A few years ago I attended a basketball game, and while the hall seats were filling up a policeman approached two young people sitting nearby.
"Fly somewhere else," the policeman scolded them.
The young people were surprised and asked questions.
That was enough for him to call a group of policemen, who stormed the stands and dragged them violently out to protest and whistle of contempt from the crowd.
When I politely asked the policeman to explain the expulsion, he looked disappointed in my journalist's certificate.
"You'm lucky, I'd flip you too."
He refused to give his details (in violation of the law), but most of all kindly agreed to explain that they were cursing.
But they did not curse, I asked.
I was here.
They did, the policeman ruled, and mostly flew because they were too close to the burnt stand of the hosts about to fill up.
Logical - his decision to move them made sense: to prevent violence;
Practical - the opposite happened.
The violence of the police on the fields is an open secret and is known to about one hundred percent of the regular sports fans in Israel.
I was reminded of the story, one of many, that this week an illusory phenomenon occurred: Betar fans supported Hapoel Tel Aviv fans in the networks. Police officers beat a helpless boy on the ground. The fact that only a few rounds before that Betar fans were beaten in the same place, with the same brutality and by the same police officers, along with a defensive spokesperson statement from the police that was worded almost identical to the spokesperson announcement from the same Betar game. A joint that may turn out to be a real Archimedean.
The instinct is to roll on the "violent Israeli police," which has also been in a bad image among the public recently, second only to the image of the judiciary.
But this is a double mistake: first, it is an injustice to a large majority of the police on the ground, honest public servants with insulting wages who work day and night.
Second, because the same instinct - "the police are dangerous" - only contributes to the current tightening of the ranks among the organization, which is conducted in an "everyone against us" approach.
If that's not enough yet, the current government is trying to put out the problem with oil, in an attempt to promote a law that would give more powers to police officers on the plots, which would inevitably lead to more institutionalized violence.
Eradication of violence on the pitches is possible.
Ask the English, who managed to almost completely eliminate the famous local hooligans from the stadiums with the full cooperation of the government and the association. Here the league administration has disappeared. What will they do, sit down? The addicted fans are their milk cow.
Eradication of violence requires a combination of forces on the part of the police that will sharpen procedures, keep away and punish distracted police officers;
On the part of the league administration and the association, who will have to remember that they work for the fans and not the other way around;
And on the part of the government, which will carry out reforms within a disgusting policing organization.
In the meantime it will not happen, because these three components simply do not exist.
We will wait for the next commotion.
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Fixed!
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