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‘Hebrew in the huddle’: American football kicks off another season in Israel
(JTA) — The year was 1999, and Jonathan Hauser was working as a concierge at the famous King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
At the time, Hauser was playing for the Jerusalem Lions flag football team, a part of the American Football in Israel organization. The league was 10 years old at the time but lacked adequate playing fields. One day, he spotted a face he knew from TV in the hotel lobby: New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Hauser told Kraft about American Football in Israel (AFI) — which Kraft, despite being a regular Israel visitor, did not know existed — and connected him with Steve Leibowitz, a veteran journalist who moved to Israel in 1974 and had been leading the development of the sport in Israel.
Just a year later, Kraft inaugurated the small Kraft Family Stadium in Jerusalem, with a field only 80 yards long (instead of the regulation 100-yard length in the NFL). The AFI — which started with touch football and later expanded to flag football and adult tackle football — had found a field.
On Saturday night, the AFI kicks off its season in Bet Shemesh with a matchup between the Bet Shemesh Rebels and the Jerusalem Lions, in front of a sold-out crowd of 400. Around 2,000 players, coaches and referees are now involved in the league throughout the country. The adult tackle league features eight teams from different cities who compete in an eight-game regular season, followed by playoffs that culminate in the Israel Bowl championship game in the spring. Other programs for men, women and children of all ages are offered in cities across Israel.
“The dream of building football in the country is due to the partnership and friendship and help of Robert Kraft, without any question, and his family,” said Leibowitz, a New York City native and longtime Giants fan.
Leibowitz had the dream since the 1980s, when he and a group of journalists put together a sports club to watch American football by pirating the signal from the Armed Forces Network. That inspired them to start the league.
In 2017, Kraft donated $6 million to open the Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem, which Leibowitz said is home to the only regulation-size American football field in the Middle East, plus facilities for soccer, basketball and more.
“My late, darling wife Myra always used to tell me that until I start building football in Israel, I would not win anything with [the] Patriots,” Kraft said at the 2017 dedication. “That happened in late 1999, and we won our first Super Bowl in 2001. Now we have five championships, and I can’t ignore the connection between our continuing to support development in Israel and our great accomplishments.”
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft at the Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem. (Courtesy American Football in Israel)
Players from AFI have gone on to play college ball in the United States, most notably Yonatan Marmour, who in 2021 became the first Israeli to play Division I football. Bet Shemesh coach Charlie Cohen, a yeshiva teacher and salesman who moved to Israel from Massachusetts in 2000, added that some athletes play in Israel during a gap year before trying to make the jump to Division II.
In the early years of football in Israel, Leibowitz said the players were mostly American immigrants or children of immigrants. But now, he says there is mostly “Hebrew in the huddle”: Nearly every team outside Jerusalem is entirely Hebrew-speaking. Some cities have Arab players, plus immigrants from Ethiopia and Russia.
Leibowitz is proud of one notable AFI alum: American-born Ron Dermer, Israel’s new minister of strategic affairs and a former Israeli ambassador to the United States. Leibowitz called Dermer, who played flag football, a “celebrity” in Israel’s football community.
Leibowitz, who serves as president of AFI, acknowledged that the sport will never surpass the popularity of soccer or basketball in Israel. But the strides the league has made are undeniable, and the AFI hopes to build three more football stadiums, with plans in motion for regulation-size fields in Haifa, outside Tel Aviv and in Beersheva.
In another sign of development on the world stage, Israel also hosted the 2019 European Flag Football Championship and the 2021 Flag Football World Championship. In July, Leibowitz said, the AFI has been invited to bring a national team of top players to play in Fez, Morocco. He said it’s the first time an Israeli team will play a Moroccan team in Morocco, likely in any sport.
And with the 2028 Olympics in the not-too-distant future, Leibowitz said the AFI is working on a squad that could qualify for the soon-to-be-announced flag football competition.
Leibowitz added that the league honors the late Myra Kraft, who was also very involved in the sport’s development, by stitching her initials onto the Israeli players’ jerseys when they play abroad.
For coach Charlie Cohen, football is at the center of his Jewish practice — and helped inspire him to become a rabbi.
“Without sports, there is no Jewish identity for me,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Cohen, 53, said he was kicked out of Hebrew school as a child and had all but walked away from his Judaism when he was coaching Pop Warner football in Sharon, Massachusetts. His winless team squared off against a powerhouse squad from nearby North Attleboro and won, 13-12.
“That was a really watershed moment for me,” Cohen said. “I took that to heart, as a person, and as a Jew.”
He explained: “Here it is, you’re a football coach, and you’re demanding that your team has character. Your team shows up for each other. If you have a loss, come fight for your guys, don’t quit… I said to myself, if I were to demand my little peewee football team turns it around, well, I’m going to turn it around, too.”
He reengaged with Judaism and ultimately immigrated to Israel, where he became a rabbi.
Cohen began as Bet Shemesh’s offensive line coach, then became head coach last season, leading the Rebels to the semifinals, where they lost by four points.
And no, Cohen is not over the loss: “We had the ball with two minutes to go. Should’ve called a timeout and calmed them down. You live and you learn.”
A Tel Aviv Pioneer player hurdles an opponent in an American Football in Israel game. (Doron Dotan)
One of Cohen’s players is 22-year-old yeshiva student Aviad Ohayon, who said he tried football for the first time in high school in Kfar Saba, at the behest of a friend. He didn’t know what football was at the time.
“The information that I had about football was like a bunch of guys with helmets fighting with a strange ball, in the shape of an egg,” Ohayon told JTA, not inaccurately. “He really wanted me to come, so I was like, okay, why not? I came to one practice and you can say I fell in love with the sport.”
Ohayon — who plays running back, linebacker and kicker — said he has played basketball, soccer and karate in the past, but football was special.
“I really loved sports, but something with football, the training and all the practices, was very different to me,” he said. “The spirit, the brotherhood, everything was way more unique than I saw in the other sports.”
Leibowitz, now 71, calls himself the “grandfather” of the sport in Israel.
“The craziness was sticking with it all these years, for over 30 years, and making it into a life ambition to establish the sport in Israel, because I think it’s a good sport. I think it has a place in this country,” he said. “I think we’ve proven that. And together with that we’ve created a community. So at this point, I can’t even leave if I wanted to.”
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The post ‘Hebrew in the huddle’: American football kicks off another season in Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Abbas Names Hussein al-Sheikh as Temporary Successor for PA Presidency
Hussein Al-Sheikh, former Secretary General of the Executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), speaks during an interview with Reuters, in Ramallah in the West Bank December 16, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
i24 News – Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) issued a statement on Sunday outlining the succession process should the chairman’s position become vacant.
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, Deputy Chairman Hussein al-Sheikh will temporarily assume leadership of the PA in the absence of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
The decree stipulates that al-Sheikh’s interim term would last up to 90 days, during which direct elections must be held to select a new chairman, in accordance with Palestinian election law.
If elections cannot be conducted within this period due to exceptional circumstances, the Palestinian Central Council may authorize a one-time extension.
Hussein al-Sheikh, born in 1960 in Ramallah, has a long history in Palestinian politics. As a teenager, he was sentenced to prison in Israel for terrorist activity and was incarcerated from age 18 until 1989. In the past year, he was appointed Deputy Chairman and designated successor by Abu Mazen after the Palestinian Central Council approved the creation of the position.
The announcement is seen as a move to formalize the line of succession and ensure stability within the PA amid ongoing political uncertainty and the absence of a functioning Legislative Council. Analysts say the decree clarifies leadership procedures in case of incapacity or vacancy, reflecting Abu Mazen’s efforts to maintain continuity and prevent a leadership vacuum in the Palestinian territories.
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Netanyahu Says Israel Will Decide Which Foreign Troops Acceptable to Secure Gaza Ceasefire
FILE PHOTO: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a statement during a visit to the site of the Weizmann Institute of Science, which was hit by an Iranian missile barrage, in the central city of Rehovot, Israel June 20, 2025. JACK GUEZ/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday Israel would determine which foreign forces it would allow as part of a planned international force in Gaza to help secure a fragile ceasefire under US President Donald Trump’s plan.
It remains unclear whether Arab and other states will be ready to commit troops, in part given the refusal of Palestinian Hamas terrorists to disarm as called for by the plan, while Israel has voiced concerns about the make-up of the force.
While the Trump administration has ruled out sending US soldiers into the Gaza Strip, it has been speaking to Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and Azerbaijan to contribute to the multinational force.
“We are in control of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will continue to operate,” Netanyahu said.
“This is, of course, acceptable to the United States as well, as its most senior representatives have expressed in recent days,” he told a session of his cabinet.
Israel, which besieged Gaza for two years to back up its air and ground war in the enclave against Hamas after the Palestinian terrorist group’s cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, continues to control all access to the territory.
ISRAEL OPPOSED TO TURKISH ROLE IN GAZA FORCE
Last week Netanyahu hinted that he would be opposed to any role for Turkish security forces in Gaza. Once-warm Turkish-Israeli relations soured drastically during the Gaza war, with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan lambasting Israel’s devastating air and ground campaign in the small Palestinian enclave.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on a visit to Israel aimed at shoring up the truce, said on Friday the international force would have to be made up of “countries that Israel’s comfortable with.” He made no comment on Turkish involvement.
Rubio added that Gaza’s future governance still needed to be worked out among Israel and partner nations but could not include Hamas.
Rubio later said US officials were receiving input on a possible U.N. resolution or international agreement to authorize the multinational force in Gaza and would discuss the issue in Qatar, a key Gulf mediator on Gaza, on Sunday.
A major challenge to Trump’s plan is that Hamas has balked at disarming. Since the ceasefire took hold two weeks ago as the first stage of Trump’s 20-point plan, Hamas has waged a violent crackdown on clans that have tested its grip on power.
ISRAEL SAYS HAMAS KNOWS WHERE HOSTAGE REMAINS ARE
At the same time, the remains of 13 deceased hostages remain in Gaza with Hamas citing obstacles to locating them in the pervasive rubble left by the fighting.
An Israeli government spokesperson said on Sunday Hamas, which released the remaining 20 living hostages it took in its October 2023 assault, knew where the bodies were.
“Israel is aware that Hamas knows where our deceased hostages are, in fact, located. If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to retrieve the remains of our hostages,” the spokesperson said.
Israel had, however, allowed the entry of an Egyptian technical team to work with the Red Cross to locate the bodies. She said the team would use excavator machines and trucks for the search beyond the so-called yellow line in Gaza behind which Israeli troops have initially pulled back under Trump’s plan.
Netanyahu began the cabinet session by stressing Israel was an independent country, rejecting the notion that “the American administration controls me and dictates Israel’s security policy.” Israel and the US, he said, are a “partnership.”
Diplomats and analysts say Trump managed to push Netanyahu, who had long rejected global pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza, to accept his framework for a broader peace deal and also forced Netanyahu to call Qatar’s leader to apologize after a failed bombing raid targeting Hamas negotiators in that country.
Trump also persuaded Arab states to convince Hamas to return all the Israeli hostages, its key leverage in the war.
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After Israeli Strikes Cripple Sana’a Airport, Houthis Turn South
A Houthi fighter mans a machine gun mounted on a truck during a parade for people who attended Houthi military training as part of a mobilization campaign, in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
i24 News – The Houthis and allied pro-Iranian groups have begun using southern Yemen’s Aden as a new base of operations after Israeli airstrikes rendered Sana’a International Airport inoperable, Yemen’s Interior Minister said in an interview published Sunday.
Major General Ibrahim Haydan, speaking to A-Sharq Al-Awsat, said security forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognized government have recently detained several Hezbollah operatives, along with Syrian and Iranian nationals, accused of drug trafficking and supporting Houthi operations.
According to Haydan, pro-Iranian operatives have attempted to enter Aden under the guise of tourists. He revealed that six Iranian citizens have been sentenced to death by a Yemeni court for their alleged roles in espionage and support for the Houthis.
Haydan accused Iran of intensifying its efforts in Yemen following setbacks among its regional proxies, saying Tehran has shifted resources into the country, including military experts, drone technology, and drug production facilities.
“After the fall of some of its traditional proxies, Iran has turned Yemen into its main arena,” Haydan told A-Sharq Al-Awsat.
The minister credited a “deep security partnership” between Aden and Saudi Arabia for the recent arrests, emphasizing that joint operations have achieved “significant successes” in dismantling terrorist and criminal networks.
Haydan also claimed the Houthis are currently “at their weakest point,” citing recent Israeli assassinations of senior Houthi civilian and military figures as a major blow to the group. He said the strikes have created “a rift and split within the group’s internal ranks,” weakening its cohesion.
The remarks come amid escalating regional tensions, with Israel expanding its strikes against Iranian-aligned forces across the Middle East and Yemen emerging as a critical front in Tehran’s regional strategy.