Israeli Football: Culture, Politics, and Identity

Israeli Football: Culture, Politics, and Identity focuses on the diverse aspects of the evolution of Israeli football and the social effects of these on-going processes.

In the span of nine decades, Israeli football has become a faithful representation of society and its key developments. The organizational structure of the teams and their ethnic composition, fans’ chants and behaviors in the stands, gender-related issues, media involvement, and other issues have reflected important societal trends and transformations. Examples of such trends include a shift from political to private ownership of football teams, a shift from Ashkenazi to Sephardi dominance, increasing diversification of the national team ― from exclusive Jewish presence to a significant presence of Arab players, including a non-Jewish captain of the national team, a shift from local-based to global-based fandom. These changes, reflecting major milestones in the evolution of Israeli football, did not occur in a vacuum but rather were integrally related to broader local and global trends. These effects may even have had a reciprocal nature, where developments in the sport sphere also affected the public sphere and prepared the ground for social change.

The chapters in this book were first published as a special issue of the journal Israel Affairs.

Ilan Tamir is Professor at the School of Communication, Ariel University, Israel, and a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

Yair Galily is Behavioral Science Professor and Senior Lecturer in Communication and Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya; Senior Fellow at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism Policy (ICT); Founder and head of the research unit at the Israel Football Association; and a member of the Club Licensing Committee of the European Football Association (UEFA).