The Most Racist Football Club In The World

incidents of racism have been rife in football in recent years from the racist abuse that was directed a bakayo saka jayden sancho and marcus rashford following england's defeat on penalties in the file of euro 2020 to zenith st petersburg fans protesting against the club's hierarchy signing brazilian wide man malcolm due to zenit's supposed tradition of not having any black players however whilst many sets of supporters tried to explain away or engage in outright denial when it comes to accusations of racism the english press sought to blame foreign accounts for the abuse of sacca sancho and rashford on social media rather than confront the problem at home for example meanwhile zenit's largest fan union lanscrona wrote in their statement to the club's board that quote we're not racists but we see the absence of black players at zenit as an important tradition it would allow zenit to maintain the national identity of the club which is the symbol of saint petersburg end quote that open letter went on to demand that zenith disassociate themselves from any players who are gay or representative of any sexual minority for that matter any who drink or smoke or any who have been transferred multiple times and have therefore played for lots of different clubs ideally lansgrown lansgrohner stated the club squad would be composed only of players from saint petersburg or leningrad as it was previously known the rest of eastern europe if necessary and europeans more broadly if they really must the supporters group even said that they could tolerate a player from latin america reluctantly perhaps remembering hulk's 56 goals in 97 russian premier league games for them but that would be the absolute limit of their tolerance again not because they are racist of course not silly but because of the club's important tradition their important tradition of being racist oh no wait sorry sorry i mean their important tradition of having an absence of black players which is completely different of course it is very much the ultra version of the i'm not racist but defense that is made right before a family member completely ruins christmas dinner by saying something horrendously racist but there is one football club that wears its accusations of racism as a badge of pride rather than something to obfuscate ordinary in response to allegations of violence racism and rabid anti-arab sentiment beta jerusalem's la familia supporters group infamously chant here we are we're the most racist football team in the country or here she comes the racist team of the country as it translates directly from hebrew at least they are more honest than zenit's largest supporters group i suppose you could argue both at home and abroad beta are synonymous with the bigotry of la familia but behind the scenes beta have been one of the most bizarre teams in all of world football over the past 10 to 15 years in terms of their myriad owners and political machinations percept by crises the most recent of which currently threatens the club's very existence beta jerusalem like almost every major israeli football team predates the state of israel itself beta were first formed in 1936 but it took only two years for the team to be disbanded by the british in what was called mandatory palestine at the time after the british had taken control of the region following an arab uprising against the existing ottoman rule during the first world war the british had promised the arabs independence if they revolted against the ottomans but the united kingdom had already secretly signed a treaty with france in 1916 with ascent from the russian empire and the kingdom of italy to define each country's mutually agreed spheres of influence and how the ottoman empire would be partitioned by the colonial powers once its territories have been conquered this was further complicated in the case of the united kingdom by the balfour declaration of 1917 which promised to create a homeland in palestine for the jewish people the british mandate lasted for 28 years from 1920 to 1948 which is when the nation of israel was born during those 28 years as tensions were increased numerous arab and jewish nationalist movements sprang up creating a conflict that has persisted almost uninterrupted in the region since then one of beta jerusalem's two co-founders david horn was closely associated with a right-wing zionist paramilitary organization known as eargun as were several of baitar's players at the time eargun sometimes alternatively referred to as etsel was considered to be a terrorist organization by the united nations and by both the british and american governments having carried out the king david hotel bombing in 1946 which killed 91 people and the der yassin massacre in which around 130 ergon fighters killed at least 107 palestinian arabs including women and children albert einstein once likened aegon to nazi and fascist parties in a letter to the new york times describing them as a quote terrorist right-wing chauvinist organization ergon targeted both arabs and the british who they viewed as being a legal occupies in 1948 when britain gave up its mandate in palestine and the state of israel was created ergon officially disbanded but its members were actually just incorporated into the israel defense forces or idf at the start of the 1948 arab-israeli war which is still israel's combined military forces to this day air gun is widely considered to have been the political predecessor to the right-wing political party herod which was founded in 1948 which was itself a predecessor to the right-wing likud party which has dominated israeli politics since the 1970s and is still the single biggest party in the knesset today i appreciate that this is a lot of political and historical context that i have just thrown at you but it provides a vital insight into i bait our jerusalem fans and particularly their la familia supporters groups political makeup is the way that it is benjamin netanyahu who has led the likud party since 1993 and was israel's longest serving prime minister until he was removed less than a year ago becoming leader of the opposition is a beta jerusalem fan and has previously given addresses to hordes of adoring beta fans it also gives important context to the way in which certain beta fans have historically viewed themselves as a downtrodden and marginalized underclass fighting against the establishment the establishment when beta were formed were the british who banned them for four years after the club was first founded routinely spied on them due to their paramilitary associations and even deported several beta players to eritrea kenya and sudan in 1944 after detaining them at the lathrum concentration camp without trial beta co-founder david horn was among the 251 people deported by the british mandate authorities all of whom managed to return to israel by 1948 with the exception of two who were murdered by sudanese guards for an attempted escape of course the dynamic has changed rather a lot since then the united kingdom and israel are now allies with close political military and economic ties the uk does not formally recognize the state of palestine and it is a similar story in terms of israel and the united states beta themselves now enjoy the support of several senior israeli politicians not just netanyahu and the right has controlled israeli politics for more than 20 years with a little sign of that changing anytime soon nonetheless the laugh family and narrative at least still tend to portray themselves as persecuted outsiders perhaps because they remain the unacceptable face of the israeli right despite reaching the top flight of israeli football for the first time in 1954 beta were immediately relegated and it wouldn't be until the start of the 1970s that they began to compete at the top end of the legal emirate as it was then before the israeli premier league was founded in 1999 and les mutt became israel's second division beta won their first major trophy the state cup in 1976 and 11 years later by which stage they had won three further state cups they finally got their hands on the league championship in the late 1990s which was beta's golden age in many respects the club won back-to-back league championships earning draws against sporting club to portugal and rangers in europe and they even beat benfica at home albeit they still lost that tie over the course of two lakhs throughout this period beta had spent beyond their means but there always seemed to be a new investor or owner who was willing to pick up the tap tapping into beta's large support and particularly those supporters sat in the vip section which included some of israel's most senior politicians the person picking up the tab at the end of the 1990s was gadzivi but his significant investment could only herald beta's worst league finish in more than a decade and by the time he appointed his daughter as general director most supporters had turned on him xevi soon severed his ties with beta leaving the club with no cash no owner and plenty of debt the club's financial crisis meant that they failed to even fulfill their first three fixtures of the season before a consortium stepped in and prevented beta from going out of business in 2005 which was the same year that the la familia supporters group was founded the russian-born french-israeli citizen arcadey guidamak bought the club if you watched my documentary about the downfall of portsmouth football club you will be very familiar with gagamac but if not it would be reasonable to describe him as a fairly controversial figure geidamak made no secret of the fact that he had zero interest in football and had bought beta jerusalem with the express intention of increasing his own personal support in a bid to become the mayor of jerusalem describing the club as and i quote an important propaganda tool and he also acquired the hapoel jerusalem basketball team at the exact same time geidamak made the fatal error of saying the quiet part out loud but the reality is that almost everyone who has ever pumped cash into beta jerusalem has done so for reasons other than just football geidermak failed to win the 2008 jerusalem mayoral election finishing third with just three point seven three percent of the vote and he immediately turned his back on the football club guardamak had previously claimed that beta had more fans than every other israeli football club combined which perhaps explains why he failed in his mayoral bid as that is absolute nonsense whilst beta do have a large fan base they are not the best supported team in israel other than among israeli politicians let alone having more supporters than every other team combined guydemac's tenure coincided with la familia's early years and the russian-born businessman who was once convicted in a french court of arms trafficking during the angolan civil war did his utmost to try and suppress la familia's influence over the club in 2005 there were rumors that gadumak might try to bring israeli international abba suhan to the club which prompted a furious response from la familia suwan an arab israeli who represented israel at international level but is a muslim and describes himself as being both israeli and palestinian had previously been abused by beta fans who unveiled a banner which read suwan you don't represent us which they accompanied with chance of we hate all arabs beta were fined for the abuse that la familia members had directed at suan but when geidermak reportedly expressed an interest in signing him in an effort to modernise the club and display their tolerance under his ownership la familia were quick to thwart those efforts it is often said that football is the great equalizer in israel and palestine with every israeli premier league team having employed arab players at some stage and in most cases plenty of them well all but one that is beta jerusalem have never had an arrow player which is a record that laughs familiar take great pride in displaying a banner which reads data forever pure in hebrew in the east end of the teddy stadium where la familia members tend to congregate donning their clubs distinctive yellow and black colors when one thinks of the pseudo-scientific concept of racial purity and what it led to during the first half of the 20th century it is always chilling to see the idea resurface but it is particularly bizarre at a passionately jewish football club which has a menorah as its symbol and club batch not only had guidamak failed humiliatingly to win the jerusalem mayoral election and failed to quite and laugh familiar after investing an incredible 50 million pounds in the club over the course of just four seasons he also saw the majority of his wealth wiped out in the 2008 financial crisis it would be fair to say that it was a rough few years for him made even worse when he was convicted of arms trafficking in 2009 though that conviction was overturned in 2011 but ghadamac did still go to prison for three years in 2015. we don't quite have time for all of arcadey gardermac's trials and tribulations but all that you need to know is that he gave up control of beta jerusalem in july 2009 and he was replaced by former beta goalkeeper israeli international and club legend it's sick cornfine along with the brazilian-born american multi-millionaire gumaraguia the plan was simple cornfire would run the club in terms of all of its footballing operations and aguia would provide the funding for those operations american billionaire investor thomas kaplan is a guy's uncle and though he was raised as a christian he converted to judaism at the age of 26. aguilar once donated 8 million to a zionist organization that promotes jewish immigration from the united states and the united kingdom to israel and in 2009 he invested four million dollars into beta jerusalem and just as arcadey gardemac did before him he also pumped 1.5 million dollars into the hapoel jerusalem basketball team however within months of aguiya's investment in israeli sport he was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital in israel by his own mother according to his mother aguiar had suffered from psychotic episodes since the age of 19 and had been diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder and psychosis whilst he was hospitalized his wife and mother were appointed as his emergency guardians and in june 2012 aguilar disappeared at sea age 35 whilst alone on board his boat in fort lauderdale florida his wallet and phone were found on board but neither aguer nor his body have ever been found he was officially declared as being dead in january 2015 having been missing for two and a half years with his wife and mother fighting over his estate at the time five days after aguilar disappeared geidermak who still owned beta but had now found the financial burden of running the club fall back on him announced that it was his intention to sell eli to be was the next man into the hot seat acquiring the club in june 2013 and promising to pay off the team's roughly 2.5 million pounds of debt which he did the following month shortly before tabim arrived beta signed two chechan muslim players zawa sadayev and jabrel kadyev both of whom were brought in on loan from akhmak groshny the biggest club in chechnya who are essentially owned and controlled by chechen dictator and putin puppet ramzan karirov who i made a documentary about fairly recently as part of the deal beta also traveled to the chechen capital of graziani and played a friendly game against akhmak roshni where religious tensions could perhaps best be described as having been high the game ended thankfully in a nil nil draw the response to sadayev and kdf's signings was fast and furious la family and members hurled abuse at the duo and at beta's hierarchy at open training sessions both players had to be accompanied by bodyguards everywhere they went and a group of supporters even burnt down the club's offices with molotov cocktails a spokesman for la familia talking to a local radio station about their response to the club's new arrivals asked whether israelis would want their daughter to marry an arab stating that beta is like a child to many supporters and that therefore the same principle applied aside from the obvious answer to that question which is of course yeah why not as long as he's not a leads fan it also raises the question of whether laugh family and members most of whom are fairly young have been skipping their geography classes chechnya is in the caucuses therefore chechens are caucasians a diverse group made up of more than 50 ethnic groups but none of which are arab there are disheartening videos of sadayev and khadiyev during their time at beta which include clips of beta fans shouting their now infamous death to arabs chant at them and a bemused moment where the players can't quite understand why that chant is even being directed at them at other clubs when an unpopular signing is made perhaps the player is associated with a rival club or has a bit of a past playing against their new team there is a consensus that if you score goals the fans will forget all of that and it tends to hold true not in the case of beta though when zawa sadayev scored his first goal for the club many supporters jeered and turned their backs on the pitch before exiting the ground in their thousands in protest that would be that in terms of that particular attempt to diversify beta's squad and bring some tolerance to the terraces sadayev and kadiv were only the fourth and fifth muslims to play for beta in the entire history of the club the first of whom was tajik player gora majoyev in the 1989-90 season ajoyo's religion apparently wasn't known to most fans and largely passed without incident albanian striker victor pacho is the second enjoying two stints at beta in the late 90s and early 2000s and once revealing in a jerusalem newspaper that he was a muslim which didn't seem to cause too many major issues the third and most recent prior to beta's chechen arrivals was former nigerian youth team international andala ibrahim who joined beta online from maccabi tel aviv in 2005. ibrahim's stay in jerusalem was not without incident he lasted just four games before he was mobbed by angry beta fans and decided to leave the club and to leave israel not long after that it is noticeable that one difference between ajoyev and pacho's unremarkable stints in jerusalem compared to ibrahim sadayev and khadiyavs that all resulted in swift and aggressive backlash from supporters is that the latter three all occurred after the founding of la familia and it must be said and indeed stressed that not all beta fans share the views that are espoused by la familia there were beta fans who were welcoming of sadayev and who celebrated when the former scored his first goal as many of their fellow supporters spilt out of the teddy stadium in disgust la familia only tend to occupy the east of the teddy stadium on a match day and have been estimated to account for around 20 of beta's match-going attendances but they shout the loudest they're not afraid to use violence and their threats are no joke eli tabib the man who replaced arcadie gardemak as batar's owner is someone who can testify to that fact better than most immediately distrusted upon his arrival at beta at least by la familia and their ilk to be formerly owned hapoel tel aviv beta's bitter rivals and opposites in almost every imaginable sense the word hapoel itself translates to the english words the worker and haperwell is israel's most prominent left-wing football club for seven decades hapowal was owned by the histradut israel's national trade union center and the red hammer and sickle on the club's badge should leave you in little doubt about the club's historic close ties to the labour movement the trade union movement and her marxist ideals hapoel tel aviv are also one of the most popular israeli teams among israeli arabs and have had no such qualms like beta about signing foreign players outrageous i know not only that to be wasn't just tainted by his hapoel tel aviv past he also said that he would be the person who finally removed the taint of racism and violence from the club neither went down particularly well and in october 2013 a grenade was planted underneath his car thankfully it was spotted by a neighbor and defused by police before any damage was done but in july 2015 shortly after beta had lost heavily to charleroi in belgium in a tie that was marred by israeli fan violence and tabi had announced his intention to sell the club as a consequence three men all in their twenties were indicted of a plot to kill to be the trio had followed tabi in his car on a motorcycle and when he parked outside of his home the gunman fired three shots one of which struck the bib in the hand fortunately he was able to alert a neighbour and get to hospital and he only sustained minor injuries but you wouldn't have thought that it would have helped too much in negotiations with a future buyer it was tabib's hand that suffered the only damage of the attempts on his life but you could be forgiven for thinking that three years later when he announced that the club would be changing their name to beta trump jerusalem in honor of the american president at the time donald j trump that he had also suffered rather a large blow to the head trump was and indeed still is a very close ally of benjamin netanyahu's and he is extremely popular among the israeli right tabibs move to add trump to beta's actual name which sounds so ridiculous every time i say that that i feel the need to point out that i'm not joking came in light of the us president taking the controversial decision to move the united states embassy in israel to jerusalem and to merge the embassy with the pre-existing u.s consulate general in jerusalem which is where talks and negotiations with the palestinian authorities were held the move angered lots of palestinians arabs and muslims but it delighted many on the right in israel not least beta's owner at that time it would seem i can't quite tell whether beta ever officially changed their name or just did so on social media but if they did it would be short-lived since tabi found a buyer just three months after that bizarre incident who would want to buy a football club internationally renowned for its racist ultras where the previous owner had been subject to not one but two assassination attempts for trying to prompt some reforms before trying to add donald trump's surname to the club's official name moshe hogg that's who an israeli tech and cryptocurrency entrepreneur who once founded a company which attracted investment from the likes of carlos slim leonardo dicaprio and serena williams before it was declared bankrupt that is two months before hog egg bought beta he bought a property in an affluent district of tel aviv for 19.3 million dollars and paid 15 of the purchase price using bitcoin controversially hog egg identifies himself as an arab jew and upon his arrival at beta he declared the religion would no longer factor into beta's decision making when it came to signing or selecting players hog egg also stated that he would personally sue any beta fans who engaged in racist chanting for 1 million on account of reputational damage to the club and his fighting talk certainly did see a reduction in the scale of racist chanting from beta fans hog egg's opposition to explicitly racist chanting from beta fans though or not be confused with any attempts to de-politicize the club you need only take a quick glance at his instagram account to know that was never likely to be the case in pre-season ahead of this current campaign you may recall that beta was scheduled to play against fc barcelona but palestinian leaders and activists called upon barcelona to call the game off on account of israel's military occupation of east jerusalem and the west bank its illegal settlements expansion and policies of evicting palestinians and demolishing their homes panicked barcelona proposed playing beta at a neutral venue instead rather than in jerusalem but hogging refused stating that he was quote a proud jew and israeli and therefore could not betray jerusalem in january 2019 it was reported that there had been no incidents of racist chanting by beta fans in all of 2018 which was heralded as a great success including by the british newspaper the jewish chronicle in december 2019 the bbc ran an article and video which they shared on their principal bbc news social media channels not just on their bbc sport accounts which was captioned for decades israel's beta jerusalem football club was known for violence and racism among some of its fans so how did the team's new owner wipe out racism in a matter of months question mark that would have been very impressive and certainly worth asking that question of how it was done but more importantly was it done in 2019 beta signed a midfielder from niger named ali mohammed despite having a muslim name mohammed isn't actually muslim at all he is a christian but that didn't stop la familia reacting angrily to his arrival and demanding that he legally change his name because it sounded too muslim beta claimed that they would now be willing to sign an arab player if the circumstances were right but the fact remains that they are still the only israeli premier league team never to have done so the club is still pure in that sense at least in life families eyes offer creep who plays in midfield for beta jerusalem once stated that quote the problem is with the muslims there's no problem with christians even today we have christians playing in our team they cross themselves on the pitch end quote the crossing was fine with kreef it would seem but kneeling was not krief is not just any old beta player it should be said he is a lifelong fan and his brother is or at the very least was a laugh family a member but it is not exactly welcoming when one thinks that kreef was at the club the last time beta signed two muslim players almost a decade ago now only for them to be hounded out with threats made to their family and to their lives in 2020 when corruption charges were brought against then-israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu there were widespread protests against the long-time pm when one anti-netanyahu protester exposed her breasts on top of jerusalem's menorah statue that was one step too far for some laugh family and members who took to the streets to launch counter protests pay attention you damn lefties the rules of the game are now changing la familia wrote in hebrew on their facebook page soon they were out targeting journalists cars with palestinian number plates and singing such iconic songs as we hate all the arabs f the media death to arabs and death to lefties it is unclear just yet when the greatest hits album will actually be released to say that any football club has wiped out racism would seem a little far-fetched to me but to say that beta jerusalem whilst la familia are still around is a club free of racism is pretty irresponsible journalism by the bbc and some other publications the video that the bbc shared accompanying that caption even included an interview with one beta fan who said and i quote i think the fans would be very angry i think it's not needed when he was asked about the prospect of beta signing an arrow player so quite how anyone thought wiped out racism was an appropriate claim in that context i'm not quite sure in 2020 there were further protests among beta fans after it was announced that moshe hogg was selling 50 of the club to a distant emirati royal and therefore arab named sheikh hamad bin khalifa al-nayan who had promised to invest 90 million us dollars in the club over the next 10 years hogg egg stated i and others before me have donated a lot of money to this club for its community i have never asked for a medal or even a small thank you but on the other hand with all due respect it is unacceptable for me to donate massive sums every month almost 37.5 million dollars and then when i enter the stadium to hear non-stop curses against me my wife and even my children end quote the deal to sell fifty percent of beta to sheikh al-nayan of the abu dhabi ruling family eventually fell through not because of the backlash from supporters this time but because an israeli football association investigation found a significant gap between the amounts of money the sheikh had promised to invest in beta and the amount of money that he actually had at his disposal of al-nayan's supposed 1.6 billion us dollar net worth the investigation found that at least 1.5 billion of it was held in non-tradable bonds belonging to the venezuelan government which economists estimated to be effectively worthless given venezuela's current economic crisis some beta fans might have been pleased to see that deal scuppered but in november 2021 owner moshe hogg was arrested over an alleged cryptocurrency related fraud and released on 22 million dollar bail according to court documents hog is suspected of 21 offenses including money laundering theft and fraud in addition to accusations of sexual assaults which are currently under a gag order hog egg denies all of the charges that have been brought against him and maintains that he is innocent but the police investigation has seen his assets frozen and as any of you have been following the recent situation involving roman abramovich and chelsea will know that can result in some pretty serious problems for a football club especially one with as much debt as beta jerusalem right now beta are in a professional and economic crisis currently just two places above the relegation zone having been forced in february to release three foreign players and desperately looking for investment beta's debt of between 25 to 30 million dollars is an extraordinary amount for an israeli football club and it remains to be seen whether the so-called most racist football club in israel has finally run out of controversial business people who are keen on cozying up to israeli politicians think that they can turn the club's fortunes around and are willing to bail them out that is it for today's video thank you very much as ever for watching there should be a couple of other videos of mine on screen now including one about why israel's football team are members of uefa despite not being in europe and also won about seven of the most political football clubs in the world i believe that there are two parts to that video but only one of them is probably on screen as i say thank you all very much as of watching hit the like button if you enjoyed today's video i sincerely hope that was the case let me know your thoughts down below in the comments and make sure that you are subscribed and have notifications turned on for hitc sevens you can also find me on social media on either twitter or instagram by the username at hrtc7s on both should you wish to do so

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 540,725

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, Beitar Jerusalem, Israel, Documentary, Racist, Beitar, Jerusalem, Fans, Supporters, Israeli Premier League, Palestine, Palestinian, Arab, Politics, Netanyahu, Racism, Footballers, Israel Premier League

Id: zQvDEahDeXE

Length: 34min 59sec (2099 seconds)

Published: Tue May 03 2022