Abstract
In “Threatened Masculinities Marginalise Women in Israeli Football”, Tamir Sorek’s research deals with the intersection of masculinity (gender), ethnicity (Ashkenazi–Mizrachi), and nationalism (Jews–Arabs) in Israeli football. He argues that the game of football and football fandom are intrinsically a major battlefield among men of three Israeli collectives—Jews of European background (Ashkenazi), Jews who came to Israel from Muslim countries (Mizrachi), and Arab/Palestinians—each having its own history and form of injured masculinity. The central thesis is that the triangular struggle among men’s threatened masculinities is tightly connected to the exclusion of women in Israeli football and other sports. Dwelling on the case of football as a hegemonic sports culture in Israel, the research reveals how members of the three collectives have struggled over their masculine identity and attempted to use football to rehabilitate their threatened masculinity. The chapter gives us a rare glimpse into manhood, masculinity, and football among Arab Israeli men, and exposes the ethnically nationalized and stratified structure of Israeli society and sports while explaining in this context how it impedes the inclusion of women.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The magazine name means “people” and its content is styled after the American People Magazine.
- 2.
This chapter is an extensive rewriting of the author’s article originally published in Scholar and Feminist Online, 4(3), 2006, http://sfonline.barnard.edu/sport/sorek_01.htm.
- 3.
A law comparable to US legislation known as “Title IX”—which bars discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs and which is notably applied to sports—has never been legislated in Israel.
- 4.
The first women’s World Cup took place as early as 1970 with the participation of seven teams, and in 1984, sixteen European teams participated in the qualifiers for the European Competition for Women’s Football. In Israel, women players established a national team in 1977, but at the time it gained no institutional recognition.
- 5.
While women’s teams comprised 44% of the volleyball teams funded by the IGA, they made up 21% of the funded basketball teams, the second most popular sport among Israeli spectators, and only 4% of the funded football teams (Seigelshifer 2012).
- 6.
It is noteworthy that this is not a mere reflection of women’s weaker status in Israel relative to men, as measured, for example, by the UN’s GEI (Gender Equality Index). This organization measures gender inequalities in three important aspects of human development—reproductive health, empowerment, and economic status. On this scale, Israel was ranked 24th in 2018, above Australia, UK, New Zealand, and the US. For a detailed look at the data, see http://hdr.undp.org/en/data.
- 7.
In its patriarchal organizational structure and public discourse the Israeli military is the second main bastion of masculinity in Israeli society and rivals football in the degree of its unfriendliness to women.
- 8.
See N5, Rapoport and Noy, part “The Gendering of Fandom”.
- 9.
The Maccabis were Jewish rebel warriors against Ancient Greco-Roman Hellenization in the Second Century BCE.
- 10.
Samson was a legendry Israelite warrior and judge (Biblical Book of Judges).
- 11.
Khaled Ibn al-Walid was a war hero who played a vital role in the Meccan victory against the enemies of the Muslims.
- 12.
A Sunni Muslim of Kurdish ethnicity, the first sultan of Egypt and Syria. He led and won the Muslim military campaign against the Crusader state.
- 13.
More precisely, the Jewish functionaries were of the General Federation of Labor Unions, assigned by the government to encourage the establishment of sports clubs in Arab villages.
- 14.
Founded in 1959 by a group of Palestinian men in the diaspora and led by Yassir Arafat, Fatah was once at the center of the fight for the Palestinian national cause.
- 15.
The first Israeli national football team that traveled to the US (fall 1948) included a majority of players with surnames thought of as Ashkenazi, like Shneior, Botska, and Shlemzon, Zimmerman, Rosenboym, Fuks, Maromowitz, Shpiegel, and Glazer) Ha-Mashkif, 8 September 1948). Ashkenazi names remained dominant until the late 1960s and then almost vanished. When the national team travelled to games in Paris, 1978, names considered Mizrachi made up the majority, for example, Habib, Mizrachi, Makhnes, Malmilian, Peretz, and Azulai (Davar, 7 May 1978). Although the inference regarding ethnicity cannot be considered completely precise, it is nonetheless significant.
- 16.
See the movie, “Forever Pure” by Maya Zinshtein (2016).
- 17.
Even a non-Arab Muslim player from Nigeria who joined the team in 2004 left it in the middle of the season under pressure from fans.
- 18.
For an entirely different interpretation of the anti-Arab attitude of Mizrachim in Beitar, see Guy Abutbul-Selinger (2019) “We Are Not Racists, We Are Nationalists”: Communitarianism and Beitar Jerusalem.
- 19.
Mapai, based on an acronym, was literally the “Workers’ Party of the Land of Israel,” a center-left political party, and the dominant force in Israeli politics until its merger into the modern-day Israeli Labor Party in 1968. Yet, its symbol as degrading to Mizrachim survives.
- 20.
Yefe nefesh (Hebrew) is a cynical reference to humanists, akin to do-gooders or bleeding hearts.
- 21.
Maccabi Tel Aviv won the European championship in basketball in 1977, 1981, 2001, 2004, and 2005.
- 22.
For instance, in the case of football (soccer) in the US, the middle-class character of the sport coincides with greater tolerance for the inclusion of women.
References
Abutbul-Selinger, G. (2019). “We Are Not Racists, We Are Nationalists”: Communitarianism and Beitar Jerusalem. Israel Studies Review, 3(3), 64–82.
Amara, M., & Kabaha, S. (1996). A Split Identity—Political Division and Social Reflections in a Divided Village (Hebrew). Giv’at Haviva: The Institute for Peace Research.
Archetti, E. P. (1994). Masculinity and Football: The Formation of National Identity in Argentina. In R. Giulianotti & J. Williams (Eds.), Game Without Frontiers: Football, Identity, and Modernity (pp. 225–244). Arena: Aldershot.
Ben Porat, A. (1998). The Commodification of Football in Israel. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 3(33), 269–276.
Bernstein, A., & Galily, Y. (2008). Games and Sets: Women, Media and Sport in Israel. Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues (15), 175–196.
Biale, D. (1992). Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America. New York: Basic Books.
Boyarin, D. (2000). Outing Freud’s Zionism, or, the Bitextuality of the Diaspora Jew. In C. Patton & B. Sánchez-Eppler (Eds.), Queer Diasporas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Burstyn, V. (1999). The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics, and the Culture of Sport. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press.
Enloe, C. (1989). Bananas, Beaches, & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California.
Galily, Y., & Betzer-Tayar, M. (2014). Losing Is Not an Option! Women’s Basketball in Israel and Its Struggle for Equality (1985–2002). The International Journal of the History of Sport, 31(13), 1694–1705.
Hargreaves, J. (1994). Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the Sociology and History of Women’s Sports. London and New York: Routledge.
Hawari, A. (2004). Under the Military Regime. Adalah’s Review, 4, 33–44.
Katz, S. H. (1996). Adam and Adama, ‘Ird and Ard: Engendering Political Conflict and Identity in Early Jewish and Palestinian Nationalisms. In D. Kandiyoti (Ed.), Gendering the Middle East: Emerging Perspectives (pp. 85–101). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Khazzoom, A. (2008). Shifting Ethnic Boundaries and Inequality in Israel: Or, How the Polish Peddler Became a German Intellectual. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Kimmel, M. S., & Aronson, A. (Eds.). (2004). Gendered Society Reader. New York: Oxford University Press.
Knoppers, A., & Anthonissen, A. (2003). Women’s Football in the United States and the Netherlands: Differences and Similarities in Regimes of Inequalities. Sociology of Sport Journal, 20(4), 351–370.
Lomsky-Feder, E., & Ben Ari, E. (1999). From ‘The People in Uniform’ to ‘Different Uniforms for the People’: Professionalism, Diversity and the Israeli Defense Forces. In J. Soeters & J. Van der Meulen (Eds.), Managing Diversity in the Armed Forces: Experiences from Nine Countries. Tiburg: Tiburg University Press.
Markovits, A. S., & Hellerman, S. L. (2001). Offside: Football and American Exceptionalism in Sport. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Messner, M. A. (1992). Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity. Boston: Beacon Press.
Sasson-Levy, O. (2003). Military, Masculinity, and Citizenship: Tensions and Contradictions in the Experience of Blue-Collar Soldiers. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 10(3), 319–345.
Seigelshifer, V. (2012). Changing the Rules of the Game: A Gender Perspective on Sports Allocations in Israel: Adva Center.
Semyonov, M. (1986). Occupational Mobility Through Sport: The Case of Israeli Football. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 21(1), 23–33.
Shafir, G., & Peled, Y. (1998). Citizenship and Stratification in an Ethnic Democracy. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21(3), 408–427.
Sorek, T. (2003). Arab Football in Israel as an ‘Integrative Enclave’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 26(3), 422–450.
Sorek, T. (2007). Arab Soccer in a Jewish State: The Integrative Enclave. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sorek, T. (2013). Sport, Palestine, and Israel. In D. L. Andrews & B. Carrington (Eds.), A Companion to Sport (pp. 257–269). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.
Sorek, T. (2019). The Palestinian Flag Is Back: Arab Soccer in a Jewish State Revisited. Israel Studies Review, 34(3), 83–99.
Sugden, J. (1994). USA and the World Cup: American Nativism and the Rejection of the People’s Game. In J. Sugden and A.Tomlinson (Eds.), Hosts and Champion: Football Cultures, National Identities and the USA World Cup (pp. 219–252). Hants, UK: Ashgate.
Yosef, R. (2002). Homoland: Interracial Sex and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Israeli Cinema. A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 8(4), 553–579.
Yosef, R. (2004). Ethnicity and Sexual Politics: The Invention of Mizrahi Masculinity in Israeli Cinema. Teoria Uvicoret, 25, 31–62.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sorek, T. (2020). Threatened Masculinities Marginalise Women in Israeli Football. In: Rapoport, T. (eds) Doing Fandom. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46870-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46870-5_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-46869-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-46870-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)