From the "game of laces" to the mayorship: Eitan Taib opens everything

Almost 25 years after the game that ended his career, the former footballer storms into the role.

Until the municipal elections, he prepares the ground, tells how he will be able to oust the veteran Jackie Levy, and also opens that wound

Aviad Pohorils, added by Ma'ariv undefined

08/19/2022

Friday, August 19, 2022, 6:00 p.m

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On the morning of Tisha B'Av, about two weeks ago, we found ourselves driving down Sha'ul HaMelech, the main street of Beit Shean, looking for Zalman Street. The hot asphalt of the month of August in the Beit Shean Valley, which not long ago changed its name to the Valley of the Springs, suggests to us that at noon the temperature You might climb towards 47 degrees, but the cold morning compassion showed only 38 degrees when we stopped by Eitan Taib's house.

Once, about a quarter of a century ago and a little more, I ran into Taib quite a few times during my visits to Beit Shan, who raised a cute soccer team in the city that climbed up to the first division, Super in today's definitions. Hapoel Beit Shean was not just a cute group, but the "second group" of each of us, the audience's favorite, the media's favorite, a saccharine and non-threatening synorom somewhere in the far east of this country.

Taib receives me with a handshake, a smile and a quarter hug.

When I heard that he had decided to run for mayor in the local elections to be held in the fall of 2023, I picked up the phone and offered to talk.

He replied: "Come on my brother, let's close the circle."

The relationship between us has been complex since that May 2, 1998 founding in a stadium that no longer exists, Kiryat Eliezer.

Beit Shean and Beitar Jerusalem met for what will forever be remembered as the "lace game" because of Taib's kneeling on the grass in the extra time of the game - and tying his shoelaces, just before Beitar scored a winning goal that practically guaranteed them the championship a week later.

"You and Nanos (Zion Nanos, Channel 2 reporter in those days - AP) killed me that day," he throws into the air with a smile what he has been carrying all these years: "I didn't understand at all what happens after the game.

Everyone was shocked, but your column in the newspaper, and his article on TV took my token off, and knocked me to the ground.

Everything changed in my life from that game."

Football is important and we will come back to it, but this time we did not come to Tev and Beit Shan to talk about what was, but about what will be, and especially to try to understand what brought him, a big boy of 51, to decide to run for mayor of this complex city, and on the way to remove Z from the mayor's seat Ki Levy, no less, who is already completing three terms.

Once, between terms, Levy lost in the 2013 election, but in the 2018 election he came back big with 63% of the vote, and he doesn't look like he's threatened by anyone, not even Matev.

If there are two familiar families in the Shan house, who were connected, really inseparable - those were Levi and Tyev.

Taib was the star of the local soccer team, a charismatic stopper with an explosive foot and a great future, who also reached Maccabi Haifa and was expelled from it back to the mother team because he was not good enough, and also retired relatively young, at the age of 30, due to a tragic chain of events that eliminated his chance of success.

Shoki, Eitan's older brother, was David Levy's personal driver for 17 years, as if he were another member of the Levy family, and drove him every morning from his home in the city's Eliyahu neighborhood to Jerusalem, to the Knesset and to the offices where he served as minister.

Levy Sr. served as godfather to the children born in the Taib family, and when he retired, Shuki became the driver and close assistant of son Jackie.

He also led him around the country, in his positions as mayor, member of Knesset and deputy minister.

Four years ago I interviewed Jackie, right after he returned to the mayor's office.

In 2013, Rosh went easy on his opponent Rafi Ben Shatrit, sent his supporters to spend time in Sahana on the eve of the elections, lost by 96 votes and moved to the Knesset, where he was the Deputy Minister of Housing.

When he announced to the family that he was leaving the Knesset and running around Beit Shan again, his wife tore out her hair, cried and told him he was crazy.

His children, and he has seven, did not want to talk to him.

His father also advised him not to return, but the local bacteria overcame him, perhaps also the ego that was broken in defeat five years earlier.

Jackie defeated Mayor Ben Shatrit by a margin of more than 2,000 votes.

I believe the circle will close.

Taib (Photo: Maariv, Yossi Aloni)

Jackie has been doing the last few years without the Taib family.

Insiders tell of a rift that led to a complete separation.

Today it is not a heated and publicized conflict but a disconnection.

"Both sides made progress and moved on," say acquaintances of the two.

Shoki Tayeb connected with the chairman of the local government center and the mayor of Modi'in Maccabim Reut, Haim Bibbs, and he works with him. Bibbs, a former Beit himself, is no less than the nephew of David Levy. He is the cousin of Orli Levy-Abacsis and Jackie Levy, the mayor.

Eitan, on the other hand, is looking for himself.

In recent years, he travels to Nazareth, where he is employed as an assistant to the mayor, Ali Salam.

Taib, who at the end of his career played in Achi, then met Salam, then a political entrepreneur at the beginning of his career, and he advises him on sports matters and also in coordinating political meetings in the city and in the Knesset.

He also coached the soccer team that was relegated to the second league, but in a city like Beit Shean, any position you hold depends on your proximity to the people pulling the strings, and Eitan says he found himself a scapegoat: "There were games with a full crowd at our place, but they formed coalitions against me there. Suddenly Actors took a political side and put me aside. It got to the point where we say I met Jackie at a wedding, and you know how it is, taking pictures and all that, but one of them came to Jackie and said to him - 'It's not good for you right now to have a picture with Eitan.' So he didn't He took a picture. I have a good sense of smell and I understood where the wind was blowing. I knew my brother Shuki was also on his way out, and so it was."

"I don't have a ticket for revenge or hatred. What I took from football is such a hard blow that I'm not ready to get into this bad blood again. I have a different approach and I'm attacking the city elections through the youth of Beit Shan. I managed to wake up the young power here. You I know how Beit Shean is, the decisions are made at the Shabbat table. The father would say who to vote for, and the whole family would line up with him and vote according to what he said, but that's the end of it.

"I'm going to be mayor here"

"I opened two WhatsApp groups. Each group is limited to 512 members, so I have one full and the other will soon fill up to a thousand people. A thousand people means the wife and children at home, and I tell you there is madness around me. From the looks of it, three will run - Jackie, Rafi Ben Shatrit and I. The elections are in a year and three months, but come here three or four months before and see what will happen here. I don't intend to raise my hands but to fight for my supporters. The Levy family can't offer me anything in return for me to give up. I respect the mayor, but older than him have gone. Look at Naftali Bennett. Until a month or two ago he was the king of the world, with media from morning to evening, and where is he now. Do you understand? I'm going to be the mayor here in November 23. Remember What does Eitan Taib tell you."

there were days.

Taib next to Meir Cohen as an actor (photo: Maariv, Adi Avishi)

Enough, Ethan.

You are fighting against great forces here.

Against a very experienced mayor, the entire Likud will go with him.

Benjamin Netanyahu, ministers, came to support Jackie in the previous elections.

"Jackie's interest is to ignore me, but he is not a political wall that cannot be passed. The public wants change. Many people like me. I am busy doing things, simply helping people, mobilizing, solving their problems. I have connections everywhere, and I travel around Everywhere".

"Look at the city, and see what it looks like. Without a government meeting that will come to the city and make decisions about bringing high-tech companies to the city, Beit Shean will remain for another 40 years as it is today. I want Beit Shean that will be fun to enter, I want a crazy education system here that will give young people Here is an opportunity and a dream to fulfill themselves. I need educators here who will change the minds of the young people here from the age of zero. Not only to improve matriculation grades, but how to educate people to be better people, to know how to maintain cleanliness, speak politely, be human beings. I want change the nature of employment here. Everyone here is leaving. There isn't a single family here where someone hasn't left. My daughter Liz returned from Tel Aviv only two months ago. She was a model there. She had to travel to Hazor to learn sewing and fashion modeling. Why can't you establish Educational institutions here, comfort clubs, to enrich the children. All that is here are food factories, meat. Not a single hi-tech or electronics factory comes here."

"For 50 years the Likud is strong here, but Beit Shan is insanely behind. I know and am involved, and today I am not interested in the Likud, Yesh Atid or Benny Gantz. I am indeed a Likudnik, but in the municipal it is not important at all. Biebs is a Likudnik in my country but independent in the municipal and mayor of the city that mostly supports the center-left. The government, and I mean every government, not just Likud, should take Beit Shan and give it a boost, because there is crazy potential here. There is a tourist section here, there are parks, an amphitheater and the Valley of the Springs. All of this surrounding area is underutilized , does not attract anything to the city. Between us? Beit Shan is a city with nothing to do today. It needs to be awakened, made into a kind of Eilat through investment in tourism. Walk around today at eight in the evening here, there is nothing. Only events. Weddings or bar mitzvahs. This is not This. The city is depressed - people stop me in the street and tell me 'Ethan, save us'."

"I'm going to be aggressive

But Eitan, you're a nice guy, known in town, helping people even - but Jackie Levy is a wall that may be impossible to pass, certainly not to climb.

How are you going to win?

Are you building a hive around you?

"You don't know me. I'm going to be aggressive. I have a bunch of people from all over the political spectrum to run with me. Ex-military people, experienced people."

His wife Asnet, who is sitting not far from us, says: "His decision to run makes a big noise. Even the city hall is afraid of his running. I hear voices, and I support and back Eitan, because he is a determined man who sets goals."

Eitan looks at her and feels momentum: "No one can underestimate me. With God's help I am on the right path. Even as a player I scored goals even though everyone doubted and laughed at me. I said I would reach Maccabi Haifa, and they laughed, raised an eyebrow. Like in football, here too I will build an excellent beehive with The best key people."

Eitan Taib with David Levy in 1994 (Photo: Yigal Levy)

Asnet and he have been together for more than 33 years, almost 30 of which have been married.

In addition to Liz, they have three other children - David, who works as a firefighter in the National Guard; Tal, a fitness trainer; and 13-year-old Nehorai. Esnat is a fitness trainer, and she has a large gym at home where she gives classes.

An hour later, when we walk around the steamy city And Eitan will try to find an audience to rub shoulders with and shake hands with, perhaps in the air-conditioned spaces of the supermarket or superfarm, I recognize his brother Shoki from a distance near one of the shelves. He was far enough away from us not to notice us, intentionally or not. Eitan doesn't really make an effort to close A distance from Shuki, who soon disappeared, and I'm trying to understand from Eitan if Shuki is in the matter of his running for mayor, even though I already understand the dynamics. Eitan: "He knows I'm running, everything is fine."

Local journalists and political campaigners who are familiar with the unfolding telenovela, which has a chance of overshadowing even the events of that match in Haifa in May 1998, watch from the sidelines with skepticism when they are asked to assess Taib's chances of occupying the second floor of the city hall building, which looks like a scaled-down version of the Histadrut committee house on Arlozorov Street in Tel Hapoel Aviv, perhaps a reminder of the distant Pai days. Shimi Weiss, a veteran journalist and commentator on local politics on Every Moment radio, who is well versed in the politics of the valley, paints Beit Shan and its larger and more established sister, Afula, as cities that live between one election cycle and the one that follows it: "Jackie Levy is quite a dictatorial ruler, and after his blunder in 2013, when he lost to Ben Sheetrit because he underestimated him, he stopped making mistakes and his position is fortified.

It is possible that Ben Shatrit will also run in the next elections, but he is an insignificant oppositionist today.

A year and a half until the elections is an eternity, but I'm willing to bet that Eitan won't make it to the last row."

"Because an election campaign, even in Beit Shean, is a lot of money. Such a campaign can reach at least a million shekels. You need activists, supporters and a mechanism. Beit Shean is a difficult city at the end of the road. It is not a crossroads, but a city in the middle of nowhere. Teib has no political skills , and I don't know who is running with him. You need people who know how to reach and conduct themselves in the corridors of government. In front of him, Jackie Levy is a shark. When Jackie lost and went to the Knesset, as Deputy Minister of Housing, he turned off the taps to Ben Shetrit. He unequivocally did not forgive him who defeated him, and did not forgive himself, and strangled him financially."

"We are also nobility in Beit Shan"

So Taib should give up, or does he have something to do?

"He should look in the city for those disappointed by Jackie Levy who are motivated to take him down. Election day in a place like Beit Shan rises up and falls on an organization. In Tel Aviv, the mayor cannot recruit the officials who will work for him, but in peripheral cities it is easier to recruit, guarantee and wink that there will be OK if you promise me support."

In Beit Shan every role, even if it is not hypocritical and smells political - in the end it is political.

Nine years ago, Taib was appointed coach of Hapoel Beit Shean and promoted it to League A, and two months after the start of the following season - when Ben Shtrit won the mayorship, Eitan, identified with the Levy family, was dismissed.

Ben Shatrit called him back, and the return opened a front with Jackie Levy, and here Tayeb marks the break with the aristocracy family: "But we are also aristocracy in Beit Shan. We are eight brothers. Shuki is the second in order, and I am the fifth. They all live in Beit Shan. To my mother I have ten siblings. She comes from the Ben Baruch family, a huge family in the city, so everything is fine and we are very strong."

"Shoki is my older brother, and he knows that I am a brave man. I always made brave decisions, even when I went to Maccabi Haifa contrary to what people thought or believed. I am already a big boy, and he knows the sympathy I have in the city. I imagine that my decision causes him a bit of a problem In front of David Levy, whom he respects a lot, but do you have any doubt that he will stand by me in everything?"

Taib in his days as coach of Migdal HaEmek, 2014 (Photo: Barney Ardov)

What kind of mayor will you be?

Who is your role model?

"I will not be a mayor of a chamber, but a mayor of an area, of action. Talks bore me. A good mayor does not need to be highly educated or academic, but to be loyal to the residents and keep his promises. Rubik Danilovich is my model. Look What did he do from Be'er Sheva? I was able to connect with him through Oren Segron, who was a player in Hapoel Be'er Sheva and today is his driver. What Robik and I have in common is that we were both soccer players. He became a great mayor, and I will do that next year."

"I'm not ashamed to learn from the best. There are things that won't happen right now, but in six months something crazy will happen here. Money is important in election campaigns, but they say that Ben Shatrit won here with 100,000 shekels, a bicycle and a toqueman. Today the young people don't look back. It doesn't interest them. I also won't get dragged into a system of slanders and such, but enough already with 30 years of leadership. It's like Mapai of old, that comes and goes, comes and goes.

Once, Jacky was mayor, and once was Ben Shatrit, mayor, and once Ben Shatrit, deputy mayor and plenum member, and again, God forbid.

enough with that.

Beit Shan is a tough city, and many people need help here.

We need to find solutions for them.

Not everyone will stand in front of the city hall and shout that a revolution is needed here.

If necessary, I will turn the world upside down, and I tell you this who was a player in the Premier League for five years, a captain in the Premier League."

"See for yourself. People used to have an ideology, and today it doesn't exist. Orli Levy made many mistakes in her conduct, and paid the price. She had great admiration for most of the public, including the media, and she lost it."

before and after the "lace game"

Taib's life is divided into two - before and after May 2, 1998. He was 26 years old when he lost the remnants of his good name as the most important and prominent player in Beit Shan: "I scored 13 goals as a stopper. There was no such thing. I came from a small place and I was popular and well-liked. I got a level Crazy coverage. How many times have I seen you come from the newspaper or on TV to our training sessions at Kibbutz Geva, or to games. Five or six times I got the Shabbat Goal program on Saturday night, I went to play for Maccabi Haifa of Giura Spiegel, Eyal Berkowitz, Haim Rabivo and Alon Hazan. The brakeman next to me was Oleg Kuznitsov, but I came there at the age of 21, mentally immature, and I stayed there for six months."

From Haifa, Taib moved to Maccabi Netanya, was injured, considered retiring, but returned to Beit Shan of Eli Gutman and Lufa Kadosh.

In the end, Elisha Levy landed there, and that game in Kiryat Eliezer against Beitar was the end of Beit Shean's fourth consecutive season in the Super League. Taib sat on the couch when he returned to the event: "Do you know what was the biggest scandal in the whole story?

that the police did not allow us to host Beit Shean in Beit Shean, and moved the game to Haifa. This was the decision of the commander of the northern district, Alik Ron. They were afraid to take a risk of the arrival of thousands of Beitar fans to the small field in Beit Shean, 4,800 seats maximum, for whom this is a game of all or nothing".

This week I watched the article about that game, and the analysis of its final minutes, especially from the moment Almog Hazan, a young player from Beit Shan, scored a huge goal out of nowhere, and shocked the stadium and especially the players.

Taib doesn't need to be remembered at all.

He pulled it out in a bundle: "Today, moving the game to another stadium would not pass, but who was Beit Shan then compared to Beitar."

Grasshoppers vs giants.

I remember Itzik Kornfein, Beitar's goalkeeper, coming out at the beginning of the second half a good few minutes late, and the game started late. Beitar wanted to know what was happening on other courts, to know what they needed.

We needed Hapoel BS to lose to stay in the league, and I really heard the announcer in Haifa announce loudly, in the 80th minute or so, 'Beit Shean, you stay in the league, Beit Shean, you stay in the league.' When Pishont scored the winning goal, the Beit Shean crowd "R broke through the gates and entered the field.

There were at least 4,000 of their fans sitting on top of us.

fear of god

Do you think someone wanted to sell a game?

It was an impossible situation to get through properly."

At Beitar's corner, which eventually led to the winning goal, you kneel down and tie the laces. The other defensive players are not in their positions. Even when you stand up, you don't really rush to block Aboksis, and I can even understand that - but the whole situation, as it appears On TV, was unbearable. All the sports broadcasts in Europe showed clips of this game, because it looked like it had changed from the bounce.

"Beit Shean paid the price for all the teams that knew how to behave in similar situations in the seasons that followed. What, weren't there more games that ended according to the desired result? They knew how to hide it better. The event in Haifa was conducted in a natural way. We stayed in the league, that's how the announcer announced, so Obviously there was a voltage drop. You can't say it's not normal. No one thought we sold a game here or got money. I didn't understand anything until I got home that night. I saw two cars parked near the house. They started attacking me and the whole house with crazy threats , and the next day Nanos came with his article and the mark with the circle around me, bending down to tie the shoe."

I told Nanos this week that I went to meet Taib, and he also didn't have to go back and check the article to repeat: "I'm just telling you about my article that he's talking about, as if we marked only him. This is so untrue, because in this article we analyzed all the minutes The latest from the player who grabbed the head in Almog Hazan's goal, Sarjan Cholkovic, through the fact that in the corners many Beit Shean players were on the 16th line at all and didn't manage to defend properly in front of the goal. One of the things we showed is really tying the laces through The circle around Taib. But to claim that we marked only him is absolutely not true. And, as someone who was in the game as a broadcaster, it is clear to me, and I emphasized it in all the reports, that in the last few minutes there was an atmosphere of pressure and fear."

As if they marked only him.

Taib against Hapoel Tel Aviv (Photo: Maariv, Adi Avishi)

Taib's defense says that five moves were made in Beitar's attack from the time he stood up from tying his shoelaces to the time Pishont's ball entered the net. But this game ended his career, and to a large extent his life as it had seemed until then - promising, with a reasonable chance of reaching the Israeli national team as well of Shlomo Sharaf, who was interested in him. He would go on to have another five years of a faltering career, but the days then were a particularly bad movie. His children were attacked at school and heard songs written against him by the Hapoel Tel Aviv fans, the main victim of the affair. His family suffered severe ridicule, and Teib was required to come to lecture to the students and give his version. The city of Beit Shean suffered a huge blow, and everywhere they talked only about it. Taib and his family were forced to leave the city and moved to the nearby Kibbutz Sde Nahum until his anger passed: "I was a smiling and happy person all my life, but from that Shabbat Everything is over.

I was photographed every time, and I always saw a person with a frozen face.

My career ended at the age of 26 and so did my livelihood. I started the following season at Beit Shan,

But the body did not want to carry.

The talent was there, but the body died."

"How much I cried. I wouldn't sleep at night, walking around alone like a sleepwalker. My wife would wake up in the middle of the night and see me lying with my eyes open. If you hadn't Asenat, I don't know if I would have survived. I just collapsed. If it wasn't for my wife, the whole case of Beit Shan fell on me".

He still played for Achi Nazareth and won a league with it, but at the age of 30 he decided to retire.

At the same time and a little earlier, in the midst of the hardship, he decided to get closer to religion and today he wears a kippah, does not travel on Shabbat, and thinks about his missed career.

"I don't watch football at all, I'm injured and my heart is burned by football, but running for mayor is for me the closing of a circle and I will also bring the team back to its good days. Nobody sees me today in any field or stadium, because I don't go. I was the king of the world And I can't because football betrayed me. I would close the room with myself and feel dead, and you are talking about someone who would come to the field at six in the morning and bounce a ball. We were goats to hell. What was allowed for Hapoel Tel Aviv or other teams in order to be promoted to a league or not relegated, We were not allowed.

I played with Berkovic in Haifa and I could go to Europe with him.

When I was young and played in the first or national league, all the coaches of the league came to see me.

I had dreams, and as in football, so in politics - when I decide, I win.

You can say what you want, but no one is born from their stomach to become a mayor.

Listen carefully, I am like Netanyahu in the city.

Come here in three or four months and hang out with me.

I have always been with you, a faithful man.

My word is a word,

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