“How can we live in the world like this?”: Ons Jabeur speaks out for children in Gaza

Ons Jabeur has raised her voice for the children in the Gaza Strip, acknowledging that the global conflicts of recent years have affected her even on the tennis court. The three-time Grand Slam runner-up is making her return to the Australian Open after several months away from the game in the latter part of 2024.

While she was away from the court, Jabeur took on an active role as an ambassador for the World Food Programme (WFP) and has been one of the few athletes who has spoken up about the critical situation in Gaza: “What’s happening in the world, it affected me more than I had expected,” the 30-year-old said during a press conference at the Aussie Open.

Jabeur has consistently participated in charity events supporting Arab women and children. Her role with the WFP has led her to connect with victims of war: “I try to help as much as I can but the tough part is I know I cannot really help as much as I want to. The loss at Wimbledon affected me also. A lot of things together, with the injuries and playing, all that baggage, didn’t help the performance.”

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Jabeur reflects on her past losses and her mental struggles in tennis

The former World No. 2 has been close to glory in major tournaments but has yet to capture a Grand Slam title, suffering defeats in the finals of Wimbledon 2022 and 2023, as well as the US Open 2022. Her most recent loss, against Marketa Vondrousova, marked the beginning of a dip in her form. “I tried to remind myself why I started playing tennis. The court should be my happy place and if it’s not the case, then something is probably wrong,” Jabeur admitted.

“Everybody calls me the Minister of Happiness, sees me happy all the time, but I’m not happy all the time. There are some moments of anger, sadness. You can see on the court, I get angry a lot. It’s a mix of a lot of things. But I try to highlight that happiness is the best emotion anybody could feel. It’s very important to remind myself of such a beautiful emotion,” she added.

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Jabeur also reflected on the tragic death of children in war zones like Ukraine and Gaza: “The important thing to speak out is to try to find peace somehow, to raise my voice, to use my platform, but also to help the kids, the families. They’re suffering every day.”

“As a WFP ambassador, we’re trying to get a simple thing we have every day here, food. They don’t have that and now it is the winter there so babies are freezing to death because of that, which for me, it’s inhuman,” she added.

“How can we live in the world like this? What is happening in the world? For me, it doesn’t even make sense. It just is really, really horrible. “Kids are dying everywhere, either in Ukraine or in Gaza or in other countries. It is very sad. I stand by justice. I stand by peace. That’s the most important thing. If they stop firing and selling guns or whatever, this will be over. But it’s a little bit more complicated than that.”

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