The Israeli soccer team Beitar Jerusalem announced last Thursday that for the first time ever its players would walk off the pitch in the event of racist chanting by its supporters. Journalist Raphael Gellar reported that punishments would be staggered. The first instance would lead to a pause in the match and the second, depending on severity, to a delay of 15 minutes or even to the players walking off the pitch for good.

Raphael Gellar on Twitter

Huge news from Beitar Jerusalem. Club announces the players will stop playing & leave the pitch if there are racist chants from crowd.

Beitar Jerusalem is one of Israel’s most successful and venerated teams, and it is a connection to a bygone era in which Israeli sports were intensely politicized. Most connections nowadays are vestigial, but Beitar Jerusalem still strongly connotes right-wing politics.

It’s also Israel’s most penalized team as a result of years of racist chanting against Arabs and violent behavior of its fans who compose the right-wing ultras group La Familia. Their antics have brought international condemnation to the club and to Israeli sporting authorities who have previously treated Beitar Jerusalem with gloves off.

There is some disagreement about the instigator of the announcement and its motive for doing so.

Gellar reports that Israel’s Football Association and Premier League were jointly behind it, signaling a much more serious approach to tackling racism in Israel’s stands and especially that of Beitar Jerusalem’s.

This fits neatly within an anti-hooliganism initiative launched over the summer by the Israel Police to curb soccer-related violence and racism. Several months ago Lt. Micky Rosenfeld, foreign media spokesman of the Israel Police, told me that “Beitar Jerusalem hooliganism is the main focus” of these expanded operations. The most attention-grabbing of these operations involved a six-month investigation of La Familia members suspected of weapons trafficking and attempted murder. It culminated in a two-night sting operation and the arrests of 73 people.

Beitar Jerusalem’s La Familia gets rubbed out

There’s also speculation that Beitar Jerusalem’s owner, American-Israeli businessman Eli Tabib, decided on the policy. Tabib had consistently refused in the past to comment publicly on instances of racism in the stands, in large part out of a calculation not to upset La Familia. Not because he agreed with them, but because they credibly threatened his and the team’s safety, if he rebuked them too much.

He didn’t need to look far back in Beitar Jerusalem’s history to see what he risked. The owner before him, Arkadi Gaydamak, had hired two Chechen Muslims in January 2013. La Familia harassed the Chechens endlessly, as well as players who defended them. They brandished a banner saying “Beitar will be forever pure [of Arabs and Muslims]” and walked out of the stadium when one of the Chechens scored for Beitar. And in February 2013 three kids in La Familia burned the team’s clubhouse down.

Tabib had decided to walk the fine line between mollifying its practices and the IFA’s punishments. Announcers would make anti-racism statements before matches, and last season, Beitar Jerusalem played the entire season with the message “No to Racism” on its jerseys. But he mostly stood by as team finances and point totals took a hit from their actions.

Nine days before the announcement, Beitar Jerusalem had narrowly lost to Bnei Sakhnin, Israel’s highest-profile team with a predominantly Arab identity. The match had been tense from the beginning, and Beitar Jerusalem’s supporters lobbed chants of “terrorist,” “burn your village,” “Muhammed is dead,” and “Death to the Arabs!” at Sakhnin’s Arab players and fans. That last chant had always traditionally incurred penalties from the IFA, and perhaps it was the final straw.

Bnei Sakhnin 1-0 Beitar Jerusalem injury time brawling | Daily Mail Online

So perhaps the announcement was about Tabib covering himself, “finding a way to avoid fines,” as described by Gal Karpel, the managing director of the Kick Racism out of Israeli Football initiative of the New Israel Fund.

Afterwards, all eyes were on Beitar Jerusalem’s next match, which was Monday against league leaders and Europa League Cinderellas Hapoel Beer Sheva. The gauntlet had been thrown. At the outset, the possibilities were simple. Either La Familia would call Beitar Jerusalem’s bluff or it wouldn’t. If it did, would the threat be carried out, which would have serious repercussions for scheduling and match outcomes, or be proven hollow?

More difficult to predict ahead of time was what Beitar Jerusalem or the IFA would characterize as adequately racist. Previously penalties lobbed on Beitar Jerusalem had come only from chants explicitly racist toward Arabs or Arab players. Chants like “here comes the most racist team in the league” had avoided scrutiny because they lacked an object.

The match was supposed to be at Beitar Jerusalem’s home, but because of the chaos against Sakhnin, the IFA had imposed the penalty of a “radius-match.” Beitar Jerusalem would be forbidden from playing its next home game within a specific distance from its home. The match moved to Petah Tikvah, a town 75 kilometers to the northwest.

Once play started, the worries dissipated. The only timeout was for halftime. It was felt at no point that the players needed to leave the field. There was one chant of “here comes the most racist team in the league,” as Beitar Jerusalem entered the field, and a handful of fans targeted an Arab player on Beer Sheva as a “sheep fucker” in the 75th minute, but they were quickly shushed by those around them. Beitar Jerusalem lost 3–1, conceding three straight after going ahead.

The threat had kept its credibility, but it’s too early to celebrate. Those in the stadium were cowed to stay quiet, but the radius punishment had discouraged much of La Familia from attending.

Gal Karpel sees some success, but worries that keeping the threat up going forward is only “half realistic.” This threat of massive retaliation could lose credibility if very small infractions are tolerated to avoid the larger disturbances that would result from teams arguing over the outcome of an abandoned match or the dysfunction that could creep into the Premier League’s fixture list. It’s a complex deterrence policy, more typical in Israel’s policy versus terror groups than its soccer league.

For what La Familia and others in Beitar Jerusalem’s crowd really feel about the ban, we’ll need to wait for the team’s next home match. On Saturday against Maccabi Petah Tikvah, we’ll know if it was a fluke or if this most recent step in confronting racism in Israel’s stands is the real deal.

Beitar Jerusalem finally tries to stand up to its hardline ultras was originally published in Howler Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The 2016–17 Lebanese Premier League kicks off on Friday, and Hezbollah is playing the Druze ethnic minority group. Saturday night the Orthodox Christians have the Sunnis.

Well, not literally, but such is life in Lebanese soccer. In a country where religion is identity and identity makes for contentious politics — Lebanon’s entire system of political representation is based on a religious census, and the country’s political leadership is allocated according to faith — where you stand on a political agenda has a habit of impacting where you sit in the stands. Or, more likely, stand and jump and chant and fight people.

Soccer — or any sport — in the United States carries no conscious political undertones. Explicit political affiliations permeated Israeli soccer until the 1980s, as I’ve written, when private financiers replaced the political organizations that had originally bankrolled every “Hapoel” or “Maccabi” or “Betar,” all of which carry those names according to their political patron.

But in Lebanon, Israel’s neighbor to the north, the same religious communities that imbue a team with their identity ended a brutal civil war less than a generation ago. They jockey endlessly for influence in the postwar atmosphere. Sometimes it has been hot conflict, with clashes in the streets and the murder of political opponents. Otherwise, it lingers under the surface.

In soccer, though, it gets the opportunity to erupt. Many of Lebanon’s teams represent the mosaic of the country’s sectarian confessions, or distinct religious communities. Most have political party patronage. This weekend it’s technically not Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim terror organization and political party, playing the Druze, a small community distinctly separated from its regional neighbors by ethnicity and religion. It’s Al Ahed, a Shiite identity squad heavily funded by Hezbollah, versus Al Safa’, which gets support from Lebanon’s Druze and money from the small community’s politicians. Likewise this weekend it’s Racing Beirut, Lebanon’s Orthodox Christian identity squad, versus Al Ansar, which has roots in Lebanon’s Sunni community and had been funded by the wealthy, Sunni family of politicians, the Hariris. A tier down there’s the team of Lebanon’s Francophile Maronite Christians, Club Sagesse. There’s even the Armenian squad Homenetmen Beirut, which represents those of the Armenian Diaspora who settled in Lebanon after the Genocide a century ago.

These squads, though, can’t claim the exclusive support of their confessions. Lowest common denominator identities aren’t monolithic, after all, with other factors such as divergent political agendas or geography impacting one’s fandom. Al Ahed isn’t the only team whose identity has been appropriated by Shia Muslims, for example: Just in Beirut alone are Shabab Al Sahel and Al Mabarra.

Moreover, some of the bitterest rivalries are intra-community, just a sign of the complex identities at play in Lebanon. Familiarity breeds contempt between Lebanon’s biggest Christian squads in a way perhaps, as acclaimed soccer writer James Montague has written, reminiscent of Scotland’s Old Firm. The specs are certainly higher. It’s not just a rivalry between two sides of the same religious coin. The Maronite Club Sagesse and Orthodox Racing Beirut are on opposite sides of the oldest split in Christianity: the thousand year divide between eastern and western. The squads are based in the same quarter of Beirut, Ashrafiyeh, making the four mile journey between Celtic’s Celtic Park and Rangers’ Ibrox Stadium feel like a cross-country road trip.

Soccer, in this context, has the technicality of peace while displaying all the hatreds of war, and it shows in the national government’s attitude to supporters of the domestic game in recent years. Out of concern for public security after the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, the government prohibited supporters from attending matches. The ban remained in place until the government determined that outbursts of violence wouldn’t plunge the country into further chaos. It lasted five years. Even with its withdrawal, only limited numbers of supporters could enter a match. More violence has cropped up since, with the latest ban from February to March this year after supporters of Al Ansar and Al Safa’ fought in the stands.

Soccer is just one more example in Lebanon of the way that political intrigue has taken firm hold to make seemingly apolitical areas of life a zero-sum competition perilously close to overwhelming Lebanon’s already tenuous functionality. The Syrian Civil War is just over the border, and in some cases has led to Al Qaeda-affiliated groups taking control of Lebanese territory. One in four people living in Lebanon currently is a refugee, likely a Syrian or a descendant of Palestinians. Its government dysfunction makes the U.S. government a model of efficiency by comparison — even trash collection is politicized. There are plenty of reasons why Lebanon is more stable than it is given credit for, but at the same time its political identity-rooted soccer fandom and violence provides flash-points. From these flash-points come the sparks that can ignite countries on fire.

In Lebanon, Soccer Is Politics by Another Name was originally published in Howler Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Israel’s Beitar Jerusalem had been hoping last week to focus on its qualification run to the Europa League, after having successfully subdued already Bosnian and Cypriot sides.

It had to deal with the aftermath of a police sting instead.

Some context: Beitar Jerusalem was founded in 1938 and has become one of Israel’s most storied and successful teams. The team is a vestige of an era when Israeli sports were intensely political, when funding local soccer teams was another form of community organizing for the predominant political parties. Teams linked to Israel’s Labor movement had the prefix “Hapoel,” center-right teams the prefix “Maccabi,” and teams of the revisionist right “Beitar.”

There’s no equivalent in the United States. Sports rivalries here are geographic, with loyalty to the local team often the only thing that could unify an arch-conservative with an ultra-liberal.

Beitar Jerusalem has a vaunted spot in Israel’s right-wing, dating back to the Irgun paramilitaries on its squads of the 1940s and 50s to the Mizrahi (Jews from the Arab world) immigrants that flocked to support Beitar as a form of protest against Israel’s elitist Ashkenazim (Jews from central and eastern Europe). Israel’s current Prime Minister, right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu, is an avowed Beitar fan. Supporting the team is still a paramount qualification for an aspiring right-wing politician.

It’s become much tougher to do that in the last 11 years. Beitar has come under increasing pressure, from the Israeli media and from Israel’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to hire an Arab player for the first time in its history, like every other prominent team in Israel has done. The team’s ownership in the last decade has attempted to bring in Arabs, but intense pressure from the fanbase, especially threats and acts of violence from a fringe of Italian mafia inspired ultras called La Familia, have made the club back down. Beitar’s former general manager, a retired goalie with 13 years of impressive service at Beitar, has likened the situation to La Familia having taken the club hostage with hateful, inciting rhetoric against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians that they follow up on with horrifying acts of violence.

Out of this amorphous group of rabid people are the guys that burned down the team’s trophy room after Beitar announced in 2013 that it would hire two muslim Chechen players — not even Arabs. In a manner eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany, they unfurled a banner right after the signings, stubbornly protesting that “Beitar will remain forever pure.” In the summer of 2014 La Familia fans were the first suspects in the kidnapping and murder of a Palestinian teenager, an act of revenge that escalated into Israel’s operation that summer in Gaza. Last fall several La Familia members attacked another — Jewish — Israeli with an axe, putting him in critical condition.

For months and months, Israel’s politicians had talked tough on La Familia but had not matched the rhetoric with action. But it seems like they were just playing the waiting game. On the night of July 26 going into July 27, the Israeli police pulled the trigger on a nationwide sting operation resulting in the arrest of 47 of La Familia’s most infamous members. Nine of them are soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces. A further 17 were arrested on July 28.

The preliminary details are spectacular. Four hundred law enforcement officials arrested the men in their homes. They were acting on information obtained over the course of a six-month investigation by an undercover police officer who had infiltrated the inner sanctum of an even more radical and criminal fringe of La Familia nicknamed “Hakometz,” or “the handful.” Some of the items police found in the possession of these La Familia members shocked them: 12 stun grenades, two tear gas grenades, two flares, 19 other improvised grenades, and a kilogram of explosives.

The sting has set the tone for a much more confrontational shift in the effort to curb fan violence, including but not limited to the right-wing, racist, anti-Arab, and neo-fascist stuff spewed by La Familia. Starting this season, a joint project between the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Culture and Sport will see rolled out a new anti-crime police unit explicitly dedicated to gathering intelligence and preventing soccer-related violence.

There’s no denying that Israeli soccer will benefit. The overt bigotry and violence condoned and/or glorified by La Familia, this hitherto unpublicized sub-group Hakometz, and other zealots have become an embarrassment to Israel’s relationship with the world.

What is happening now is akin to missing the forest for some really violent and racist trees.

Netanyahu said as much last summer, after violence they caused in Charleroi, Belgium during another round of Europa League qualifiers compelled him to denounce a small group of Beitar fans who had “besmirched Israel’s image.”

I can’t help but feel, though, that this needs to be complemented by action on other fronts, with what is happening now is akin to missing the forest for some really violent and racist trees. The content of their violence — axes, torching clubhouses, etc. — borders on cartoonish, and supporting it has never really been an option.

But it just feels like a half-measure. There’s a reason that the violence emanated out of Beitar. No other club with a national presence as big as Beitar’s has ever had a philosophy on which that of La Familia is even on the radar. Not even most of Beitar’s fans — they see La Familia as a detestable fringe hijacking their club. Some supporters have even become disgusted enough to form a fan-owned breakaway club, Beitar Nordia, to return back to the sportsmanship and competitive values Beitar initially represented.

But Beitar also represents the continuing legacy of Revisionist Zionism, which is predicated on the idea that violence and strength were the guarantors of Israel’s survival. Only from this baseline can hardline supporters of a proudly Jewish soccer team in Jerusalem, a front line of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, could a fringe of La Familia’s character emerge. What was more reasonably considered the case in 1948 does not hold in 2016.

It would rationally follow that the best way to combat La Familia would be to attack the mentality of which it is just an extreme, and the clearest symbol of it is Beitar’s long-enduring policy of refusing to hire an Arab player. When that issue is resolved, perhaps it can provoke the culture change at Beitar that would do a final disservice to the radicals.

Perhaps, though, like the many at Teddy who could have been subjected to La Familia’s tear gas had last week’s raids not occurred, I’m not holding my breath.

Beitar Jerusalem’s La Familia gets rubbed out was originally published in Howler Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The taxi rolled to a stop where the Stadion na Aerodromu’s single lane access road spilled into a dirt lot. The road we turned off was a two-lane highway flanked by boarded-up apartments on one side and impenetrable brambles on the other. A stooped woman lingered at a dumpster, scavenging for recyclables and food scraps.

In the other direction, twenty cars occupied a sliver of the otherwise-barren space. Only fifty-five minutes remained until kickoff in the Montenegrin Premier League fixture between Sutjeska and FK Mladost Podgorica.

Podgorica, Montenegro’s capital and largest city with 150,000 people, could not be bothered by the activity at the stadium. A few dozen policemen in antiquated riot gear mingled with wrinkled old men by the exterior fence. With nothing better to do, my friend Dylan and I ambled towards an entrance.

The metal gate was guarded by three goons clad in orange vests. I made an “entry” hand gesture to the nearest one. He barked “two tickets: four euros.” Cheap enough. I passed the money through the bars of the fence, and they brusquely frisked us before we entered the holding pen. Walking up the grandstand’s sheet-metal stairs and past an indifferent old man displaying vacuum-sealed bags of peanuts, we got our first glimpse of the elusive field. Surprisingly, it was tidy, crisply lined, and verdant.

Thirty minutes before kickoff, ten old men dotted the 500-seat grandstand. Plastic peeled away from each seat to reveal chipped and faded red paint. Not caring about the warm-ups, I walked up to a diffident-looking teen, Stjepan, and asked him to fill me in on Montenegrin football.

In short: it’s bleak. Players earn low wages — typically between 500–1,000 euros a week — and European football is elusive. UEFA allots Montenegro four spots in European competition, but they’re usually knocked out before August. As a result, Stjepan and other Montenegrins support — and prefer — Europe’s heavyweights. Stjepan claimed the Rossoneri were his first love, even though he’d traveled since childhood to watch Sutjeska with his father.

“They’re coming. They’re called the Dukes. They’re the ultras.”

Nonetheless, so few people in the stadium seemed odd. Sutjeska was gunning for a domestic three-peat. The last time the two teams had met, Sutjeska had humiliated Mladost, winning 4–1. The revenge narrative–a righteous anger of ‘how dare you soccer peasants defeat us?’–was there, so I wondered aloud, “where are the fans?”

“They’re coming. They’re called the Dukes. They’re the ultras.”

“It’s fifteen minutes until match time. You sure they’re coming?”

“They’re coming,” Stjepan demurely affirmed.

Five minutes before kickoff, I could still claim entire rows of seats for myself. As the referee idled at center-circle, the sound of raucous chanting and the roar of engines emanated from behind the stand. The men of the grandstand rushed up to its summit in search of a better vantage point. As I joined the rush, I tangled legs with an unknown supporter. I felt a snap in my right knee followed immediately by intense pain and, shortly thereafter, total immobility.

First mistake: Losing the use of a limb at a Balkan football match.

Undaunted, I staggered to the grandstand’s uppermost row just in time to see a charter bus and two campervans pull up. Before the caravan could even grind to a stop, at least a hundred buzz-cut men in black shirts streamed out of doors and windows. They chanted in unison; a stream of unpronounceable sounds twisted with anger and superiority in their mouths. The riot squad snapped to attention and gingerly approached the situation from their loitering spot. The whole time, they prayed that the situation wouldn’t spiral out of control.

The Dukes instantly killed that hope. With security goons blocking the entrance gate, they flowed to the next attraction: the cops. The front line of skinheads provoked the police with a bevy of head-butts and haymakers. The peacemakers among the Dukes tried and failed to hold their belligerent comrades back, but the police weren’t mollified.

The Dukes were unprepared for the police response. Under the crush of advancing batons, they tripped and stumbled backwards into the safer confines of a jungle of parked cars. Someone among the ranks lobbed a last-ditch flare at the police. It missed, sparking a fire in the weeds that cloaked the scene in thick, white smoke.

Shrouded in this acrid fog, a new standoff line emerged between the riot squad and Dukes. Neither side had incentive to aggress. The police couldn’t give up maneuverability. The Dukes wanted to keep their brains inside their heads. They stood at stalemate, waiting for a new development or new orders from their respective commanders.

A dramatic beat came in the form of the whistle signifying game on. Spectators returned to their seats, bored with the Dukes’ antics. I felt incredulous. There was a fight out there, there were casualties out there, there was a fire raging out there. And these fans would rather watch a pedestrian soccer match in here.

They hadn’t forgotten the Dukes. In the third minute, Sutjeska headed in a corner. Cheering spectators sprinted back up the ramparts to yell the good news down to the Dukes, who re-erupted into the pre-match rituals that had originally goaded the police violence. They fist bumped, high fived, and headbutted each other, this time avoiding police provocation. One scaled the fence, not to infiltrate the grounds, but to pound his chest and shout primal emotions at no one in particular.

This outburst emptied the Dukes’ malice. They filed calmly, orderly, intently out of the parking lot to the gate, like soldiers surrendering on the battlefield. The security guards briefly frisked each one for coins, bottles, lighters–anything that could be used as a weapon–and then let them through. Security bypassed, the ultras broke their orderly approach and jogged up the stairs to their section: ours.

Second Mistake: Buying tickets in the ultras’ section at a Balkan football match.

Ultras wearing black shirts and other ill-assorted clothing were coming at us. 30 meters away: the clacking of their feet on the sheet metal floors was deafening. 20 meters away: They wore shirts with an image of a heavily contrasted white figure in a white hood, face obscured by shadow, staring with malevolence and otherworldliness behind piercing blue eyes.

10 meters away: they were teenagers with pimples and wispy facial hair. They shouted and gnashed their teeth like wolves, but were still probably shy around girls. A taller Duke-ling asked me for water to pour on a burn he’d sustained outside. His voice jumped octaves when he applied it.

The match result was no longer the focus. Sutjeska had overwhelmed the opposition from the beginning. After the first goal, Sutjeska continued to suffocate Mladost’s midfield and peppered shots on goal. The Dukes recognized this domination. They limited their antics to singing, clapping, and the occasional jumping. I felt secure enough, even with the bad knee, to snap photos and jot down notes.

Third Mistake: Snapping photos and jotting down notes while in the ultras’ section at a Balkan football match.

A Duke with hints of a five-o’clock shadow barged up to me and gestured for my notebook. I handed it over sheepishly. Saying ‘no’ seemed wrong, like being the new guy in prison who disrespects a gang leader. He stared at the notebook, then at me, back at the notebook, furrowed his brow, and then smiled at the epiphany that it was English. With the most genial of grins on his face, he conveyed with hand gestures that I would have been punched and tossed out for a local language.

After halftime, Sutjeska quickly scored two goals. The Dukes still chanted vigorously, but their attention wandered from the match to my existence. Word spread quickly that Americans were in the crowd. Part laughing, part-threatening they projected their resentments toward Dylan and I. A buzz-cut teenager with Aviators approached us and asked, “You know NATO?” I nodded. He declared with a grin, “I fucking hate NATO.” He mimicked firing an anti-aircraft gun at my head.

Fourth Mistake: Acknowledging NATO at a Balkan football match.

In the 1990’s, US-led NATO airstrikes pounded the Balkans, killing at least 500 civilians across Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro. It’s likely some of these kids knew victims. At the very least, it was an act of war and a national embarrassment.

Another, fatter Duke approached Dylan and demanded that he remove the “Croatia” hat he mistakenly wore to the match. “This time,” they said, they’d let it slide.

Fifth Mistake: Wearing politically charged clothing to a Balkan football match.

Ethnic Montenegrins, along with their closely linked Serb brethren, despise Croatia. As recently as the 90s, they even fought all-out wars. Several times in the last century, Croats and Serbs perpetrated ethnic cleansing of each other’s people. Wearing that cap was asking for conflict, like brandishing a Gunners scarf at White Hart Lane, but with murder and ethnic hatred as the seeds of conflict, not familiarity that bred contempt.

That was the last mistake I wanted to make; the Dukes only had so much quasi-goodwill left. With ten minutes left and all my weight on Dylan, I hobbled out of the stadium and back to the highway, where we hailed a cab back to our hotel. If the Dukes exited the stadium in the same way they’d entered, three serviceable limbs weren’t going to be enough for self-preservation.

Among the Dukes in Podgorica was originally published in Howler Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.