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Beitar soccer club drops match with Barcelona for refusing to play in Jerusalem

“I can’t betray Jerusalem,” said Beitar Jerusalem soccer-club owner Moshe Hogeg.

Crowds of fans at a Beitar Jerusalem game. Source: Beitar/Twitter.
Crowds of fans at a Beitar Jerusalem game. Source: Beitar/Twitter.

Beitar Jerusalem soccer-club owner Moshe Hogeg said on Thursday that he canceled a friendly match with Barcelona after it refused to play in Jerusalem.

“After receiving the contract for signing and being exposed to the unequivocal demand that the game not take place in the capital, Jerusalem, and some other demands that I did not like, I slept with a heavy heart, thought a lot and decided that before all, I am a proud Jewish and Israeli,” Hogeg wrote on Facebook.

“I purchased Beitar Jerusalem out of love for the holy capital; I fought a war with racism and will continue to fight it,” he said. “I promote coexistence and am in favor of peace.”

“I can’t betray Jerusalem,” he added.

“The administration is giving its middle finger to the Congress,” Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters, after he was denied access to U.S. military facilities in the Gulf.
Three other soldiers were lightly wounded when the military vehicle overturned.
“Mamdani could not even give us one day to mourn without defaming the Jewish people and giving cover to our enemies,” Inna Vernikov, a Jewish member of the New York City Council, told JNS. “We will not let Mamdani and his radical pals rewrite Oct. 7.”
“It’s actually hard to find a sentence in Mamdani’s post that isn’t a lie,” Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter said, of the New York City mayor.