October 13, 2025
“The Occupation Kills Everything, Including Athletes”
By Nic Wong
Mustafa Tafesh and Ashraf Murad, members of the Palestine National Baseball Team, are just two of 800 athletes who have been killed during Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Mustafa Tafesh was born to be an athlete. As a 21-year-old infielder for Palestine National Baseball Team, he made history in the first baseball championship Palestine competed in—the 2023 West Asia Cup in Pakistan—securing second place. But his dream was not to win; it was to raise Palestine’s flag internationally as an athlete. “When we played together, he was happy to represent Palestine at the highest level,” said Nader Ihmoud, an infielder for the team and editor in chief of Palestine in America.
Mustafa spent his childhood in various sports, playing soccer and badminton at the Hilal al Quds soccer club as a midfielder and defender and winning the Palestinian Under 18 League Badminton Championship in 2018. In each sport he played, he aspired to play at the international level. Completing his education at the age of 16, he started to compete in local tournaments and refereed girls’ softball and baseball matches. Even at times where the baseball team lost, he found a way to say the right one-liners to lift his team’s spirits while wearing a smile on his face. “He was the best teammate you can imagine,” said Ihmoud. “He was always in a good mood and he put everybody else in a good mood.”
On August 12, Tafesh was killed by an Israeli air strike outside his home in Sheikh Radwan, one of more than 800 Palestinian athletes who have died amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. “The occupation killed him,” said Ahmed Tafesh, Mustafa’s father and the president of the Palestinian Federation of Baseball and Softball, “preventing him from achieving his dreams and depriving Palestine of a distinguished player.”
