Football in the Holy Land

Crossing Continents Thursday, 24 April 2008 At 1102 BST on BBC Radio 4

Beitar Jerusalem, the reigning champions of Israeli football were four minutes from clinching the league title, 1-0 up against Bnei Herziliya and an unassailable fifteen points clear of the pack.

Then large parts of the crowd, led by the notorious right-wing ultras "La Familia", invaded the pitch in such vast numbers that the police were powerless to stop them.

20 minutes later, unable to clear the pitch of celebrating fans, the game was abandoned and the result was decided by a tribunal of the Israeli FA. The game was awarded to Bnei Herziliya, Beitar was docked two points and ordered to play the rest of their home games without an audience.

It was not Beitar and La Familia's first disciplining of the year. Earlier in the season they broke a minute's silence for former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and sang chants in praise of his assassin Yigal Amir.

This was the final straw after another season of anti-Arab chanting and active support for the Israeli settlers' movement. The team were forced by the Israeli FA to play to an empty stadium where they were defeated by the country's leading Arab team Bnei Sakhnin.

Having been the sporting standard bearer of the Israeli right for over 60 years, Beitar are now owned by Russian-Israeli oligarch Arcady Gaydamak, whose son owns Portsmouth FC. He has spent freely in his efforts to take Beitar to the top of Israeli football and to insert himself in Israeli politics.

With his own political party he plans to run for both the Knesset and for the Mayor of Jerusalem later this year. Gaydamak, who has claimed that Beitar will deliver 60% of Sephardic votes to him in Israel, and having ignored and indulged La Familia for the last two years, has finally been forced to confront them. In an interview on Israeli Army Radio he said:

"I am the team and I have no intention to sell¿ I have no respect for them [the fans that went wild]. While there numbers are in the thousands, they are not the majority."

However, La Familia continue to dominate the mood of the stadium, their politics and their attitudes shared by many who do not sit with them. They won't be leaving any time soon. Arcady Gaydamak, like many would be populists before him, is finding out that football clubs and their fans are an unstable and capricious constituency.

BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents was broadcast on Thursday, 24 April 2008 at 1102 BST.

Reporter: David Goldblatt
Producer: Anna Raphael