The Telegraph Fulfils Arab Pipe Dream Of Erasing Israel From Middle East

Football season is reaching it’s climax (the football that uses feet, not hands), and several finals matches are about to take place, one of them. Arguably the most prestigious of them all is the English FA Cup final tonight, between Manchester City and Wigan Athletic.

The Telegraph has an article about Wigan’s goalkeeper, the Omani Ali Al-Habsi, and how he became the first ever Middle Easterner to play in the FA Cup final.

Wigan’s Ali Al Habsi today becomes the first Middle East player to play in an FA Cup final. He tells Jim White about his personal journey.

For Wigan the next one is the biggest in the club’s history. And for Al Habsi himself, it offers the chance of rehabilitation. He has played in every round of the FA Cup, was recalled for the semi-final against Millwall last month and is cheerfully hopeful that he will be stepping out at Wembley this afternoon. If he does he will be making history himself: the Omani will be the first player from the Middle East to play in an FA Cup final. The very thought has been making national news back home.

“I feel that honour,” he says. “Everywhere in Oman people are speaking about the Cup final. Not just in Oman, actually, but across the Middle East. Everyone wants Wigan to win now. Except maybe in Abu Dhabi.”

That is, of course, not true.

There’s this small country in the Middle East – you might have not heard of it – called Israel, which for the past 2 decades has been sending football players to play in the English Premier League.

One such player is former Israel national team captain, Yossi Benayoun, who 7 years ago played in the FA Cup final with West Ham United against Liverpool FC, (and please, no pig jokes).

http://youtu.be/TsApNfJ06eI

But he’s not the only one.

3 years ago, Tal Ben-Haim, then playing for Portsmouth, was in the roster for his team – though didn’t play – in the  2010 FA Cup final against Chelsea.

I don’t know why Jim White wrote this fallacy, but one can only hope that it’s because of oversight, short memory, or the lack of fact-checking, and not some more sinister belief that erased Israel from the Middle East.

7 thoughts on “The Telegraph Fulfils Arab Pipe Dream Of Erasing Israel From Middle East”

  1. I would posit that Israeli names don’t sound Middle Eastern to him and Israeli teams are usually lumped into the European group.

  2. ifitquackslikeaduck

    Jim White is a good egg.

    And although you have a point, you should remember that Israel is a member of UEFA, as well as participating in the Eurovision Song Contest (Lebanon was going to but withdrew at the last minute because of Israel’s presence even though they had always known…). I don’t think any other Middle Eastern countries ever get the ‘European’ label.

    Of course I understand perfectly that if she didn’t get these European gigs Israel would be even more isolated than she already is.

    1. The only reason Israel finds herself put into European groupings is because all the Middle Eastern countries operate a racist boycott against her
      And the reason why airlines put Israel in their European schedules is to protect themselves from Arab/Muslim backlash
      As it turns out Al-Habsi didn’t even get to play!!!
      And how names sound is no excuse for a soccer pundit not to check his facts

  3. Jim from Iowa

    The only soccer match I would consider watching is the one envisoned by Monty Python with one team made up entirely of Long John Silver impersonators. Goooooal, ye swabs.

  4. I think that it’s a deliberate oversight and a way of sucking up to the Arab world which doesn’t want to acknowledge that Israel exists.

  5. I think the folks here commenting on this subject don’t really understand the importance. Israel is so much more advanced that it would be an insult to include it with the primitives of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc in regards to sports, innovations and so on.
    In the company I work in, and that’s a approx 80’000 workers-company (worldwide), the included in an internal statement once “Palestine” in the “Middle Eastern” countries list I was shocked. Only to find out that Israel is automatically included with the European list.

  6. Tom,

    While I appreciate you offering another, more favorable, explanation, I still stand by my opinion that leaving Israelis out of that sport’s lineup, if not deliberate (which I think it was), was done because no one fact-checked the false information given to them.

    Dafna

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