Fadi Deeb is the only member of the Palestinian Olympic delegation from Gaza, and he is the only Paralympian athlete from Palestine to compete in the 2024 Summer Games. While he has experienced great personal tragedy due to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, Deeb has come to the Paris Olympic Games to represent the people and the indomitable spirit of Palestine, and to send a message to the world: “Nothing can stop us… Palestine is not dying, we are still here.” In this exclusive interview, recorded from Paris, TRNN’s Dave Zirin speaks with Deeb about the importance of sports in Gaza and what it means for him to represent Palestine in this year’s Olympics.
Studio Production: Jules Boykoff
Post-Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley
Transcript
Dave Zirin: Hey, this is Dave Zirin from Edge of Sports TV, only on The Real News Network. I am honored, honored, to be speaking with Fadi Deeb, who is the only member of the Olympic delegation of Palestine from Gaza. And he’s also the only Palestinian who’s part of the Paralympics, correct?
Fadi Deeb: Yes.
Dave Zirin: That is amazing. Thank you so much for speaking with me.
Fadi Deeb: Thank you, too, for you coming, for this happening, for speaking with me. I’m very happy to see you.
Dave Zirin: Me too. Before we started, you said one of the reasons why you want to compete at the Olympics is that you want to show people in Gaza—you want to show them that there is life. Is that correct?
Fadi Deeb: Yes, people think that life in Gaza is just war and [killing] and the blood. Yes, there is, but there is life. There is people searching [for] life, there is many success stories. There is many youth, many [children], many women searching [for] life. They have [much] knowledge, for example, about sport and disability. As a Paralympic Palestinian community, we have more than 140 international medals, and more than six Paralympic medals. So there is life, it’s not just blood and [killing] and war, no.
Dave Zirin: What is it like to train in Gaza, given the privation, the walls, the lack of equipment, the facilities blocked off by Israel? What is it like to train there?
Fadi Deeb: If you want to talk about the equipment in the Gaza Strip, it’s nothing [compared to] what we have here in Europe or around the world. So the equipment in the Gaza Strip—we just [use] anything that looks like or can be similar [to] normal equipment. But because the energy and the power is coming from inside of us—this is why we are not stopping. We just have a goal. We have dreams, we have energy. So, we don’t care about what we have now, we want to fight to be like champions, to show Palestine how beautiful [it is].
Sometimes we are training in the land without equipment. Sometimes we don’t have a discus, so we use something similar to a discus, like a metal or something like that. Maybe [it’s] more heavy, but it’s no problem, but you [get] the idea. Sometimes we don’t have enough shot put or the same kilo of shot put. We use a stone or something similar like that. So, nothing can stop us.
Dave Zirin: Wow, “nothing can stop us.” It’s a tough question, but I have to ask: How is your family? How have they been affected by Israel’s war on Gaza?
Fadi Deeb: It’s a very hard situation. First, on the 7th of December, [I lost] my brother and also two of my nephews—[out of my] whole family, I lost more than 15 persons. And for my special family, there are four groups… The idea now [is to keep] the families in the Gaza Strip [from being] together. So if there is any group, they still attack the others [who are alive] to finish the family. It’s a very hard situation.
So, as a professional player, you must focus [on] what you are doing, on your playing, on your league and everything. And at the same time, you have family—you cannot separate the [two]. For example, my club—I have a Euro-club with my club in Germany—they asked me, “Fadi, we know it’s tough. It’s very hard. Can you stay home and relax?” I say, “No.” What I’m doing now here is to show there is a Palestinian player [who] is under all of these hard things, [just like] there are people searching [for] life, they still have humanity, and [they] want to send a message to all of the world: The people in Gaza are human, they need the same human rights [as] everybody in this world.
Dave Zirin: What are your thoughts on Israel competing in these games, even with the war and even with everything they are doing to the people in Gaza?
Fadi Deeb: I don’t know really [how] I can answer this question, because normally the sport must be celebrated above everything. But now everything can become [political], also in sport. So my message as a Palestinian: I’m raising my flag here in Paris 2024 [to show] Palestine is not dying. Palestine is there and we have a message for all of the world. But at the same time, I want to ask the Israeli players something: What is your message? What do you want to show [about] yourself to the world? To show the genocide that has happened in Gaza? To show what? What do you want to show? What’s your message for the world?
Dave Zirin: Right, that’s a great point. I also want to ask you about Paris. How have you been received since you’ve been here? How has the experience been for you as a Palestinian Olympian?
Fadi Deeb:
As a Palestinian, my body is here, but my mind, my everything, is in the Gaza Strip. When I started playing outside of Palestine… 10 years as a professional player—seven years in Turkey, one season in Greece as a player, [and] as a coach, and this is my second year in France as a player, and also I’m a coach.
So, [all the] time, I have online contact with many national teams, with my people in the Gaza Strip, [I talk about how] to improve the sport in the Gaza Strip, how to improve the clubs, [I] give them new information about the games, everything. There [are] many things in Gaza you can improve to [help make] very strong national teams and very strong people. And with Cambodia, I’m working with a technical manager for the Cambodian national teams, [doing] some advising with the Syrian national team, with Yemen, with Libya.
And here also, [I’m] a player in a French league, and I’m also a coach for a club. I have two teams, one in the Fourth Division and one in the Fifth Division. And sometimes I have a session in the schools, in the college and the university, to teach the people how to work with people with disabilities, [how] to show their sport to every party. So this is my job when I’m in Turkey and when I’m in France. Because I believe one thing: You don’t need to be a French man or a Palestinian man to support. Just easy things: to share your information, to be human; it’s about [being] human. So [as] a Palestinian man living in Paris, I respect the rules, respect the people, respect my humanity, and I share my information. And I hope that the same thing will happen for the other people [from] my country, Palestine.
Dave Zirin: How important is sports in Gaza?
Fadi Deeb: Sport in Gaza is very, very important. But politics [makes the importance of sports] smaller and smaller. Because the priority now is for food, for many different things.
But if you want to talk, for example, when I had my disability in 2001, [there] were not too [many of us], maybe 200 or 300 people with disability. But now, you talk about more than 120,000 people with disabilities in Gaza… Before one week in this war, [we had] more than 10,000 new people with a disability. And sports [provide] the first type of social inclusion for these people, [it] encourages them in their family, in their life, in work, to show them [through] sport… So sport is very important, like studying in school. Sport teaches people how to respect, how to start to have a life, how to build in your life. Yeah, it’s very important.
Dave Zirin: And the last question – you’ve been generous and I think we want to get some dinner – so, I want to ask you: As a Palestinian Olympian, the only Paralympian from Palestine, and the only Olympic representative from Gaza, what is your message to the world?
Fadi Deeb: My message for the world is: just be human; give us the same human rights [as] other people. We have life, we have goals, we have dreams. You don’t need to be in the same religion or the same culture, or the same nationality. When you [stand up against] the war in Gaza, you defend your humanity, not just us. This is my [request] for the world: Just give us the same human rights. I want to raise my flags here in Paris to show people that Palestine is not dying. We are still here, we are still fighting, we are still alive.
Dave Zirin: Well, I really need to end this interview before I start crying. So for Edge of Sports TV, thank you so much.
Fadi Deeb: You’re welcome.
Dave Zirin: I’m Dave Zirin.
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