9: Sectorial Sport; Sport and the General Public
9A. The Gender Issue: Women in Israeli Sport 
9B. Sport for the Handicapped
9C. Popular Sport
A: The Gender Issue: Women in Israeli Sport
We have talked of sportsmen and women in general terms and it should have
been clear throughout this article that both men and women have been involved
in the development of sport, both in the pre-state Yishuv and the period of
the State of Israel. However, let us now dig a little deeper and ask the gender
question. What is the status of women in Israeli sport?
The answer seems to be as follows. Women have been involved in the developing
sporting world, more or less from the beginning, but the world of sport as
it has developed in Israel is still primarily a male world in terms of a number
of factors. More attention has been paid, since the very outset to the world
of sport for men. Women’s sport has been both an outgrowth and an afterthought
in terms of the attention that it has received and the resources and facilities
that have been put at its disposal. Four and a half times as many men as women
have participated in the Olympics representing Israel. Even in the Maccabiah,
supposed to be a much more populist event, the ratio is three to one.
It must not be supposed that this merely reflects the respective levels of
the men and the women. For example, in 1991 the Israeli women’s fencing
team got ninth place in the world championships. On the strength of that showing,
they were invited to participate in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona as a team,
but the funds and support were not forthcoming and they did not go. Only four
years later, in the Atlanta Olympics of 1996, did they finally participate.
There is no question whatsoever that had this been a men’s team, they
would have been there in ‘92.
Another example of blatant inequality of a different kind caused a major
scandal in Israel in 1985. In that year, the women’s basketball team
got through to the finals of the twelfth Maccabiah where they were due to
play the American team, and according to the original plan, that final was
due to be played just before the men’s final in the country’s
premier basketball stadium at Yad Eliyahu (the home of Maccabi Tel Aviv).
However, days before the final, the women’s venue was changed to the
far less prestigious venue of the Maccabiah village. The women were so insulted
that they decided not to show and they managed to persuade the American team
to do the same as a show of protest and solidarity. The Israeli Basketball
Association decided to punish the whole team by disbanding it, a decision
that was finally rescinded when the women took the case to court. Once again,
it can be suggested firstly that the decision to change the venue to the Maccabiah
village would never have been taken if the men had been involved, and secondly,
if such a decision had been taken, the Basketball Association would never
have disbanded the whole team.
In general terms it might be said that women have never had the encouragement
to take up competitive sport in the same way as men have. Research has shown
that in Israel, only about 25% of the participants in competitive sport are
women, a number much lower than the average in the western world, and even
lower than the average in the world as a whole, which is lower than the average
in the western world.
Between 1993 and 1998, four government committees were set up by different
governments to assess the situation of the sporting world in Israel. In every
one of the four committees, one of the major recommendations was to give more
resources and encouragement to the situation of women in sport. The fact that
the fourth committee said pretty much the same as the first committee means
that precious little was done in the interim. This remains essentially the
situation today. In many western countries, the battle for equality in sport
was fought – and, to a large extent, won – a generation ago. Israel
has not yet won that war. In the last decade or so, it can be said that the
battle has only begun. Some powerful lobbying groups have started to try and
push to remedy the situation, but much is still left to be done.
B: Sport for the Handicapped
There is one field of sport where Israel has become a world leader and that
is sport for the physically handicapped and the paraplegics. The field was
developed primarily by a German Jewish neurologist, Professor (later Sir)
Ludwig Guttmann, who relocated in Britain prior to W.W. II and began to develop
a programme of sport as an aid to physical and mental rehabilitation of the
physically handicapped. As part of this programme, he initiated the paraplegic
games at his hospital in Stoke Mandeville.
Within a few years it had become an international attraction, and handicapped
sportsmen and women from many different countries began to participate in
the games. By the late 1950’s, it had been decided to create an Olympic
structure for the handicapped in tandem with the regular Olympic games. The
first of these games was held in 1960 in Rome, immediately after the regular
Olympics, with 400 participants from 23 countries. Since then the annual Stoke
Mandeville games and the quadrennial handicapped or paraplegic games have
become major events, recognized in the sporting world.
Israel became involved in these initiatives relatively early. The large numbers
of people crippled in the Holocaust, the casualties of the 1948 war and the
thousands of victims (primarily children) of the tragic outbreak of polio
in Israel in 1950, forced the young state to start paying attention to the
problem of rehabilitation and despite relatively slim resources in the early
years, clubs and programmes including sporting events became a feature of
Israeli society in the 1950’s and 60’s. The first three Israeli
participants in the Stoke Mandeville games arrived in 1953 and within a year,
the Israeli delegation had won a third place in a swimming competition.
The games proved an enormous boost for the developing of sport for the handicapped
in Israel and by the time the first handicapped Olympics (the Paralympics,
as they came to be called) came round, the small Israeli delegation won several
medals. This was the beginning of phenomenal success of the Israelis in the
Paralympics and in 1968, when Mexico City, the proposed venue had to be changed
because it was realized that altitude would prove an insurmountable obstacle
to many handicapped participants, Israel stepped into the breach and hosted
the games, in which 800 participants from 29 states took part. The games opened
before a crowd of 24,000, and Israel gained 61 medals including 18 gold ones.
Israel became a world power in paraplegic sport in the sixties, the seventies
and the eighties, but by that time more and more countries had begun to realize
the value and the importance of sport and had invested large sums in training
facilities and preparation. Israel could not maintain its early advantage
and the numbers of medals slowed down, but each Paralympics nevertheless brings
home some medals and records.
In the 2000 Sydney Paralympics, the Israeli delegation of 34 participants
brought back six medals, including three gold ones, all gained by the swimmer
Keren Leibovitz who broke three world records at the same time. In the last
few years, increasing budgets have been given to sports facilities and training
programmes for the physically handicapped and perhaps the next years may see
something of a return to the glories of thirty or so years ago.
C: Popular Sport
We have talked of professional competitive sport and that has indeed become
the dominant idea of sport in the world. Nevertheless, before we close, we
should briefly mention the “other” kind of sport, popular sport
in which people indulge for fun or for fitness rather than for glory or money
or other such prizes. It is interesting to note that HaPoel and, to an extent,
Elitzur developed initial agendas that were aimed at developing sport for
the “people”, rather than just competitive teams or individuals.
It will be recalled that HaPoel was hostile to F.I.F.A., because it was seen
to be too “professional” – and therefore capitalist and
exploitative. With the years however, HaPoel and all the other centre became
increasingly involved in the promotion of competitive and professional sport.
People’s sport has, however, become increasingly popular all over the
world and in this regard Israel is no exception. There are dozens of major
sporting events, runs, swims, marches, bike-rides, that go on throughout the
year in Israel and many of them have proved extremely popular. Some of them
have been running on a regular level since the 1950’s, while others
are new on the scene, having developed only in the last few years and still
struggling to make themselves a regular annual presence in the national, or
at least the regional calendar.
In line with the rest of the world, individual sport and exercise is also
becoming a central and noticeable feature of Israeli life. The roads fill
regularly, morning and evening, with joggers and walkers and local gyms and
health and fitness clubs have proved extremely popular. There is little of
the national consciousness that vitalized the early sporting initiatives of
the Zionist society and the Israeli state. Here we are witnesses to a much
more individualistic phenomenon of the same kind that can be found in any
western country. Fitness rather than service is the concern here. Narcissism
and the individual play a part that the nation played for many in the past.
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