football as a bridge within the tangled place they found themselves in. Ruled by the British, is an experience that Einav constantly hints at how it will end: in a scorching failure. Or in 2008, offered just that: a football game that would decide the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).
But Einav's main argument is that neither side has really tried to use football as a bridge between peoples.
And even if it seemed that all sides did want to play against each other, it was not a serious endeavor: the British understood that this place was hopeless and were busy for many years with the collapse of their empire, the Jews did not see the Arabs as real partners, and the Arabs - understood that football could be used Also a national marker - did not agree to be used as the fig leaves of the Jewish football business.
Football, as mentioned, was just a symptom of the painful disease that accompanies us to this day.
One of the interesting cases in which the book deals is Jerusalem sports.
The British tried to do good and produce a sporting activity that would unite Jews and Arabs, and of course allow the British to play football with them.
In practice, this led to the disappearance of Jerusalem sports and the transfer of its center of activity to Tel Aviv, where the real rivalry between Hapoel and Maccabi began to take its place.
As time went on, this hatred grew stronger than the hatred for the Arabs or the British - and it is possible that this phrase is still relevant today.
Tel Aviv has taken on the attempt to make football a place where, on the one hand, it is possible to specialize, and on the other hand to make sport one through which ideologies, worldviews and personal identity can be conveyed.
The political conflict and domestic problems were sometimes only the background to what was really important to the activists of the time: control of local football.
Einav wants to prove that in the end, the football that remained here thanks to the British as a national sport - even though its level is light years away from that played in the kingdom - could have brought about one or another change in the inevitable collision course between the country's inhabitants.
But the British, as mentioned, totally despaired of this country, and went to lick their wounds overseas.
Their true idea collapsed even in the early stages.
Apart from the love of the game and its introduction for almost every home in Israel for 74 years, he has not been able to bridge any gap, and racism in Israeli football is a matter of routine on the local pitches, unfortunately.
And perhaps the attempt to force on the game another role besides the initial one - the playful and childish in the positive sense of the word - is the one that is pre-destined for failure.
With the few tools the British had, the national mood among the Jewish community that was preoccupied with daily survival and the Palestinian understanding that what was would no longer be - all in all wanted football as a comfortable escapism, as it continues to be used around the world in 2022.
The meager means, the fact that he was, as Einav points out, the only thing accessible to all sections of the population and in all places unlike the rest of the social activities, is what gave him his charm.
Despite everything that has happened to this place in the last century that football has been played, in the end the ball has always kept and will continue to roll.
And in this his power.
Omar Einav / Standing at the Gate - Football and Jewish-Arab Relations in Palestine, 1948-1917,
Am Oved Publishing, 416 pages
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