I saw a screening of Sons of Sakhnin United in Washington, DC at Busboys & Poets as part of the Kicking & Screening International Film Festival. The documentary takes you behind the scenes of B’nei Sakhnin, the only Israeli Arab team in the Israeli Premier League, during 2003-2004 season. Shocking observers with low expectations for the team, B’nei Sakhnin won the Israeli State Cup, which booked their place into the following season’s UEFA Cup. This would be a dramatic story based on these accomplishments alone. However, when one adds the context and complication of Arab-Israeli relations, we again gain some insight into what makes football more than a game. B’nei Sakhnin was the first Arab team to qualify for Europe. Their historic journey is a testament to how football can become a vehicle for a team and its followers to express many of the same things that people use football for around the world – to express the joy, sadness, perspectives and challenges of daily life.
Sons of Sakhnin United provides wonderful insights into some of the difficulties that Arabs communities face in Israel. It humanizes ideas and people who over the years have almost become stale, immovable fixtures in the mainstream narrative about the Middle East. People often partake in philosophical debates about Arab-Israeli relations without ever knowing people who live in the region or who have experienced conditions in the region first-hand. Sakhnin United succeeds in showing people as people rather than caricatures. While it is easy to demonize individuals on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide, Sakhnin United steers clear of stereotypes and focuses on people’s complexities. People change their outlooks and preconceived notions, showing that the right opportunity can alter entrenched views.
Football is the opportunity that enables the characters and the audience to understand nuance – that there is no black and white. We are introduced to Eyal Lahman, an Israeli Jew, who leads B’nei Sakhnin to lift the State Cup. We meet Israeli players who initially held reservations about joining an Israeli Arab team, but turn a corner and start to understand that many of their prior beliefs were nothing but stereotypes reinforced by insular communities. We follow club captain, Abbas Suan, through the club’s successes, which ultimately lead to his first cap with the Israeli National Team and the subsequent complexities that accompany his inclusion.
The documentary entertains, but there are also lessons (whether intentional or not) to be learned. Perhaps the major takeaway is that football stories can transform the way people look at the world. But it’s more than that. Football is a sport that can educate a global audience about local stories due to the universal appreciation for the game and its elements – the rivalries, league formats, the challenges players face, the experience of being in the stands, promotion and relegation. The fact that so many people around the world from different backgrounds and belief systems understand the language and pageantry of football is an amazing social phenomenon. The ability to couch the world’s stories in football is what makes the game so powerful and instantly relevant to so many, and is precisely where Sakhnin United succeeds.
Sons of Sakhnin United gets the Nutmeg Radio seal of approval. Definitely worth checking out.
