8 - Risk, rationality and trust

Summary

Illiberal squad

Natzerat Illit has one competitive basketball team, Hapoel Natzerat Illit (henceforth HNI). Formed in the 1970s, when it joined the bottom (fifth) division of Israel's National League, the team took a few years to be promoted to the fourth division (liga Bet), where it competed from 1984 to 1990. Affiliated with the nationwide network Hapoel, the sports arm of the Histadrut trade union federation, HNI was and still is operated and financed by the local workers’ council (Moetzet Hapo'alim), the standard name for local branches of the Histadrut.

The 1988–1989 squad offered a fairly representative cross section of the Israeli population of the town. The eldest player was a twenty-eight yearold driving instructor. The youngest were three seventeen-year-old schoolboys. There were two conscripts, a policeman, a shop-keeper, a technician and a bank clerk. Five players were of North African origin, seven were East European – three of them natives of the Soviet Union who arrived in Natzerat Illit as toddlers in the early 1970s. There were no Palestinian players on the team.

Having played for clubs in higher divisions of Israel's national league, I joined HNI soon after moving to the town. At thirty-four, I was past the zenith of whatever basketball career I may have had, and was looking mainly for exercise to stay in shape. Being more or less on a par with the team in terms of ability, my position as an active player on the squad was self-explanatory. Players as well as management were vaguely aware that I was engaged in a social study of the town as part of some university degree.