Ben Natan: Israel's War on Palestinian Athletes
As we approach the Olympic games and the World Cup, Israel's demolition of Palestinian sporting culture deserves its own scrutiny.
Israel is waging a campaign of elimination against all of Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. Not just a war on people, but a war on their culture as well. Yes, Israel has killed more than 40,000 civilians including aid workers, medics, and journalists, with tens of thousands more missing.
They have also destroyed civilian infrastructure and systematically destroyed cultural infrastructure like mosques, churches, libraries, and schools. Israel’s aggression hasn’t stopped there. As they violently upend Palestinian society, they have also waged a war on sports in the Gaza Strip and the people who play them.
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has killed more than three hundred professional Palestinian athletes since October 7th. Many, many more have been subject to the disabling injuries that run rampant across Gaza due to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaigns.
In Gaza, sports are a vital part of the social fabric. The Arab Palestine Sports Federation was established in 1931 to promote professional and amateur sports across Palestine. The establishment of Israel in 1948 split Palestinian society between the West Bank and Gaza, disrupting typical flow of goods, services, and cultural products, sports included.
After the Oslo Accords in 1993, professional sports in Palestine were resurrected and the Palestinian Football Association was established, joining many major international associations including the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and FIFA.
Organized and recreational sports are an important piece to any society. Sports allow communities the opportunity to gather together in teamwork and friendly competition. Sport unites countries in international competition.
For children, sports allow time to play with friends, to run outside, to discover a new dream of competing at higher levels. Sports allow for the development of physical awareness and capability, while also serving to teach how we’re one piece of a larger puzzle. Sports, for many, are crucial in how we are socialized as children and maintain social bonds as adults.
The most prominent sport in Gaza is soccer, which plays a huge role in Palestinian culture. The Gaza Strip Premier League has 12 teams where dozens of professional players compete yearly, playing games in Gaza’s many stadiums.
Gaza’s ten soccer stadiums have either been reduced to rubble, turned into refugee camps, or used by the IDF as temporary detention centers where Palestinians are jailed and often tortured. The Rafah Municipal Stadium, home of Shabab Rafah SC, is the largest stadium in Gaza, with a 5,000-person capacity. The stadium was destroyed during Israel’s ground invasion and subsequent occupation of Rafah.
Israel’s war has decimated soccer in Gaza, a feature of their destruction of Palestinian society at large in the strip. Since October, Israel has killed at least 55 Palestinian soccer players. Two of those players were on the Palestinian National Team, including Mohamed Barakat or “the legend of Khan Younis”. Barakat was the first Palestinian to score over 100 goals professionally.
He was killed by an Israeli airstrike.
There are local and recreational clubs where hundreds of players compete with chances for professional promotion within Gaza and sometimes beyond. Mohammed Abu-Hujair, 16, was set to attend Real Madrid’s Soccer Academy in Spain before Israel invaded Gaza and made it nearly impossible for Palestinians to leave. Abu-Hujair is now living in a refugee camp that is set up inside the stadium where Al-Salah FC played before the war’s outbreak.
While soccer is at the heart of sports in Palestine, plenty of athletes in other sports compete within the country and at the international level. Majed Abu Maraheel competed in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta in the 10,000m race. He was Palestine’s first Olympian.
After his appearance, he retired from running to become a prominent coach for the Palestinian competitive runners, including three Olympians. Majed Abu Maraheel died in Gaza due to lack of medical care. He could not access critical medicine due to Israel’s suffocating blockade of Gaza and died of kidney failure.
[Ed. Note: Sports Politika by Karim Zidan has consistently covered stories like these. Their story on Maraheel is here and this story covers the inverse — the expansion of Israeli sport on illegally settled Palestinian land here]
Other popular sports in Gaza include karate, basketball, volleyball, bodybuilding, table tennis, biking, and skateboarding. Prominent athletes in all these sports have been killed, as have coaches, trainers, managers, and referees.
All of this violence suffered by Gaza’s athletes is nothing new. Much like the widespread killing of civilians in Gaza over the last eight months is an especially violent chapter in a long history of Israel’s war on Palestinians, the systematic destruction of Gaza’s sporting life has always been a feature of Israeli repression.
In 2018, the Palestinian Great March of Return was a months-long peaceful protest movement at the Gaza border where Palestinians confined in the strip protested Israel’s blockade and stranglehold on the region. Israeli military and border patrol responded brutally, killing more than 200 Palestinians and wounding more than 10,000 people.
Notable during this repression was the fact that 60% of those wounded suffered gunshot wounds in their lower limbs, with a large number of those wounded suffering devastating knee injuries.
Years later, Israeli snipers were caught bragging about how they knew exactly how many knees they shot in a day during those protests. In 2016, Israeli publication Haaretz reported of a similar campaign of soldiers and policemen targeting the knees of Palestinians in the West Bank.
"On that day, our pair had the largest number of hits, 42 in all. My locator wasn't supposed to shoot, but I gave him a break, because we were getting close to the end of our stint, and he didn't have knees," Eden said.
"In the end you want to leave with the feeling that you did something, that you weren’t a sniper during exercises only. So, after I had a few hits, I suggested to him that we switch. He got around 28 knees there, I'd say," he added.
There is no knowledge of any internal directive in Israeli security forces to purposely disable Palestinians, but these forces are quite obviously motivated to do so when given the opportunity.
These mass disabling events by Israeli forces have a profound impact on Palestinian society. Imagine how many of those 6,000 civilians played soccer, basketball, or volleyball. Imagine how gravely their lives and their ability to enjoy recreational sports in their communities were altered by Israeli aggression.
In Gaza, which has been under a vicious blockade for 18 years, sports offer a respite for the Palestinians who live there. Daily life in Gaza over that time has been stricken by poverty and hunger caused by the blockade. Israel’s deadly incursions into the Strip since 2006 means there is always a threat of direct violence. Yet Palestinian people have still found joy in sports.
The leisure provided by sport is fundamental to survival under the types of conditions Palestinians in Gaza are forced to endure. Sports have been found to have a positive impact on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) suffered by combat veterans. Gaza has functionally been a war zone for 18 years and in 2020, it was found that over half the children suffered from PTSD. It cannot be overstated how important any form of recreation, rest, and relaxation is under the conditions in Gaza.
Israel is engaged in an extermination campaign of the Palestinians in Gaza. This doesn’t just mean killing Palestinian people, but also erasing everything Gaza that makes life bearable. Sports have played a vital role in Gaza to hold people together and bring joy to those living there. That is why stadiums and fields are being destroyed while athletes are maimed and killed.
The sporting world has a responsibility to act. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, FIFA and UEFA swiftly suspended Russia and Russian clubs from international competition. As of now, Russia is still banned from the 2026 World Cup. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing under their countries’ flags and, instead, they must compete as neutrals.
These international governing bodies have only just begun to deliberate about punishing Israel. The Paris Olympics are weeks away and Israel has yet to receive any punishment in terms of sanctions or bans from the IOC, despite pleas from Palestinian Olympic Officials.
FIFA is “mulling” options regarding the Israeli Football Association, but that was after seven months of destruction. They banned Russia within weeks of the invasion starting. Israel has killed two members of Palestine’s national soccer team and it’s still up in the air if they will be held accountable.
International consensus is growing regarding Israel’s War Crimes. The ICC has begun the process of issuing arrest warrants for multiple Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for their commitment to criminal warfare in Gaza.
The plea of Palestinian athletes at this moment is shared by all of Palestinian people currently suffering under Israeli occupation and siege. Gaza has been ravaged by the IDF and with it, Palestinian sporting culture. There are international governing bodies that could intervene on behalf of these athletes, and sports publications who could speak up for them.
The silence of the sports world in the United States and Europe is symptomatic of a large complicity in this genocide. While Palestinian athletes are being murdered and sporting infrastructure destroyed, much of the world is standing on the sidelines.
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