Israel football team living curious existence in exile, trying to give hope in time of darkness

Israel relocated to Hungary for their Nations League match vs France but the ongoing situation in the Middle East is never far from thoughts

A hundred Star of David flags fluttered in the drizzle at the Bozsik Stadium on Thursday, as Israel’s footballers sang the wistful words of the national anthem: “Jewish glances turning East / To Zion fondly dart.”
The Hatikvah – which translates to “The Hope” – is the song of a displaced people, and it felt doubly appropriate because this team now find themselves displaced all over again.
Over the bleak 12-month period since Hamas launched its Oct 7 attacks, Israel have been playing home matches in Budapest: a city with one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe, and a president – the notorious dictator Viktor Orban – who considers Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israel prime minister, a friend.
Thursday night saw France arrive in this liminal space: a tattered stadium in an unlovely Budapest suburb, all dual carriageways and brutalist architecture, which was serving as a proxy for Jerusalem, Haifa or Tel Aviv.
The 8,000 seats were perhaps a quarter full for this Nations League match, with plenty of Jewish skull caps on display, but surprisingly few guns, dogs or security guards. Any outbreaks of public disorder in Budapest tend to focus on the Hungarian parliament building, some seven miles away. Down in District 19, otherwise known as Kispest, everything was eerily quiet. If the Bozsik Stadium had become an unofficial part of Israel for a few hours, it must have been the safest part by far.
“Our situation in Israel is really difficult at the moment,” said Maccabi Tel Aviv midfielder Dor Peretz, as he took questions on the eve of the French challenge.
“I don’t think you can realise how difficult [it is] when soldiers defend our borders, and kill for our country. [It] is really strange to host the game in Budapest, without a lot of fans, without a lot of the crowd  cheering Israel. But we understand that our country is in different days and some things are much more important than our games.”
Peretz went on to mention the extra responsibility that athletes feel in such troubled times, explaining that the team are desperate “to give some hope and some moment of happiness for our people”.
Yet Peretz’s manager, Ran Ben Shimon, shies away from warlike rhetoric. Unusually literate for a football manager, Ben Shimon has apparently been reading an academic investigation of sporting performance during times of conflict. The conclusion? Excessive intensity brings more stress than success.
“Motivation – we don’t need more,” said Ben Shimon on Wednesday night. “I trust my players to come with a light mood and with a balanced approach. This is the most important thing for me.”
No matter how light and frothy Ben Shimon’s team talk might have been, Israel seemed unlikely to compete too closely with France, whose position at No 2 in the Fifa world rankings contrasted sharply with their own position at No 79.
The Israelis were perhaps fortunate that Kylian Mbappe sat this one out, triggering a storm of protest back in France. But Les Bleus still played with potency. Chelsea’s Christopher Nkunku kept sprinting onto passes from the Real Madrid midfield pairing of Aurelien Tchouameni and Eduardo Camavinga, and he showed wonderful footwork to put France 2-1 up just before the half-hour mark.
During a long night of chasing faster and defter opponents, Israel did at least manage to create a lovely goal of their own, via a perfect header from Omri Gandelman. It was only in the last eight minutes that the French drove home their superiority, scoring twice on the break to seal a 4-1 win.
There was little sense of mourning from Israel’s players afterwards, nor from Ben Shimon, who pronounced himself happy to have “made a team like France sweat”.
In truth, the Israelis are grateful to be on the field at all, with Peretz describing “the amazing privilege of playing football when our country is in a war”.
They should enjoy it while they can. The Palestinian Football Association has spent recent months lobbying Fifa to ban Israel from world football over the country’s “humanitarian law violations” in Gaza. Fifa – which was one of the first international organisations to recognise Palestine – has neither supported nor rejected the protest, preferring to play for time by delegating it to a pair of subcommittees.
There are several problems with the PFA’s argument. For one thing, it was the Palestinian terror group Hamas which initiated the latest tragic cycle when it conceived and carried out the Oct 7 atrocities. For another, football is probably the most diverse activity in Israel. As a symbol, the national team reach across a far more heterogeneous population than most people imagine.
Israel has a substantial Arab-Palestinian minority of around 17 per cent. This community is so over-represented on the playing field that it supplies almost half of the teams in the Israeli football leagues, and usually contributes three or four players to the national side as well. Most Muslims live among the dusty, underprivileged settlements in the north of the country, where the football pitch is often the one facility in mint condition.
Historically speaking, it was an Arab-Palestinian – Abbas Suan – who scored the most famous goal by an Israeli, salvaging dreams of a place at the 2006 World Cup with a late equaliser against Ireland. Through that one strike, it was said, Suan brought more unity to Israel’s disparate communities than the region’s politicians had managed in the previous 50 years.
Suan’s successors remain influential to this day. On Thursday, Israel’s best player was another Arab-Palestinian: Mohammad Abu Fani, a low-slung, fleet-footed midfielder who acted as a central pivot. Abu Fani received warm applause from the fans when he was substituted, and in fact he is so popular in Israel that fans from his former club Maccabi Haifa often fly to Budapest to watch him play for Hungarian champions Ferencvaros.
Or, rather, they used to fly to Budapest. That was before the conflict started, and travel became prohibitively expensive. “There used to be 10 or 12 flights a day into Eilat,” recalled Ariel, a laconic Israeli fan who was carrying two miniature Star of David flags. “Now there’s one or two, and the prices are crazy. Almost all the people here are from Budapest’s Jewish community. They’ll all be in shul [the synagogue] for Yom Kippur tomorrow [Friday].”
Among the other football fans observing the day of atonement will be Ronen Dorfan, an Israeli sportswriter who moved to Budapest 17 years ago. Over the past year, Dorfan has been surprised to find himself the only Hebrew-speaking journalist at most of Israel’s matches – a situation he ascribes to the high cost of travel.
According to Dorfan, the Israeli team can cope with their exile – costly as it might be for everyone, including the national football federation – for as long as Budapest is prepared to host them. But his next concern is that other countries will start presenting a cold shoulder, whether on political or practical grounds.
“Belgium came here in September on security grounds,” Dorfan explained, “even though that match was originally supposed to be played in Brussels. They thought Israel might attract terrorist activity, and that was very concerning. But, so far at least, they’re the only ones to refuse. It’s very encouraging that we’re going to Italy for Monday’s match, and then the Stade de France next month.”
It is a curious existence that the Israeli footballers have in Budapest: hermetic and strangely artificial – like some sporting equivalent of Tom Hanks’s airport movie The Terminal.
Ultimately, though, this Nations League escapade will be a brief reprieve for many of them. Around half of these players are based in Europe or the United States. The other half must return home for Israeli League duty after Monday’s appointment in Udine. Then, next month, they will be back at the Bozsik Stadium – which is better known as the home of Honved, once Ferenc Puskas’s great side of the 1950s – for Belgium’s second visit in 72 days.
“It’s pretty simple,” said Dorfan. “We won’t be playing in Israel till there’s a ceasefire.” Until that day, the footballers’ rendition of “The Hope” will retain its poignant tone.