The Bloomfield Stadium in Tel Aviv hosts a football derby on Wednesday evening between Hapoel and Maccabi. And most likely the attachment of one club will insult the other in a special way. The songs go like this:
"Your number one is a German."
"Your number two is a German."
"Your block, you are all German."
Hapoel and Maccabi are the two most successful clubs in Israeli football. Hapoel was 13 times master, Maccabi won 22 titles. Both teams share a hometown, the city derbies are among the hottest games in Israeli football. In block 11 are the Maccabi pendants, on the other side, in block 5, are the Hapoel Ultras home. There derbies sometimes derbies in Derbys as "German".
From there comes another, controversial song. In it, the Hapoel fans wish the warring club, he may experience a Holocaust. Another song is about Maccabi fans "inhaling Zyklon B". Zyklon B was the gas used by the Nazis, especially in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, to murder the Jews.
The Israeli Football Association is trying to act against it. In the 2011/2012 season, there was a financial penalty for a Hapoel fans' Holocaust fanfare at the A-youth derby and blockade against Hapoel for Holocaust references (in both songs and graffiti).
Fatih Saribas / REUTERS
Maccabi's ex-player Avi Nimny is still known by Hapoel fans as a "fucking German"
Hapoel fans call the Maccabi fan block 11 a "ghetto", Maccabi, they are the "Nazis". And meanwhile, it has also found imitators among supporters of other clubs. After Ultras of Hapoel Be'er Sheva had detonated a smoke bomb in the Maccabi block and red smoke had risen, they sang it like this: "As the Reichstag smothered, Block 11 is red." In the past, the toilets in the Maccabi block were sprayed with swastikas, and their own fan block was subsequently closed for two games.
Jewish fans compared to Nazis, Zyklon B calls and swastikas: where does all this come from? According to the Hapoel appendix, one answer is: from basketball. One cause could be the success of Maccabi.
So it is stated on Wikipoel, a website by and for Hapoel fans. There it is said that the references have their origins in the basketball rivalry of both clubs. Unlike in football, Maccabi's basketball players are already hurrying their opponent, 53 times the club was champion, Hapoel follows as the second most successful club with just five titles.
"Germany is a brand that means success"
The athletic exceptional position of the competitor led therefore to disappointment of the Hapoel fans and then became frustration, which was discharged in the songs. At the beginning of the noughties, they would have reached football. But the Nazi comparisons do not explain that.
Israeli sports journalist Irad Tzafrir says Maccabi's "German" image is closely tied to winning. "Germany is a brand that means success, and the comparisons with Maccabi and their winning mentality only strengthened that reference," said Tzafrir. Although the Maccabi fans criticized the hapoel songs about the Holocaust, their own songs are by no means harmless. "It was about raping female hapoel fans," says Tzafrir. Hapoel fans would be compared to Hezbollah.
The meaning of the Hebrew word "German" has undergone a change in Israeli society, says Professor Moshe Zimmermann, a historian focusing on the history of German Jews and anti-Semitism.
Alain Slider / AP
A spectator storms the field at the Tel Aviv Derby and attacks a Maccabi professional. The photo was taken in 2014
"In the past, the German was equated with the Nazi," says Zimmermann. Over time, however, that has changed, the difference between the two terms has become clearer, he says. Important for this development was the Luxembourg agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of 1952, in which Germany committed itself to reparation payments. According to Zimmermann, this agreement and the diplomatic relations that later established both nations would have spurred on the change.
Nowadays "German" is above all synonymous with those attributes that are often clichéd as "typically German": accuracy, reliability, efficiency.
"German" is usually positively connoted in football
If in the Tel Aviv stadium players of the opponent team are called "Germans" and this is intended as an insult, that is an exception, Zimmermann believes. "From Emmanuel Scheffer (an Israeli coach of German origin, who led the nation to the only World Cup participation in 1970, editor's note) to Jürgen Klinsmann, 'German' is usually positively connoted in football," he says.
That it is not so in other areas, shows a recent example from politics. The corruption allegations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu divide the Israeli society. Among Netanyahu's supporters are those who insult the responsible public prosecutor Shai Nitzan via social media. On the Facebook page of the big daily newspaper "Haaretz" was recently cited such a defamatory posting against Nitzan. "Shai Nitzan", it says there, is "a German, his heart is made of stone".