70 Years to Israel; 67 Years to the National Olympic Committee of Israel

The state of Israel marks its 70th anniversary this year, but the NOC of Israel will reach this mark only in three years – in 2021. The three lost years influenced Israeli sport inside the country and its international relationship to this day. This presentation will focus on the reasons for the late establishment of the NOC and the outcomes of the IOC`s recognition of Israel as an Olympic state in late 1951.

Two months prior to the independence of Israel in May 1948, Israeli sport stakeholders – conservative Maccabi and socialist Hapoel - agreed upon cooperation for one year in order to send a local delegation from Palestine to the 1948 London Olympic Games. This agreement was at those days a precedent, which would exist for many years and pave the path to problematic leadership among sport leaders and between them and the government of Israel.

The NOC of Palestine, composed by the Jewish Zionist Maccabi fracture, ceased to exist from May 1948 and the IOC did not want to recognize a new NOC from the former Mandate state a few days before the Olympic Games. A sportive vacuum lasted in Israel for almost three years and several parties tried to fill it – Maccabi, Hapoel and the local government. Each one of the parties negotiated with the IOC to accept Israel to the Olympic family before the 1952 winter and summer Olympic Games.

On the one hand the IOC acknowledged it was a unique situation to deal with several parties from the same nation, and decided it was better to make an agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs instead of the sport organizations, which then and also nowadays argue about the hierarchy and leadership of local sport. On the other hand, the IOC knew that the sport leadership and the NOC, which was established only after the intervention of the government, rely on the government.

Those three years shaped the relations between sport in Israel and the state leadership, as well as the connection between the NOC and the IOC placing Israeli sport in its unique spot locally and internationally.