Three weeks after Israel’s Olympic athletes earned an Israeli record number of medals at the Summer Olympics in Paris (seven), the Israeli competitors in the Paralympics participated successfully at the same venues.
The Israeli men and women returned home last week with a total of 10 medals.
Israeli athletes have traditionally fared better at the Paralympics than at the Olympics, winning nearly 400 medals at the Paralympics and its precursor competitions since 1960, far exceeding the 20 that Israeli Olympians have brought home.
The standards for qualifying for the Paralympics are not as high as for the Olympics, says David Wiseman, founder of the Follow Team Israel Facebook page. Similarly, Wiseman said, it’s easier for Israeli Arabs to qualify for the country’s Paralympic team.
A critical reason for Israel’s Paralympic success is Israel’s expertise in treatment and rehabilitation of, and respect for, people with disabilities, including amputees, men and women who were the subject of injuries in war and terrorism, and victims of accidents and birth defects.
The composition of this year’s Israeli Paralympic delegation, as in past years, reflected the country’s religious and ethnic demographic more accurately than the Olympic squads, which usually consists of Jewish athletes.
Members of the 2024 Paralympic delegation included Arabs and Druze, as well as several members of Israeli émigré families.
Winners of medals at the 2024 Paralympics were:
• Swimmer Ami Omer Dadaon, who has cerebral palsy, won four medals: gold for the men’s 100-meter freestyle S4; gold for the men’s 200-meter freestyle S4; silver for the men’s 150-meter individual medley S4; and bronze for the men’s 50-meter freestyle S4.
• Rower Moran Samuel won gold for women’s single sculls.
• Taekwondo athlete Asaf Yasur won gold for the men’s 58-kg.
• Rowers Saleh Shaheen and Shahar Milfelder won bronze for the mixed double sculls. An Israeli Druze, Shaheen was severely wounded in a terrorist attack while serving in the IDF at a Gaza Strip border crossing in 2005. Milfelder lost half her pelvis to cancer.
• Israel’s women’s goalball team won silver. The members of the six-person team included Lihi Ben David, Gal Hamrani, Elham Mahamid, Noa Malka, Or Mizrahi and Roni Ohayon.
• Swimmer Mark Malyar won bronze for the men’s 100-meter backstroke S8.
• Tennis player Guy Sasson won bronze for the men’s quad singles.
The list does not include flagbearer Adam Berdichevsky, who lost a leg in a 2007 boating accident in Thailand, and competed in singles and doubles wheelchair events in the 2016 and 2021 competitions, and survived the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack at his home in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, but did not advance in the Paralympic competition.
Swimmer Iyad Shalabi, an Arab Muslim resident of northern Israel who was born deaf and mute and became paraplegic after an accident at 13, is also not included in the list.
Shalabi, who won a pair of gold medals at past Paralympics, qualified for this year’s competition but could not go to Paris because of an illness in his family.
Dr. Ludwig Guttman, a British-German neurologist who fled Nazi Germany, was the founder of the competition for disabled athletes that evolved into the Paralympics.
For the US, track and field star Ezra Frech had a breakout performance, winning his first-ever Paralympic medals, both gold, in the men’s 100-meter T63 and the high jump T63.
In the 100-meter, Frech, 19, who was born without a left knee and shinbone and with only one finger on his left hand, beat the German silver medalist by .02 second.
His 1.94-meter jump in Paris topped the Indian silver medalist by .06 meters and set a new Paralympic record. Frech was .03 meters shy of his world record of 1.97 meters.
American table tennis star Ian Seidenfeld, 23, won his second career Paralympic medal in Paris, a bronze in the men’s singles MS6 competition. He had won gold in Tokyo.
Seidenfeld, who was born with Pseudoachondroplasia dwarfism, is coached by his father Mitchell Seidenfeld, a three-time Paralympian and four-time medalist.
JTA’s Jacob Gurvis contributed to this report.
