Tennis aids in success

KARIN KLOOSTERMAN ISRAEL21C

Everywhere in the world, marginalized populations have less access to good education, advanced music programs and sports facilities. This is no less true in Israel.

One-fifth of the population is made up of Israeli-Arab Muslims and Christians and, for multiple reasons, these minorities get fewer opportunities in sports, which have been shown to lead to higher achievements in other areas and improved track records in school, relationships and community building.

An avid supporter of Israeli tennis, philanthropist Freddie Krivine came from the United Kingdom with his wife to live in Israel in 1984. Since the early 1970s, he has been a supporter of the Israel Tennis Centres and women’s tennis, eventually becoming president of the Israel Tennis Association. But at an event of 600 players in the late 1990s, he was surprised to see only four were from the Arab sector – he decided to embark upon a new project for young Arabs throughout Israel.

Although Krivine passed away in 2005 at age 84, his daughter, Jane, took over, with encouragement from the board of her dad’s philanthropy, the Freddie Krivine Foundation. The first priority was building locally, she said. “My father saw it as extremely important to create facilities in their own communities, so [Arab] children can come and play on their own time. It’s better than piling 25 children into a bus and moving them into a centre.”

Since 1998, her father’s foundation has subsidized tennis lessons for about 6,000 young Israeli Arabs, some of whom have gone on to be coaches during the time that Jewish Israelis go into mandatory military service. The foundation also has built and surfaced more than a dozen tennis courts in cities like Nazareth, so young Arabs don’t have to get on a bus and travel many miles to play, and it runs specialized coexistence programs in Caesarea, Israel, and in Boston, Mass.

Besides creating and maintaining courts, the foundation subsidizes tennis lessons in Arab communities, setting fees on par with what people would pay locally for other sports. Charging a fee encourages commitment from the parents and the children, Krivine said.

The foundation trains coaches, encouraging older teens when they are 18 to enrol for a coaching certificate from the Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sport near Netanya, and it gives special support to star players.

The foundation’s success stories include Ruan Zubidate from Bizmat Tivon, a Bedouin who is the top female Arab tennis player in Israel. She travels to tennis matches around the world representing Israel.

Now in its second year, the foundation’s Tenacity program brings young Arab coaches to Boston for the summer, where they learn English and teach tennis to vulnerable populations of teens in the United States. One of those who participated is Ebraheem Fhmawi, a 19-year-old from Faradis, near Haifa, who dreams of studying chemical engineering. Fhmawi was among the first to join the Krivine Foundation’s coexistence program in Caesarea, where Jewish kids from the well-to-do coastal city are matched with Arab kids from Jisr el Zarka.

Arab and Jewish kids have little contact and rarely get to know each other, Krivine said. At first, she was skeptical about this program of her father’s, questioning the efficacy of busing kids to Caesarea for coaching lessons starting at age eight. The whole project “was a costly venture for us,” she said.

“This program in Caesarea is with well-heeled families from a fancy place,” she added. “We whittled it down to about 10 children who were meeting there about four or five times a week, coming in from Jisr el Zarka.”

The fruits of her father’s labor came not long ago, when a group of the kids turned 18. Krivine asked them about their future. Four of them were going on to medical school, and one wanted to be a veterinarian. “All were doing something really worthwhile. They knew that they could do it,” she reported.

And tennis, invariably, was at the centre of their success. The program provided a place where they learned that Israeli Arabs, too, could reach for the stars – and catch them – if only they were offered the tools to do so.

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

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