160 fans took Hapoel Tel Aviv with her this week on a private flight to Belgrade for the Eurocup match against Venice. All the passengers were injured in some way in the war – evacuees, bereaved families, relatives of abductees. All of the group tried to detach themselves from the harsh reality they have been living with since October 7.
Among the passengers was the Bachar family. Grandfather Oded (70), mother Naama (40) and children Gal (10) and Amir (8). The family lives in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak near Gaza and have been in Eilat since that Shabbat. They also took part in the trip the group organized to Paris last month.
Brian Angola with the kids. Everyone was excited, Photo: Private
"It was very special," Naama tells Israel Hayom. "The worker organized a plane especially for this thing. An atmosphere of a red plane was created, those who were on the flight were only the fans. On the way back, the players joined the flight, as did the owners Ofer Yanai and Avi Zeidenberg. In Serbia the people were really nice, there was no feeling of hostility in the air, there was no feeling that we had to be careful and careful. Really amazing feeling."
Have you managed to disconnect a bit and forget for a moment about the harsh reality?
"The children are sharp and smooth. And we're probably because of them, too. But this is a very difficult situation. It is very exciting, but it is not a complete disengagement. For the kids, it's amazing. Ofer Yanai said that if he had heard about another team making a fan jet, he would not have believed it was real. I wanted to tell him that in the atmosphere he created, the connection created between his spirit and the spirit of the team and the fans – it is really obvious that something like this would happen. We are very hugged, they really hug us all the time. The fans' association, also specifically, also the players. All the time you see that everyone just cares. A connection that is very present."
The Bachar family's connection with Hapoel Tel Aviv has been going on for years. Gal plays for Hapoel Eshkol's children's team, coached by Omer Bilansky, who until recently was also an assistant coach in Hapoel Tel Aviv's senior team. Bilansky also organizes basketball camps in the area in the summer, and brings players from the team in red who talk to the children and play with them. Not long ago, the team contacted him and asked him to bring fans and children from the surrounding area to travel on the expedition.
So much more than a Basketball team. Proud of my guys, proud of our community. @HapoelTLVBC @EuroCup unit pride pic.twitter.com/RT8I2uHCYf
— Danny Franco (@FrancoachD) December 20, 2023
The highlight of the journey for the children was the personal and direct encounter with the Hapoel players. "This is the most exciting thing for them that can happen," Naama says. "The actors are also very involved in the situation, the Israelis are real, and with the foreigners it's funny... They are very, very nice and play with them and sit with them on the bus, invite them and stuff... On the other hand, during the trip I got to sit with one of the foreign players and suddenly he started asking me questions and was shocked by the story, he didn't connect what he might know with the fact that it was right next to him. But yes, the players were very connected to the fans who came. Kyle Alexander really cried when he hugged Yuval Gabay's father."
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"I don't have many words to thank for this," she finishes excitedly. "At a time when our entire community structure cracked, the place stopped belonging, only the people themselves became belonging – so when the group comes and does something like this, it actually connects us to another community. These community connections are what help us keep our heads above water. Even though we didn't know the other people on the flight, we were all in the same boat, we could start speaking the same language. It's really not self-evident. In every space I go to, you always have to explain and mediate at first, here it really wasn't the feeling. Here they created a community and it's amazing."
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