The Jewish-Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says in his brilliant book Modernity and the Holocaust that through history, most of the atrocities have been committed by people who follow orders and law, so what we need now to stop the Israeli genocide in Gaza for some Israeli soldiers to stop following orders, stop playing football and starts playing the beautiful game of Soccer!
How Football Explains the War Between Israel and Palestinians
Since the Israeli attack on Gaza where, in the last four months, a massive, indiscriminate bombing has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Destruction of a city of almost 3 million people. Lots of pundits, political analysts, military experts, and historians have been trying to explain the conflict and understand the Israeli Army’s barbarity and the human cruelty of the world that is watching as if it were a football match. If you want to understand the Americans’ fascination with the Zionist state and why so the Palestinian human tragedy story does not move many Americans? Americans’ justifications for their support for the Zionist state, some political, some religious, with millions of Christian Zionists, and getting God in the real estate business and worshiping land is not the way to go. But there is a cultural reason behind American fascination with Israeli aggression and violence:
American masculinity. Israel is a small, modern, civilized state that lives among millions of backward Arabs who hate them. Let me introduce another reason for the American fascination with Israel; this can be explained in terms of American Football. As the Israeli Army contentious its savage bombing campaign against the Palestinians. On Sunday, over 120 million Americans congregated in living rooms, bars, and restaurants to eat, drink, and watch the Super Bowl LVIII championship game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, bringing millions of dollars to the Economy. This is the biggest sporting event of the year, with the highest TV rating and the game day ticket price averaging $10,466; it brought more than $500M in economic value to Las Vegas, the host city, and a 30-second ad costs $4.5m. American football is not just a game; it is a vast, entertaining cultural exhibition where one hour is stretched into more than three hours of festivities. In the Israeli-Palestine conflict, Israel, with its overwhelming military superiority and myopic thinking, plays Football, whereas Palestinians, with their skillful maneuvering and field advantage, play Soccer. That’s why many Americans don’t play soccer; they don’t understand it. G. Gordon Liddy explained why he hates it: “Whatever happened to American exceptionalism?” David Brook calls this American parochialism; we don’t want to participate in world culture, and Ann Coulter, the conservative firebrand Fox pundit, once said, “No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer.” The football game is played with oversized, over-coached, and over-equipped players, representing our modern gladiators facing death over territories. The game is organized play-by-play in a book, and even before they start, everyone knows his exact role on the battlefield. The game is linear, forward, predictable, and territorial. Soccer is more spontaneous, creative, and simple, and unlike Football, it is not so much about the occupation of territory and smashing your opponents; it is about shifting positions, maneuvering and running a series of attacks and retreats, winning without physical elimination, but avoiding the opponent’s strengths, while football is all about domination, and destroying your opponents. Palestinians in Gaza may have lost the military war, but they won the Cultural war. Camera helmets, air forces, warships, tanks, airplanes, rockets, protected Israeli Forces, Iron domes, and submarines. The Palestinian resistance, as in soccer, Palestinian fighters rely on maneuvering, retreating, hiding, using old technology, old weapons, slingshots, rocks in the two intifadas, tunnels, flying bikes, and balloons in Gaza, where David defeated the mighty Goliath. The brilliance of Palestinian resistance throughout the war with Israel. Like a cleaver soccer player, the Palestinian fighters retreated and went underground when needed; as the French intellectual Jean Baudrillard explained how you resist hyper-power, “Never attack the system in terms of relationship or force. That is the imagination the system itself forces upon you. Shift the struggle into the symbolic sphere, where the rule is that of challenge, reservation, and outbidding.” The Palestinians brought the Israeli armies into their own game; football players could not play soccer; they were too big and way overdressed, and this made the Israeli military superiority irrelevant; you can’t bring tanks inside tunnels, you can’t bomb enemies, you can’t see, you can’t shoot a child with a rock or slingshot. Soccer is a game about life drama and disappointments; it is not about winning; it’s about surviving and keeping the ball moving. Football is a game where violence is celebrated and glorified, where players hit and tackle, then showboating chest bump celebration. In soccer, violence is shunned and punished; players avoid hits and tackles, and the reaction to violence is exaggerated. In football, players rarely object to referee calls; they accept them. They follow orders and return to huddles to get more instructions for the next attack. Soccer players constantly object and protest referee calls; a sense of justice is their graveness. The Jewish-Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says in his brilliant book Modernity and the Holocaust that through history, most of the atrocities have been committed by people who follow the laws and obey orders, so what we need now to stop the Israeli genocide in Gaza for some Israeli soldiers to stop following orders, stop playing football and starts playing the beautiful game of Soccer!
Ahmed Tharwat
Host of Arab American TV show
BelAhdan
Blogs
WWW.Ahmediatv.com
Lives in Minnetonka, MN
