semitism.net

My next post will be a more serious one, but in my first post after a long absence, I needed to ease my way back into the blogging world with something a bit different than usual…

Long time, no blog, you might say. Yes, it has been more than 2 months since I have posted to the site. My apologies to Andrew for coming down with such a case of blogger’s block. Mostly it was due to my family’s move from Philadelphia to the DC area. Moving is certainly one of life’s most arduous tasks (it is among my only sympathies for the soon-to-be-disengaged Gaza settlers) and is that much more arduous with a nearly 9-month old son, no matter how wonderful and amazing he may be.

It has been a dizzying couple of months not just for my family, but in the Middle East as well. But try as I might for the past few weeks, I couldn’t quite find anything I felt overly compelled to write about. Information overload on one hand; same old, same old, on the other.

Then I saw this over the weekend:

Tiki Barber is in Israel this week visiting former Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Barber ran into Peres and New York this summer and accepted an invitation to speak to young athletes there. Jeremy Shockey must not have been available.

So, first things first. I am a huge sports fan. And I am a fantasy sports player; fantasy baseball, though, not the more prevalent fantasy football (I spend football season running a pool). Yes, after (okay, maybe before) going through the day’s “real” news, I spend a fair amount of time checking into issues like the bullpen controversy in Boston (eased for the moment since Keith Foulke had surgery) or wondering whether it’s worth trading Dontrelle Willis for Carlos Lee (my co-owner and I think - hope — it was).

And it has always been a bit of an issue for me among the peace activist movement that there are not more sports fans. Many I have met seem to have no real idea that sports even exist - ever notice that the only things that seemed to be scheduled on Super Bowl Sunday other than parties are peace-related events? Many others who were once sports fans let their fan-dom lapse as they get immersed in the issues because sports begin to seem less “relevant” or “important.” This is probably worth an entire post (or even website) in and of itself, but suffice it to say that I think this is nonsense.

(I will note that one exception to the non-sports fan in the activist world is Michael Brown - currently the Executive Director of Partners for Peace in Washington and one of the best writers about the conflict. You can find much of his work here.

He is also a huge sports fan and a fantasy baseball legend. Together with a Palestinian in Gaza, Michael twice won a fantasy baseball league that consisted of well-known sportswriters and baseball experts.)

And I think the “sports is not important argument” is nonsense for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is entertainment value. This situation is a primary example.

You have to start by wondering how/where/when/why Shimon Peres and Tiki Barber “ran into” each other and whether the moment is caught on tape. (If anyone has it, I’ll pay). What did they talk about? Did Peres ask Tiki how he thought Eli Manning would do in his second season - will he be stuck in the shadow of his brother Peyton’s shadow in the same way Peres ended up in Rabin’s shadow? Or maybe Shimon got past an awkward pause in the conversation by slapping him on the back and saying, “Hey, Tiki, do you know your name means ‘my bag’ in Hebrew?”

Then how does the invitation to come to Israel get raised? Did Tiki consider whether the rest of his teammates Labor or Likud - and how his trip might divide an already-fractured team? Especially surprising that hard-line coach Tom Coughlin (an obvious Likudnik) let him go at all.

Did Tiki return the favor and invite Shimon back to attend Training Camp later this summer, or maybe to come to a game this season? Can’t you hear Peres, trying to talk football as he visits the announcer’s booth, when an ex-player like Phil Simms cuts in and tries to impersonate Howard Cosell and ask Peres something political? “Tell me, Shimon, how do you think the wall of linemen assembled in front of Eli Manning compares with the wall you are building through East Jerusalem?”

And why was Tiki’s twin brother and fellow NFL star Ronde left home? Imagine the possibilities - Tiki coaching a group of Israeli youth, while Ronde coaches the Palestinians. (Probably would have had to have been this way - Tiki plays for the Giants and Ronde plays for the Buccaneers - if Peres invites Tiki, he would obviously want Israelis coached by a Giant, not a Buccaneer). Brother against brother, but all in the name of peace. I am sure it would have been a tie.

But more than all of the potentially amusing ways to think about this entire episode (I have about 4 more pages of thoughts), there is something crushingly sad underlying it all. Shimon Peres. If he were just a former Israeli leader out promoting a peace center, it would be one thing. That’s the role for former leaders - they should create centers that seek to promote peace by having kids play sports together. And they should invite “stars” from other places to come and help those kids, and have those starts tell the kids born into conflict that they “all look the same” so maybe one day they can believe that there will be peace.

But Shimon Peres is supposed to be leading the Labor Party. (For more on that sad subject, which I plan to write about soon, check this article from last week’s Haaretz magazine). Whether or not you agree with Peres’ decision to join the Sharon government, the idea of that move was to make him an internal watchdog of sort, to help make sure that disengagement happens, and happens “right.” Instead, here is Peres in New York meeting Tiki Barber, then there he is showing him around Israel. If it weren’t so depressing, it would be a joke.

Of course, getting frustrated with Shimon Peres as a leader is something of an Israeli pastime. And maybe so is getting frustrated with the “matzav.” But I guess what we can say for sure is that the frustration will never end until Shimon Peres is no longer able to influence the matzav, in any way. Even if it does mean an end to the Peres/Barber summer camps.