Americans Save Israeli Soccer Team Beitar Jerusalem
One of Israel’s most storied — and racism-tarnished — sports teams has new owners, a pair of Americans who hope to change the atmosphere at games.
Dan Adler, a former Hollywood talent agent and vice president at Walt Disney Imagineering, purchased the team with fellow US investor Adam Levine. The duo are taking on a sports franchise that was once one of Israel’s wealthiest, but has suffered a series of financial and administrative problems in the last half-decade.
Adler’s purchase of the team drew extra attention in Israel because of his affiliation with dovish organizations that support a two-state solution — a position many Beitar supporters reject. Fans of the club have appalled many Israelis — but no doubt pleased others — with racist chants at games, including “Death to Arabs” and “Terrorist, Terrorist.” The team has never had an Arab player, and in 2009 a team captain apologized, due to fan anger, for suggesting that an Arab player might someday join the team.
The son of a Holocaust survivor, Adler mostly avoided politics during an interview with Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. But he told the paper, “I know Beitar has a certain reputation — or rather, that a portion of the fans has a certain reputation.”
Referring to himself and Levine, he added, “We believe that Jerusalem is a city where all types of people must live,” and said, “We will change the character of the crowd.”
An Israel Policy Forum board member and a member of the American Jewish Committee’s National Board of Governors, Adler ran for congress earlier this year as a Democrat. Though the bid was unsuccessful, he earned brief national attention for one of the campaign’s more memorable, and more unusual, commercials.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
