Tanya Habjouqa for The Wall Street Journal. TEL AVIV—Spring has arrived on the beaches of Israel, and with it the perennial sound of batted balls. Paddleball is the country’s unofficial national sport. But this year the rat-tat-tat noise, the flying projectiles and flailing rackets that result have triggered a backlash and a bit of soul searching in the Jewish state.
Beach paddleball, known as matkot in Hebrew, has a hallowed place in Israel. In recent years, the sport has mutated. That mutation—known as “Bat Yam style” for the Tel Aviv beach suburb where it was pioneered in the 1990s—turned the quaint seaside pastime into a fast-paced, hard-hitting game. Since then, the style has spread—and so too have calls to ban the sport.
“You can’t walk peacefully along the beach without getting slammed by the matkot balls,” says Tom Shinan, 35 years old, director of a 15-minute video assailing matkot released last summer. “It’s horrible.” He says he would “go to the beach and feel like I’m back in the army dodging bullets. That tic-tic-tic is everywhere.”
Matkot in Israel stretches back years. Early 20th-century Zionist painters depicted the sport. On any sunny day, Israeli beaches are clogged with matkot players, ranging from Speedo-clad hobbyists struggling to string together a rally to seasoned practitioners of Bat Yam style thwacking the air with violent precision.
Matkot involves two people using what are usually crudely made wooden rackets to bang a squash ball back and forth. In the traditional form, there is no winner and no loser, just two people trying to sustain a rally.
“It is a game of couples, of partners, of love and community,” says Morris Zadok, 62, owner of a sporting-goods store dedicated largely to matkot and regarded as one of the sport’s leading advocates. “We don’t try to crush the opponent, we try to work together to keep the ball off the ground.”
Mr. Zadok was among a group of matkot die-hards who began playing a more-aggressive form of the sport in the 1990s. They made it competitive, with two-man teams battling to string together as many hits as possible within a three-minute window.
“The adrenaline became very high and people began hitting the ball very, very hard,” says Gideon Nevo, a professor of Hebrew Literature at Ben Gurion University, who gave up squash for matkot.
Bat Yam’s pioneering paddlers brought their swagger to other beaches and matkot’s mutated strain spread.
“When we brought Bat Yam style to Tel Aviv, we were like, what is this? You play like little children,” says Mr. Zadok.
Matkot paddle manufacturers began churning out more powerful rackets made of carbon instead of wood. The new paddles allowed players to hit with more force and the carbon made a louder, more earsplitting thwack. An Israeli air force engineer even produced a matkot paddle made of fighter jet alloys.
Fired by Bat Yam style, matkot was enjoying a revival. The first Israeli matkot competition was held in 2000, capped by a national championship in Tel Aviv. Each summer has been filled with similar competitions. Mr. Zadok even petitioned to have matkot included in the London Olympics.
But last summer, matkot’s fortunes began to turn. “It was a dark summer for matkot,” says Mr. Zadok.
That was when Mr. Shinan’s video, called “Matkot—The End” appeared on YouTube. It includes tear-jerking firsthand accounts by victims of matkot accidents on Israel’s crowded beaches. One elderly woman recalled getting hit in the face with a matkot paddle and needing dental work. The video called for matkot to be banned.
Mr. Shinan’s video touched a nerve. Within days, over 100,000 people had watched it in a country of seven million. Israel’s largest news channels aired live debates on matkot.
While proponents see matkot as a symbol of the cooperative spirit in Israel, critics denounced it as emblematic of rudeness.
After the video went up, the city of Netanya canceled the national matkot championships for the first time since 2004.
Mr. Zadok said the city told him the tournament was canceled due to budget shortfalls. A spokeswoman for Netanya’s mayor said in a written statement to The Wall Street Journal that the matkot championships were canceled “due to the slight interest from participants.”
Matkot players didn’t buy it.
“That was just their way of trying to get out of it. It seems the YouTube video influenced them,” says Mr. Zadok.
The outpouring of emotion both for and against matkot shocked Mr. Shinan, who directed the video. He cut his hair so he wouldn’t be recognized in public. He says he hasn’t stepped a foot on the beach since the video first went public.
“I can’t get the fear out of my head that if I go to the beach, the matkot players will lynch me,” says Mr. Shinan. He says he hasn’t received any threats.
The debate has even cut a rift through the pro-Israel lobby in America. Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, a U.S. group, issued a rare rebuke of Israel on the sidelines of the Herzliya Conference earlier this month.
“I was hit by a high velocity matkot ball a year ago on the beach in Tel Aviv,” Mr. Pollak said. “It took me days to recover from the welt. It makes you think, is this the Zionism we defend?”
On a winter Saturday earlier this year, Mr. Zadok and fellow matkot veteran Amnon Nissim hunkered down in Mr. Nissim’s apartment in Tel Aviv.
Mr. Nissim’s apartment doubles as a matkot museum, home to hundreds of one-of-a-kind matkot paddles dating back to 1948, the year of Israel’s founding. Mr. Zadok made himself coffee from a kettle fastened to a matkot-paddle hot plate, and pounded his fist on the coffee table, made out of a giant matkot paddle.
“We can’t let things get out of control,” he says. “This sport is ours. This sport is Israel.” Mr. Nissim, wearing a diamond-studded gold matkot-paddle pendant, agreed.
This month, as temperatures soared, beaches filled and matkot players turned out by the thousands across Israel.
Mr. Zadok took a break from his matkot game. “We’re back,” he says. “We’re going to have the biggest matkot tournament Israel’s ever seen this year.”
