Israel at Heart brings new outlook to basketball

Lucas Mann Assistant Sports Editor

Filing into Jewett parlor, the players from Israel at Heart were almost indistinguishable from the Vassar men’s basketball team. The two teams of tall kids with athletic gaits and hooded sweatshirts didn’t look much different from one another. But there were differences—some enormous ones—between the two groups of athletes, and they had come together to talk about them. The exhibition game that they played earlier that day, which was the season opener for the Brewers, was as out-of-conference as a game could be. These kids hadn’t gotten off a luxury bus from Skidmore; they had come from Israel as both competitors and cultural emissaries.

Ask the players why they came all this way and they will tell you it had more to do with patriotism than with sports. “I have a chance to help my country,” one player said. “I want everybody to know that Israel is a very nice place to be and, maybe, if you see me and you like me, you’ll think differently of a soldier that you see on TV—that maybe he’s not just a killer.”

Israel at Heart, an American non-profit organization based in Newark, NJ, attempts to show the world real Israeli athletes and citizens, giving them a chance to tell their stories away from the political biases seen in mainstream media.

Along with simply displaying themselves and their culture, the players raised controversial issues during the question and answer session they held in Jewett on Monday, Nov. 6. Their role as visiting athletes did not change the fact that they had an one-sided message. At one point, the team captain leaned forward in his chair and declared, “It’s a fact that CNN is pro-Palestinian. That is just a fact. It’s important for you to see us, who were there, who were soldiers, so we can tell you the true story.”

The line between athlete and pundit could not have been more blurred. This man was a point guard, but he had also been a soldier and spoke with a definite political purpose. It begged the question: If a team of Palestinian basketball all-stars had made the trip to Walker Field House, would we have heard the same “truth?”

For the Vassar community to hear voices of such anger and of such personal investment in an ongoing war was enlightening. Israel at Heart did not bring an objective point of view, but instead brought men who could not go to college until they were 26 years old because they spent their late teens and early 20s in combat.

Vassar Head Coach Mike Dutton saw the introduction of a different kind of voice as a positive experience for his team and the school.

“I know for Vassar and for some of my players, having the experience of war brought in is something they have not had much contact with,” said Dutton. “I think it really teaches kids firsthand about something they didn’t know. Yeah, I think they had an agenda, but they spoke from the heart.”

This “heart” that Dutton described was present in each personal anecdote that the players offered. One assistant coach, wearing warm-up pants and an American basketball t-shirt, took the floor and described a moment in his life when the idea of playing basketball in America could not have entered his mind.

“In 1996, I was a soldier,” he said. “We gave Palestinians weapons, as a sign of good faith, we even rode on a patrol together. On that patrol, Palestinians turned around and shot two Israeli soldiers with our own guns. You know, Israel has the only army in the world called a Defense Army.”

So how much of an agent of social change can athletics be? Dutton did not want to romanticize athletics or Israel at Heart. “Still,” he said, “basketball can be a common denominator to bring different people and cultures together. These kids couldn’t have made it to Vassar if they hadn’t had sports.”

In the end, Israel at Heart’s stay in Poughkeepsie was an enlightening experience. They challenged the Brewers on the court, coming in as the underdog and losing by only three points in a scrappy game full of lead changes. And when the jerseys came off, they challenged Vassar with their experiences as Israelis and with their mission to show Americans a positive side of Israel.

During their visit, Israel at Heart related stories that set them far apart from the world that the Vassar men’s team has known. They displayed both a love for the game and a passion that extended beyond the three-point arc. The differences between the experiences and opinions of the Israeli youths and those of many Vassar students were impossible to brush aside, but it was their similarities that brought them together.