Majdi al Tattar: Gaza’s beloved amputee swimmer and gold medallist killed by Israel

By Humaira Ahad

Braving all odds with a never-say-die spirit, Majdi al Tattar had carved a niche for himself in the sports community of the Gaza Strip.

Tattar was just 9 years old when he lost his leg in an accident. That, however, didn’t dampen his spirit and he was determined to chase bigger dreams.

He turned his ordeal into a blessing and qualified as a swimming coach in Gaza. The life that kindled hope for many in the territory was silenced by the genocidal regime in a brutal airstrike on Saturday.

Tattar, who was an inspiration for thousands of swimmers, particularly amputee swimmers, in the besieged strip was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the wee hours of August 10 morning at the Tabaeen School in the Al-Daraj neighborhood of central Gaza City, which left more than 100 dead.

The 44-year-old father of five ran a swimming school in the coastal territory, which was thronged by swimming aficionados across age groups. He would hold separate sessions for children and adults.

“Currently, I work as a coach at the Palestinian Swimming School in Gaza, where I train students from different age groups, ranging from 4 to 60 years old,” Tattar said in an interview with The Palestine Chronicle in 2022.

Standing on crutches, his professional choice of being a swimming coach would leave the first-time visitors to the swimming school surprised and doubtful.

However, seeing him swimming like a fish made people praise his remarkable perseverance and earned him a special place in Gaza’s sports fraternity.

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“I lost my leg at a young age, but it was the beginning of a new path for me. The accident was an incentive to discover new talents. I learned how to swim. I constantly improved, until I became a swimming coach,” he said in the 2022 interview.

An ace swimmer, Tattar participated in several local and international swimming tournaments.

In the year 2000, he participated in the Arab Swimming Championship in Jordan, winning two gold and one silver medal, a reward for his years of hard work.

“I told myself I had to turn this ordeal into a blessing; I made the amputation of my leg a motive for me to become an active member of the society. I developed my skills that enabled me to start a swimming school,” Tattar said about his life journey at the time.

Tattar’s passion for the sport made him travel across West Asia. He participated in various tournaments in Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and many other countries in the region.

The quest to learn more and improve his skills led him to join various swimming courses that eventually helped him qualify to become a rescuer apart from being a swimming instructor.

Talking about the bombardment that killed Tattar, head of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, Dr Fadel Naeem, said most of the injured who were admitted on Saturday following the regime’s bombardment on Tabaeen School had either sustained severe burns or lost their limbs.

According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, nearly 92,000 people have been injured in the war in the besieged strip, with at least 12,000 estimated to be children, many suffering irreversible injuries.

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Earlier this year, the Humanity & Inclusion NGO reported that 70 to 80 percent of those being admitted to Gaza hospitals had lost limbs or suffered spinal cord injuries.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that between October and January, more than 1,000 children lost one or both legs. 

Many amputations were performed without anesthesia and with crude instruments, explaining Israel’s destruction of the medical infrastructure in the enclave.

The Zionist regime has also destroyed the Hamad Hospital, Gaza’s only facility for manufacturing prosthetics and rehabilitation instruments.

Gaza has the “biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history,” Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a London-based Palestinian surgeon who specializes in plastic and reconstructive surgery, said in November.

At the beginning of the regime’s genocidal war, Abu Sitta spent 43 days working in Gaza.

“Around half of my operating list, which was around 10 to 12 cases every day... were children.”

According to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), prior to the current onslaught, Gaza was already suffering from an "amputee crisis" due to previous Israeli wars.

In 2019 alone, Israeli forces open-fired on Palestinian protestors resulting in 120 amputations, 20 of which were children.

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