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.

This book contextualizes the Munich massacre as one of the factors that contributed to a re-thinking of security strategies in the early 1970s, a moment in the evolution of modern governments' fight against terrorism. In the early hours of September 5th, 1972, heavily armed members of the Palestinian group, Black September, turned terrorism into a global televisual spectacle for the first time by entering the Olympic Village, where they murdered two Israeli athletes and took nine of their teammates hostage in 31 Connollystrasse. Indeed, terrorism has far-reaching implications on social, psychological, and political levels. Sporting attacks on athletic personalities or mega-events may also seriously affect the reputation of the political leadership, ultimately undermining the state's authority. Hence, 50 years later, this book aims to gather contemporaneous scholarly work that further explores this topic from a variety of perspectives-from security, sociology, media, history, public relations, to the political, ideological, and psychological aspects of sport and terror. This volume will be of great use to scholars and researchers interested in Terrorist and Security studies, political violence, and the Arab Israeli conflict, particularly the collective memory of the Munich Massacre. The chapters in this book were first published as a special issue of Israel Affairs.

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.