Why is Beitar Jerusalem the most political football club in the world with Shaul Adar

Jerusalem Unplugged

In December 2020, an Israeli football club made worldwide headlines. The news that a UAE royal had bought 50 per cent of Beitar's shares shook Israel and the football world. Beitar, proclaimed by some of its own fans as 'the most racist club in the country', is a club like no other in Israel. While Israeli football as a whole is a space where Israelis of all ethnicities and foreigners can co-exist, Beitar won't even sign a Muslim player for fear of its own far-right supporters' group, La Familia. In this episode I talk to Shaul Adar the author of On the Border a the fascinating tale of a club that began as a sports movement of a liberal national Zionism party and became an overt symbol of right-wing views, Mizrahi identity and eventually hardcore racism and nationalism. With the author we explored explored the radicalisation of Beitar and the fight for the soul of the club between the racists and open-minded fans. Founded in 1936, the club took its name from a Zionist organization set up in 1923 by students in the capital of Latvia, Riga, following a visit by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the Zionist Revisionist and founder of the para­military group Irgun. For thirty years, under the British Mandate, impoverished young Mizrahim (Jews from Arab countries) had kicked a ball around Jerusalem’s Musrara neighbourhood with Arab friends. The war of 1948 radically changed that. Subsequent events sharpened the divide, leading to the unrepentant racism of La Familia, Beitar “ultras” who began by making monkey noises at a player from Cameroon and graduated to chants threatening death to Arabs. Employing violence and intimi­dation, they ensured no Muslim could play for Beitar.

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