Sport Policy in a Transformed Socio-Political Setting: The Case of Israel

Abstract

This article describes the impact of socio-political transformation processes on sport policy through the Israeli experience. A framework was developed for analyzing learning processes, utilizing the argument that under highly centralized systems, citizens' preferences regarding any area of life, including sport, are strongly affected by governmental policy. We show that in Israel the lack of a significant sport policy during the centralized formative years of the State influenced citizens' long-term preferences regarding sport, in the sense that it was regarded as a marginal issue that did not trigger demands for policy change. We explain that the marginality of sport in Israeli society also continued when the nature of relations between citizens and politicians was transformed from a top-down to a bottom-up orientation.

Key Words:

• sport policy
• learning
• alternative politics
• Israeli society
• political culture

We thank the editor and the anonymous referees for helpful comments.

Notes

1. Over the years Israel continued to absorb immigrants. The most recent wave of mass immigration was comprised of members of the large Jewish community of the former Soviet Union, which struggled for years for the right to emigrate to Israel. While some 100,000 managed to get to Israel in the 1970s, since 1989 over 700,000 have settled in the country.

2. It should be borne in mind that historically, sport and Judaism were not always in conflict. According to Griver (1999), this aversion can be traced back to the third century BCE, when the Greeks ruled in the Land of Israel. Then the Jews viewed sport as an alien Greek concept, and Jewish contingents rarely took part in the classical Olympic Games because participants were required to offer gifts to the Greek god Hercules—a gesture that contradicted basic Jewish beliefs. During the Roman period, sports were associated with the cruelty and violence of gladiatorial combat. Nevertheless, the ruler of the land of Israel at the time, King Herod, built stadia throughout the country and encouraged contests in boxing, archery, racing, and gladiatorial disciplines. This did not change opinions, though, and for many centuries Jews saw sports as a “Hellenistic” evil to be rejected. Such opinions regarding sport still persist among some Orthodox Jews today.

3. One of the recommendations of the Levin Committee in 1998 was to raise the allocations to sports through the Ministry of Education and Culture to one percent of the Ministry's total budget.