Several of Israel's Olympic-sport unions are protesting the way the Ministry of Culture and Sport is handing out a revived equipment-purchase fund, arguing the new scoring model rewards where a club's town sits on a national statistics table rather than what gear its athletes actually need, ONE reports.
The fund is worth 60 million shekels a year and had sat dormant for four years before the ministry restarted it, releasing the first 30 million shekel tranche under a new "ongoing competitive" model published this week, according to the report. Clubs and unions applied, and are now, per the ministry's own account, in the appeals stage.
The complaint, as relayed by ONE, is about the yardstick rather than the money itself. Instead of weighing an association's actual level of activity or how many athletes it serves, applications are being ranked largely by the Central Bureau of Statistics' socio-economic cluster rating of the municipality where the club or union is registered.
That has produced what unions call an absurd outcome: clubs based in strong, central cities such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are being turned down for equipment funding even when their need is genuine, simply because their home authority scores well on the national index.
"Most associations from strong cities in the center of the country that have needed equipment for years aren't eligible for the budget," one association manager told ONE, speaking anonymously. "It turns out we're being judged on a statistical figure and not on the substance of what we do, and that's disappointing."
Israel's Cycling Union, Athletics Union and Taekwondo Union are among the bodies named in the report as having had applications rejected under the new criteria.
Yehuda Maayan, chairman of the Taekwondo Union, was the most pointed critic quoted. "The new fund doesn't suit this period," he said. "It strips most unions of the right to purchase equipment." He also questioned the fund's own branding, asking why a model that filters applicants by municipal statistics rather than merit is being called "competitive" at all.
The Ministry of Culture and Sport, responding to ONE, said the model was designed and vetted properly: it went through a public-comment period and was approved by the National Sports Council before being published for the first time since 2022. The ministry noted that with applications now in, the process is currently at the appeals stage — leaving open the possibility that rejected unions could still see funding released if their objections are upheld.
For federations such as taekwondo, which has repeatedly flagged threadbare training budgets and equipment shortages even after producing an Olympic bronze medallist in Tokyo, the stakes in getting the criteria right are not abstract. A union locked out of a national equipment fund has few other places to turn for the basics — protective gear, mats, training equipment — that keep a small-budget sport running.
ONE's report does not detail how many applications were rejected in total or give a full breakdown of the scoring formula beyond the municipal statistics component, and the ministry has not yet said whether the criteria will be revised. The appeals process now under way is likely to determine whether any of the rejected unions receive funding from this first tranche.
