‘Play and shut up’: the silencing of Palestinian athletes in Israeli media

Abstract

In this paper we contrast two opposing theoretical views in the sociology of sport. The first sees sport as a field that brings together different groups and bridges social divides. In this view, minority sport stars serve both as role models and as a mouthpiece voicing the feelings and needs of their ethnic groups. The opposing view holds that the sport field reflects the tendencies of the larger society, helping to maintain the social dominance of hegemonic groups. In this view sport stars serve mostly as tokens and have no real influence on the social order. Our systematic analysis of Israeli media between the years 2002 and 2007 lends support to the latter view. We show that the expressions and behaviours of Israeli Palestinian soccer players are consistently policed and silenced by the Jewish-dominated media discourse, effectively blocking one of the few channels of expression for the Arab public in Israel.

Keywords:

• Israel
• sports
• Palestine
• media
• citizenship
• discourse

Notes

1. When we talk about Palestinians in this article we refer to Palestinian citizens of Israel and not to their compatriots in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. In Israeli political discourse the terms used to refer to these citizens – Arabs, Palestinians, Arab-Palestinians, etc. – are full of meaning and contentious. We use them interchangeably.

2. Two famous examples used to demonstrate this are those of the black boxer Muhammad Ali in the United States and the aboriginal sprinter Cathy Freeman in Australia.

3. In other research (Shor and Yonay 2009) we have demonstrated that functionalist views of this type also dominate Israeli media.

4. It is important to note here that the Hebrew media are not the only agents working to discipline the national and political aspirations of the Arab minority in Israel. Various state and governmental agencies (including of course the security forces), along with the legal system and the substantial economic dependency of the Arab sector on the Jewish one, all have an important role in this ongoing process.