By Mark Baber
April 21 – The Israeli Equal Employment Opportunities Commission has demanded that Beitar Jerusalem retract statements the team’s coach made against Arab players joining the team in a move which highlights the failure of the Israeli Football Federation (IFA) to eliminate racist and apartheid practices within its own leagues, just five weeks before FIFA’s annual conference and the debate on the motion to suspend the IFA over its racist policies towards Palestinians.
The intervention by Israel’s comparatively weak and toothless Equal Employment Opportunities Commission was sparked by remarks by Beitar Jerusalem’s coach Guy Levi who confirmed the club’s policy of not hiring Arab players, telling Radio Tel Aviv FM102: “It doesn’t matter that this is the right time; it would create tension and cause much greater damage. I won’t find any player from the Arab sector who would want to. Even if there was a player who suited me professionally, I wouldn’t bring him, because it would create unnecessary tension.”
Beitar Jerusalem has a strong contingent of openly anti-Arab racist fans who openly chant racist slogans at matches and who consciously use the club as a political bulwark against the introduction of equal opportunities and anti-racism in Israel-Palestine. The racism of their ‘La Familia’ supporter group attracted widespread outrage in 2013 when they unfurled a banner saying ‘Beitar will always remain pure’.
Whilst many employers in Israel-Palestine are reluctant to employ Arabs, the Israeli Equality of Opportunity in Employment Law (1988) formally prohibits private and public-sector employers from discriminating against job candidates and employees on various grounds, including nationality.
Whilst the law has rarely been applied in cases of discrimination against Israel’s Arab population, Levi’s remarks were too much for National Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Tziona Koenig-Yair who wrote to Beitar’s owner, Eli Tabib, drawing attention to previous remarks at a club press conference about Beitar’s theoretical willingness to hire Arab players and saying: “The remarks of the current coach show that the ways of the team go completely against its declaration at that press conference and that ostensibly it maintains a policy of discrimination in a context of nationality and religion.”
According to the commission, because of the attention the coaches remarks have received in the media, “it is of the greatest importance that the club be judged to the full extent of the law, because refraining from doing so could turn a statement and policy of this type into the norm in Israel.”
The discriminatory practices of Israeli clubs are just only one of the grounds on which campaigners hope to see a suspension of the IFA at FIFA’s upcoming congress; however it may be prove to be significant as people ask the obvious question: What would UEFA and FIFA’s reaction be to a European club, supported by rabidly racist fans, which banned Jews from playing?
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