The Erasure of a Generation
More than 615 Palestinian athletes have been killed by Israeli strikes since Oct. 7 — 13 in June alone.
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On Saturday, the Palestinian Olympic Committee (POC) released a statement which revealed that 13 Palestinian athletes and coaches had been killed by Israeli forces during the month of June.
Among the victims of the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign were eight football players and coaching staff—Mohamed Abdel Moneim Al-Jaabari, Emad Yousef Al-Samhouri, Mohamed Mahmoud Yassin, Mostafa Mayt, Abdullah Mazen Hawila, Ayman Jumaa Al-Hamas, and Youssef Ayman Al-Najjar—two volleyball players—Abdel Karim Al-Nanman and Ahmed Mohamed Al-Mufti—handball player Mohamed Hussein Al-Nashar, karate practitioner Ayman Totah, and Muay Thai fighter Ammar Hamayel.
“These athletes departed this world after the brutal bombing and the aid queues,” read the POC statement.”Each one of them had a dream but the occupation assassinated them and their dreams.”
The POC added that the overall death toll within the Palestinian sporting community over the past 20 months, including young athletes and technical staff, has risen to approximately 615 fatalities, as of June 2025.
The decimation of Palestinian sports and the erasure of a generation of its athletes is a microcosm of the ethnic cleansing being committed by Israel’s government.
More than 56,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants orchestrated an attack on southern Israel that killed about 1200 people, and led to the abduction of approximately 250 hostages.
The Palestinian death toll continues to rise at an alarming rate. Israeli forces killed at least 90 people in Gaza with airstrikes and gunfire in the two days since the POC released its statement. More than 40 were killed in an airstrike that hit a waterfront cafe in Gaza on Monday. 33 others were killed when Israeli airstrikes hit two schools used as shelters for displaced people in northern and central Gaza. Nearly a dozen more were gunned down as they tried to reach desperately needed food aid distribution sites.
Meanwhile, the lack of food entering Gaza caused by the ongoing Israeli aid blockade is leaving increasing numbers of Palestinians “vulnerable to starvation”, with daily energy intake now well below what a human body needs to survive, the UN warned last month.
Despite the dire situation in Gaza, the sports world has taken almost no action against Israel for its government’s war crimes. The International Olympic Committee washed its hands of the affair entirely, while FIFA has spent more than 20 months dragging its feet and postponing a decision to ban Israel from world football.
In May 2024, the Palestinian Football Association submitted a proposal to sanction Israel on the grounds of human rights and humanitarian law violations committed in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. Since then, several federations and NGOs have filed submissions to FIFA in support of the PFA’s bid.
Initially, FIFA vowed to resolve the issue during an extraordinary council meeting in July 2024, only to postpone the decision to the August 31 council session. FIFA then pushed the decision back again to its October 2024 meeting, where it was once again postponed to allow for “due diligence,” according to FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
Then, at its 75th annual Congress held in Paraguay on 15 May, 2025, FIFA Secretary General Matthias Grafström told the FIFA Congress that two FIFA committees were still investigating the complaint, and that new members of those committees would need time “to appropriately inform themselves on the matter,” even though the illegality of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory is not a contested issue but a matter of fact.
While the sports world continues to drag its feet in the face of Palestinian suffering, more athletes continue to be killed with each passing day. On July 1, the POC announced the passing of Malaak Musleh, a Palestinian boxing champion whose death represented yet “another Olympic dream silenced by brutal occupation.”
“Though Malaak has departed, her enduring ambition stands as a solemn testament to a cruel and genocidal war,” the POC said.
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