The World Cup is a generator of clichés.
And that's a cliché - how could it not be?
- just like the assertion that the World Cup is not just football.
Relative to a country that traditionally does not participate in World Cups, Israel sent to the current World Cup a very sizable delegation of soccer fans, soccer commentators, and soccer talkers.
And I don't know a single Israeli who truly believes that if they had also attached him to the studio, or to one of the broadcasting stations, and given him a chair and a microphone, it would have been an unnecessary waste of time and money.
Which of course is the modest way to express my justified grumbling.
Indeed, the World Cup is such a thing that we all have something to say about it, and with great desire.
This week, among other things, there were several reports of blatant displays of hostility towards members of the media and just Israelis who came to celebrate in Qatar.
All the displays of hostility, which were quite violent, came from different Arabs.
Arabs from Asia and Africa, alone and in groups, just fans and people in office and in uniform.
Report blatant, loud and threatening hate.
The Israelis who shared with us what they went through described a double blow.
Every person who encounters hatred on an ethnic or religious basis has a hard time digesting the intensity of the threatening and ugly emotion, which rolls towards him from the direction of people who do not know him at all.
But beyond that, the impression arose that the very fact that all this is happening in a colorful and multinational sports celebration adds to the pain.
Here, representatives from all over the world gather in one place, to unite and celebrate their common love for the game.
But not with you.
You are Israeli and Jewish, therefore you are outside the lines.
Outside of the party and the game.
It is hard not to empathize with the pain and insult of my fellow journalists, who arrived in Qatar excited and loaded with good intentions, and what they met there shook them.
Some of them expressed themselves about it in words that I don't remember when I met them.
One of the reporters, for example, ended his painful list in the newspaper with an excited exclamation that it is time to unite and rise above the petty arguments that separate us, the Israelis, because "we do not have another country".
These things were a summary of a few days in a Muslim land.
maybe a week
My jaws dropped.
There is one small and not very important thing to say about all this.
From time to time, as part of the political debate in Israel, a question arises about the "prejudice that the people of the Mizrah ethnic group have towards the Arabs", as Yaron London put it not long ago.
And it is not clear whether this is an anthropological curiosity, or a kind of rhetorical wonder seasoned with a hint of arrogance: how do we explain the voting patterns of our brothers from Islamic countries and the residents of the periphery.
Not only do they refuse to adopt our political worldview, the blue-collar beauties and the righteous, they also tend to show a degree of mistrust towards the cultures they themselves know well.
You feel at home in the world of sounds, tastes and smells of Arab cultures, and some of them even speak the language.
So how, for God's sake, how?!
Indeed, this is a shocking question that can easily join other questions such as: Why exactly are the immigrants from Argentina so opposed to a military regime?
How is it that the immigrants from Russia show such skepticism towards socialist concepts?
Why do kibbutz members talk so harshly about the shared accommodation?
Why don't Haifa people react with enthusiasm when they see large wild animals crossing the road?
Why, really?
It's time to lighten up and finally answer this important question.
Well, the forefathers and grandmothers of the so-called "Eastern Witnesses" did not spend a week in Qatar.
They lived in this space for generations.
Jews lived in Morocco, for example, before Arabs lived in Morocco.
The experience of staying as Jews - not foreigners but others - in a Muslim environment did not pass them by during a universal sports celebration, nor in luxurious hotels.
No, they are not ungrateful.
No, they don't throw a stone into the well.
And no, not all of them really worked for the king.
They had a complex life, ups and downs.
Experience has been gained and conclusions have been formed.
There are things from "there" that they love fiercely.
From others they shy away and are cautious like fire.
One can, for example, love the sounds of the muezzin singing and shudder at the text of the sermon.
One can love the colorful markets of Aleppo, Baghdad or Marrakesh, and at the same time recognize the deep enmity towards other religions, and the deep belief that in every relationship someone must be afraid, and it should be you.
And it is possible to live a full life and forge relationships of trust and friendship, and sometimes also real brotherly love, without forgetting that agreements will not always be kept, and without for a moment abandoning the rule "respect him and suspect him" - which is not written anywhere in the Bible, but history itself has burned it.
I can't believe that after a week in Qatar (a week!) I suddenly hear in the major newspapers in Israel sentences that, when my grandfather said them, we ourselves asked him to lower his voice.
Really unpleasant.
The old Israel, the Sabrite, used to despise the opinion of the Mizrahim.
What do they already understand?
All in all, several hundred years of experience in the tiny space between the Straits of Gibraltar and South India.
Where is it and where is a week in the World Cup.
I cannot underestimate the call to boycott this World Cup.
The arguments regarding corruptions and injustice and the trampling of human rights, which were involved in holding this great celebration, are respectable arguments in my eyes.
But whoever did not watch the group stage of the Qatar World Cup, could not see the brave protest of the Iranian team.
These guys expressed demonstrable support for the popular protest against the Ayatollahs' rule, refrained from singing the words of the national anthem and took a risk that none of us can bet on where it will lead them.
And those who didn't watch the games - couldn't be amazed at the sight of the thousands of Japanese fans, who clean and polish the stadium at the end of the game, and almost apologize when they explain "that's how it is in our tradition".
Just to remind you that you can wave tradition arguments even on your way to do a good and beautiful and considerate deed, and not just to demand consideration and favors from others.
And he could not see the Iranian referee being forced to pick up a pride flag from the grass, nor the tears of Messi, and with him millions of people, after he scored a goal out of nowhere, just to pull the dream a little longer.
Every World Cup carries a souvenir for me.
I remembered one World Cup this week, which caught me in reserve service in Hebron.
The reserve month completely coincided with the tournament.
We guarded the Glass Junction and the Cave of the Patriarchs, secured hinges and watched from the rooftops, and in between, at the outpost, we tried to steal a view of some game using a small, squishy television receiver, with two antenna antennas.
The viewing experience was flickering and snowy, and horrible in general.
Most of the games were defensive and boring.
But it was a pleasure.
During the entire month of the games, the intifada stopped.
Not one stone was thrown at us.
Almost no one walked the streets.
More Brazilian flags were flying on the balconies than Palestinian flags.
The last terrible attacks threw me back to that World Cup, and to a time when even terrorism knew how to bow its head before football.
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
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