By Chantal Da Silva and Alexander Smith
Palestinian-American athlete Valerie Tarazi has arrived in Paris on a mission: To “speak up for the people who can’t” and raise hopes in Gaza as she prepares to represent them at the Olympics.
Making the Games “has been a dream of mine forever,” the swimmer, who will compete in the 200 meters individual medley, told NBC News in a video call, shortly after landing in the French capital last week.
Tarazi, who is planning to start a Ph.D. having just completed her master's degree in supply chain management at Alabama’s Auburn University, said she had envisioned herself at the Olympics ever since she was a child watching the Beijing Games in 2008.
But as well as fulfilling a personal ambition, Tarazi said, she hopes to use her presence in Paris to speak up for the people of Gaza, where more than 38,700 people have been killed in the Israeli military campaign, according to local health officials, since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which saw around 1,200 people killed and around 240 people taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
“We’re not here to compete for ourselves or represent ourselves,” said Tarazi, who was born and raised in Chicago. “This is more than that.”
The 24-year-old is one of eight Palestinian athletes set to compete in Paris, along with fellow swimmer Yazan al Bawwab, taekwondo fighter Omar Ismail and judoka Fares Badawi. Boxer Waseem Abu Sal, runners LaylaAlmasri and Mohammed Dwedar will also take part, while Jorge Antonio Salhe will compete in the skeet shooting.
Taekwondo fighter Ismail, 18, is the only competitor who directly qualified for Paris. The other seven athletes have been granted Universality Places under a program that allows athletes from nations with less-established sports programs to compete without having to meet qualification criteria. Almost 100 national Olympic committees are eligible for such placements, according to the Olympics website.
Tarazi is part of the diaspora who live outside the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Many are descendants of families displaced in the “Nakba” of 1948, when around 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes for the founding of Israel.
Badawi, Abu Sal and Dewdar are from the occupied West Bank, where there has been rising violence since Oct. 7.
About 700,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the latter of which Palestinians have claimed as the capital for a future state. The international community, including the Biden administration, considers the Israeli settlements illegal.
And last month, in a move that is likely to worsen already soaring tensions, Israel approved the appropriation of nearly 5 square miles of land in the Jordan Valley — the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric called it “a step in the wrong direction,” adding that “the direction we want to be heading is to find a negotiated two-state solution.”
Tarazi said her own family’s roots are in Gaza, where many of her relatives remain. She added that her family back in Chicago were doing as much as they could to help those in the enclave where war has been raging for more than nine months.
“I say I’m one of the luckiest Palestinians in the whole world because I’m not there — but at the same time, I’m one of the unluckiest Palestinians in the world because I can’t be there because it’s not safe enough,” she said. “It weighs on all of us every single day.”
Swimmer al Bawwab, who was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Dubai, echoed her sentiments. The 24-year-old, who has family in the West Bank, said he hoped to show the world that Palestinians in Gaza and beyond simply want “the same rights” as everyone else.
Competing in the Olympics, he said, was not just a point of personal pride, but also his “way of using sports as a tool” to “prove to the world that we are also humans.”
“We also deserve the same rights,” he added. “We also want to play sports.”
In the midst of Israel's offensive in Gaza, there have have been growing calls for Israeli athletes to be barred from competing in the upcoming Games. The athletes with whom NBC News spoke declined to comment on the matter.
Ismail, the taekwondo fighter, said he also hopes to inspire young Palestinians when he competes in the City of Lights.
“I’m thinking of kids in Palestine ... in Gaza, also, and I hope they can see me as a role model,” he said in a phone interview last as he trained for the Games.
Nader Jayousi, the technical director of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, said the athletes' mere presence at the Games was of incredible importance, not only as a means of inspiring younger generations, but also to reinforce the Palestinian identity on the global stage.
Those competing in Paris will have their “names going down in the books of history under the name of ‘Palestine,’” he said, though, he said the athletes were also at the Games to win and planned to go for gold.
“We don’t need anybody to feel sorry for us,” he said. “We need people to recognize what kind of a nation we are able to achieve."
