Beitar Jerusalem

The Jerusalem derby against Hapoel Jerusalem is not decided on form. It runs along the old fault line of Israeli politics, the right against the left, and Beitar carries the history of the Revisionist Zionist movement its youth branch was built to serve. Founded on 15 July 1936 by David Horn and Shmuel Kirshenstein, the club began life as Hameora and, when the British authorities banned the Beitar movement in 1947, played for a time under the name Nordia Jerusalem before the old identity returned. Matches against Hapoel Tel Aviv carry the same political charge on a national scale, while games with Bnei Sakhnin, a club with an Arab-majority fanbase, have carried an edge sharpened by Beitar's own record: it remains the only club in Israel's top flight never to have fielded an Arab player.

The team plays in yellow and black at Teddy Stadium, known simply as Teddy, which holds 31,733. Six league titles have gone to Jerusalem, alongside eight State Cups and four Toto Cup wins, with the most recent State Cup arriving in 2023 and a Toto Cup added in 2026. Older programmes still refer to the club by nicknames from earlier decades, among them Menorah and Lions of the Capital, though supporters simply call it Beitar.

No one wore the shirt more often than Uri Malmilian, whose 423 appearances and 29 State Cup goals still stand as club records. Eli Ohana carried the team through the 1980s and went on to play at the 1990 World Cup, and Yossi Benayoun came up through the youth ranks before building a career across European football. It is Malmilian's name, though, that gets attached to Beitar first.