http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=13687&intcategoryid=5<snip>
"Chanting “Death to the Arabs,” hundreds of young Jewish soccer fans race up a dusty side street to catch a bus carrying fans of the Arab team that had just beat theirs in a tense game.
The supporters jeer even after the bus pulls away. Moments earlier, an Arab fan had been hit in the head with a rock, bloodying his forehead.
Welcome to professional soccer in Israel, where racism and violence have become part of the country’s most popular sport."
<snip>
"Soccer hooliganism in Israel has not reached European levels, but it is very much part of the culture of the game here — something civil society organizations and team officials are trying to change."
<snip>
"Overall, racial incidents are down at soccer matches this season, but ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence exacerbates soccer violence, said Yair Galily, a sports sociologist and head of mass media and sports studies at the Zinman College of Israel’s Wingate Institute.
Soccer “is a very interesting and authentic reflection of society. We have a violent society relative to other places in world, and we can see it in the soccer violence,” Galily said. “Because it comes out in the context of soccer it is legitimized, as if it’s OK to get these things out as a catharsis.”
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