Israeli Comedy Scores Points by Bringing Together Soccer and Gay Politics

In the movie ‘Kicking Out Shoshana,’ a popular athlete pretends to be gay. The result is both funny and surprisingly meaningful.

By Liel Leibovitz for Tablet Magazine

It’s been an eventful summer for Beitar Jerusalem. In June, after several young Israelis brutally murdered an Arab teenager in retaliation for the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish youths, police sources suggested that the killers were members of La Familia, a small group of several thousand fans of the iconic Israeli soccer club who are known for their extreme right-wing views and their love of violence. Shortly thereafter, when Israeli soldiers entered Gaza and peaceniks in Tel Aviv and elsewhere took to the streets to demonstrate for peace, La Familia’s minions, some wearing their favorite club’s jerseys, were caught on camera confronting the demonstrators with their fists. And then, just as Beitar seemed to be irredeemably affiliated with the actions of its most vile followers, came Kicking Out Shoshana.

The movie, a comedy released late last month, tells the story of Ami Shoshan, a star player for Bnei Jerusalem. The team is a thinly veiled version of Beitar, and Shoshan is a thinly veiled take on the prototypical Israeli baller, all machismo and chest hair and rogue charm. That charm gets him in the good graces of Mirit, played by the future Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot. But Mirit is a big-time gangster’s girl, and her boyfriend, armed and unamused, gives Shoshan a choice: Suffer a very painful removal of a key part of his anatomy, or convene a press conference and tell the entire world he is gay.

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