Strengthened by the historic friendship between the two “spiritual brothers” Viktor Orbán and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli national team plays all its home games in Hungarian stadiums. The Prime Minister of Israel could also attend every challenge to the Nagyerdei Stadion, given the willingness to host him in Hungary, as done in recent months to strengthen the bilateral agreements between the two governments – in spite of the arrest warrant standing by the International Criminal Court (which, in fact, Budapest has decided to abandon).
But yesterday, however, Bibi at the stadium was not there when, the first leg between Israel and Italy valid for the European qualifications at the next World Cup in the United States was staged on the Debracen neutral. As there will not be on October 14 in Udine when, despite requests for cancellation and various embarrassments, the return will be staged.
However feverat all football given the still desolate prospects of an Italian national team still in the process of healing (yesterday he imposed himself 5-4 at the end of an infested game of errors), is destined to rise again. The words of the mayor of the Friulian city, Alberto Felice De Toni, who officially asked for the postponement of the race or of the president of the Avosali, Renzo Ulivieri, who even suggested the boycott of Israel and the suspension of his national teams from sports competitions, were worthless. And the impression is that the new appeals will be of no use that will certainly follow one another in the coming weeks.
The tomb stone on the subject had already placed the minister for sport and young people, Andrea Abadi. A few weeks ago, urged that it could be serenely played against the Israeli national team as opposed to the Russian one, disqualified for over three years, had revealed before people The reason for double morality: «Russia is an aggressive country, Israel has been attacked. Everything started, beyond the judgments and how it is becoming, from 7 October 2023 ». Closed topic, even if the reasoning was accompanied by a vanystium that denies what has just been said: “I believe that the reconstruction of relationships and a perspective is born from the recognition of the facts, which cannot start after but must also take into account the conditions”. The conditions, in fact, such as Israeli occupations in Palestine or the enlargement of NATO to the east.
Today in front of Hell Palestinian, the football question may seem to be not very important. But the ball, which for the Marxist Eric Hobsbawm is a proletarian cult worship, exemplary historical product of industrial society – is a plastic model of complex social phenomena, sometimes also an anticipator of regulatory instances of civil society. The first examples, if not a boycott at least of scruples of consciousness with respect to the Palestinian genocide begin to emerge. The Norwegian Federation, for example, in the wake of popular protests has decided to donate the collection of the Norway-Israel match of 11 October-the same qualifying group of Italy-to a humanitarian association that operates in Gaza. There was also talk of the same initiative by the Italian Football Federation for the match of three days later, but the proposal seems to have already set. However, these are operations of individual federations, not shared worldwide.
Speaking of the double morality between Israel and Russia, the president of Fifa Gianni Infantino has been stating for almost two years on the expulsion of Israel from world football required by the Palestinian Olympic Committee. On the contrary, it was very fast in 2022: the expulsion with ignominia of the Russian and Belarusian national teams and of all their clubs from the international underlying only four days after the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. This even if infantine, politically, has always been very close to Moscow: Friend of Putin, who has personally handed over the medal of the order of friendship to the Kremlin, negligent to say the least against the suspicions of Russian doping before the 2018 football world championship in Russia, and ready to condemn anyone who pronounces on a football field one Slava ukraini although he abandoned himself in public to one SLAVA ROSSII. But why this disparity of treatment?
Russian football It is the expression of the Russian autocracy: railway companies, gas multinationals and state banks are at the helm of the most important teams of the championship and the investments that led post-Soviet football to appear to the European stages in the early years of the new millennium-were directed by Putin in person. For this reason, the international punishment arrived through football has had a profound and more relevant meaning than you can imagine.
Today Israeli football, on the other hand, with its decidedly more canonical presidents than Russian ones, is a (ugly) copy of English, French, German and above all Italian football: especially family intertwining with politics, various buildings, car sellers and potential criminals. All very Orthodox and, consequently, decidedly harmless. For example: Alona Barkat, owner of the Hapoel Beer Sheva, according to last year, is a sister -in -law of the Minister of Israeli economy, Nir Barkat, former mayor of Jerusalem from 2008 to 2018, investor, with his brother, in multinationals who deal with cyber security and trading with registered office at the Virgin Islands; Mitchell Goldhar, Canadian millionaire, head of an investment fund that builds shopping centers, owns Maccabi Tel-Aviv, a reigning champion; Ya’Akov Shahar, always president of a Maccabi, that of Haifa, presides over one of the largest Import Companies of Israeli machines and trucks; Moshe Hogeg of the Beitar Jerusalem, active above all in the field of cryptocurrencies and serial fraud (offending for a case of over 290 million dollars) is out of a bail of 22 million, awaiting judgment following accusations of human trafficking, induction to prostitution, administration of drugs to minors and so on. And these were only the first four in the ranking of the last championship.
In short: nothing new for football, definitely accustomed to the way politicians, entrepreneurs and delinquents use sport-washing to improve their reputation.
Whether to punish Russian football It has served to punish Russian statism, not to punish the Israeli one has meant validating a way of making football completely similar to the western one. To the point that the president of Lazio and Senator of Forza Italia, Claudio Lotito, signed an agreement with Goldhar and Shaha, presidents of the Maccabi of Tel- Aviv and Haifa, to promote an unspecified football collaboration and “an awareness campaign against hatred and racial discrimination”. Too bad that the fans of Maccabi Tel-Aviv, through their official profiles, publish photos of their members engaged in the operations in Gaza, confirming their explicitly anti-Arab matrix.
With all the sports facilities of Gaza destroyed by the Idf and the over nineteenth -century victims including athletes, coaches, managers, referees, including also Palestinian football stars, it takes courage to continue on the road to agreements with Israel and to consider football matches with Israel legitimate. The same “courage” of Minister Abodi and Senator Lotito.
