Support My Marathon Run for the Rachel Corrie Tournament for People with Disabilities in Gaza

• November 19, 2015, 6:40 pm

Friends, on Nov 29, I will be running my ninth full marathon in Seattle Washington. That is a distance of 26.2 miles (42.195k). This run, like others, is dedicated to a good cause: the Rachel Corrie Tournament for People with Disabilities to be held in Gaza in December. The Gaza tournament coincides with the United Nation’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which falls on December 3.

150 men and women will take part in football, table tennis, and basketball tournaments, and a wheelchair marathon, providing a sport forum to showcase the skills of athletes who are deaf, amputees, paraplegics, or have suffered from polio.

These men and women are a sampling of the many thousands of disabled Gazans, many of whom became this way in the last Israeli war on Gaza and the previous one and the one before that ..

They deserve our love and support, least because they are a source of pride and inspiration. I thank the Rachel Corrie foundation for its continued initiatives, especially in the field of sports . These initiatives bring communities together, where they celebrate their resilience and collective spirit, despite their continued pain and seemingly perpetual siege.

Please support my run, and Gaza’s inspiring athletes.

Please share and spread the message.

Ramzy Baroud

– Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include “Searching Jenin”, “The Second Palestinian Intifada” and his latest, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.