Hooray! At long last Israelis, Lebanese, Jordanians and Syrians agree on one issue: sports. This may be small potatoes, but it shows that people who have been at loggerheads for numerous years can agree on something, when necessary.
What’s the cause of their agreement? Football, what else? It started when Middle East Television recently began broadcasting the Monday night National Football League game.
Ray Bevan, the manager of the Mideast TV network CBNS, said that viewers in each of the four countries “are just ecstatic.” He said they have been writing to the network saying they would like to see two games a week.
The fans are acquiring a keen knowledge of the rules of the pro football game despite the fact that soccer is the most popular sport in the four countries. Bevan said he believes football is an activity that serves as “an outlet for violence without blowing up somebody. It provides a safety valve.”
Israeli newspapers are latching on the game and recently the sports daily there began promoting the grid games as an integral part of American life and advising its readers to watch Monday night football.
Since the Monday night game is usually a tape of a contest played the previous week, Americans living in Israel avoid reading the scores of the contest at the time it is published in order to maintain suspense.
Bevan indicated that these grid enthusiasts can look forward to viewing the Pro Bowl games as well as the Super Bowl contest. He said that another American sport, wrestling, also enthralls the audiences in the four Mideast countries.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
