Last gasp Israeli hero strikes blow for tolerance

“ABBAS is Jewish, Abbas is Jewish,” chanted 41,000 delirious Israelis after the Bnei Sakhnin midfielder had equalised against Ireland at the Ramat Gan Stadium. The irony of it all wasn’t lost on any of them.

Only last February, Abbas Suan, an Israeli Arab, was heckled and booed by a rabid Jerusalem crowd in that bustling city’s Teddy Kollek Stadium. Now, here he was rescuing the nation’s World Cup qualifying campaign in the more secular Tel Aviv with a priceless strike against Ireland.

How ironic in a nation so divided between Jew and Arab, that it should be an Arab that proves the saviour in the middle of the Jewish festival of Purim, one of the most important of festivals in the religion’s calendar year.