DUBAI: Yahya Nabil Kabbara has always been perceived as academically distinguished, but not athletically, due to being subjected to nightmarish waves of bullying over his obesity since childhood.
A Lebanese math teacher, Kabbara chose his own method to fight bullying by swimming 5.5 km to a rocky island off Lebanon’s coast to prove that “being overweight doesn’t impede oneself from notching achievements.”
Since a teenager, friends and classmates never allowed Kabbara to play any sport with them because they said his “obesity makes them lose.”
“That left a scar in me and pushed me to set that personal challenge to swim to the furthest island off Tripoli’s seashore,” Kabbara told Arab News.
Born in the northern Lebanese city in 1987, the 34-year-old tutor currently teaches math for secondary classes at a public high school.
Commonly known as “Araneb Island” or “Rabbit’s Island,” his target is the biggest of three flat rocky islands that constitute the Palm Islands Nature Reserve. The three islands’ area is around 4.2 sq km.
On Sunday, Sept. 19, Kabbara put on a pair of paddles, jumped into the ocean and swam for nearly four-and-a-half hours until he reached Rabbit’s Island.
Having once weighed over 140kg, Kabbara has been training seriously by swimming, walking, hiking, mountain climbing and preparing himself mentally and physically to be able to fulfill what he describes as a “personal challenge and a message to all those who bullied him for being overweight.”
He added: “Classmates and friends never allowed me to play any sport with them because, according to them, my obesity always made them lose. That hurt me a lot … it left an aching scar in me that I always stayed alone. My family once thought I had autism,” he said.
Coming from a hardworking family, Kabbara started teaching at the age of 14 because he adores the profession and needed to earn pocket money to support his father.
Despite having two doctorates, he could not land a university job because, according to him, “you need a wasta (support from a politician or influential person), meanwhile I’ve never been affiliated to or supported any Lebanese politician.”
In 2015, Kabbara obtained a Ph.D. in applied Mathematics at the Lebanese University while also picking up a doctorate from Paris-Est Creteil University in France.
The father of a nine-month-old daughter said the fact that he was constantly bullied at youth pushed him to work “seriously and really hard” on his fitness to prove to others that being overweight “should not cripple oneself from fulfilling their goals.”
“At a certain point of my life I realized that I have fulfilled a lot academically and that the time has come for me to accomplish something physical,” he said, reiterating that he set up his swimming challenge “to prove to himself and others that with perseverance any goal is attainable.”
Kabbara explained that the idea to swim to Rabbit’s Island was like a dream to him since childhood.
When the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) surfaced in early 2020, the 34-year-old had still been suffering from obesity and feared that lockdowns would force him to gain more weight and feel “desolate and depressed.”
“But I told myself ‘no.’ I walked as much as possible and swam a lot after borrowing my cousin’s paddles. I love swimming so I swam 300 meters, then 500. In November I swam to the nearest island, Al-Ballan. It took me an hour. Then I went to the second island of Al-Rmayleh,” said Kabbara.
“All I wanted to do is accomplish my goal and prove to myself and others that everything is possible,” concluded Kabbara, who said that he had dropped his weight to 109kg.
Lebanese teacher swims 5.5 km to island off Tripoli coast to challenge obesity bullies
https://arab.news/y9xwt
Lebanese teacher swims 5.5 km to island off Tripoli coast to challenge obesity bullies
- Double Ph.D., Yahya Kabbara, was bullied as a youth for being obese until he ‘notched a physical success’
- “Classmates and friends never allowed me to play any sport with them because, according to them, my obesity always made them lose,” he told Arab News
Lebanon to hold parliament session on January 9 to elect president
- State news agency: ‘Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9’
“Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9,” the official National News Agency reported.
Israeli tank fires at 3 south Lebanese towns
- Lebanese security sources and state media report tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba
BEIRUT: Israeli tank fire hit three towns along Lebanon’s southeast border with Israel on Thursday, Lebanese security sources and state media said, a day after a ceasefire barring “offensive military operations” came into force.
Tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba, all of which lie within two kilometers of the Blue Line demarcating the border between Lebanon and Israel. One of the security sources said two people were wounded in Markaba.
A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah took effect on Wednesday under a deal brokered by the US and France, intended to allow people in both countries to start returning to homes in border areas shattered by 14 months of fighting.
But managing the returns have been complicated. Israeli troops remain stationed within Lebanese territory in towns along the border, and on Thursday morning the Israeli military urged residents of towns along the border strip not to return yet for their own safety.
The three towns hit on Thursday morning lie within that strip.
There was no immediate comment on the tank rounds from Hezbollah or Israel, who had been fighting for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war.
The agreement, a rare diplomatic feat in a region racked by conflict, ended the deadliest confrontation between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group in years. But Israel is still fighting its other arch foe, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip.
Under the ceasefire terms, Israeli forces can take up to 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military not to allow residents back to villages near the border.
Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, the top interlocutor for Lebanon in negotiating the deal, had said on Wednesday that residents could return home.
Syria war monitor says more than 130 dead in army-militant clashes in north
- Clashes followed “an operation launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
- The air forces of both Syria and its ally Russia struck the attacking militants
BEIRUT: A monitor of Syria’s war said on Thursday that more than 130 combatants had been killed in clashes between the army and militant groups in the country’s north, as the government also reported fierce fighting.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll in the clashes which began a day earlier after the militants launched an attack “has risen to 132, including 65 fighters” from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, 18 from allied factions “and 49 members of the regime forces.”
Palestinian leader Abbas lays ground for succession
- Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday announced who would replace him in an interim period when the post becomes vacant, effectively removing the Islamist movement Hamas from any involvement in a future transition.
Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president.
Under current Palestinian law, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) takes over the Palestinian Authority in the event of a power vacuum.
But the PLC, where Hamas had a majority, no longer exists since Abbas officially dissolved it in 2018 after more than a decade of tensions between his secular party, Fatah, and Hamas, which ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.
In a decree, Abbas said the Palestinian National Council chairman, Rawhi Fattuh, would be his temporary replacement should the position should become vacant.
“If the position of the president of the national authority becomes vacant in the absence of the legislative council, the Palestinian National Council president shall assume the duties... temporarily,” it said.
The decree added that following the transition period, elections must be held within 90 days. This deadline can be extended in the event of a “force majeure,” it said.
The PNC is the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has over 700 members from the Palestinian territories and abroad.
Hamas, which does not belong to the PLO, has no representation on the council. The PNC deputies are not elected, but appointed.
The decree refers to the “delicate stage in the history of the homeland and the Palestinian cause” as war rages in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, after the latter’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel in October last year.
There are also persistent divisions between Hamas and Fatah.
The decree comes on the same day that a ceasefire entered into force in Lebanon after an agreement between Israel and Hamas’s ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The Palestinian Authority appears weaker than ever, unable to pay its civil servants and threatened by Israeli far-right ministers’ calls to annex all or part of the occupied West Bank, an ambition increasingly less hidden by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli military says it downed drone smuggling weapons from Egypt
CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Wednesday it shot down a drone that was carrying weapons and crossed from Egypt to Israel.
When asked about the latest drone incident, Egyptian security sources said they had no knowledge of such an incident.
In two separate incidents in October, Israel also said it downed two drones smuggling weapons from Egyptian territory.
Israeli officials have said during the war in Gaza that Palestinian militant group Hamas used tunnels running under the border into Egypt’s Sinai region to smuggle arms.
However, Egypt says it destroyed tunnel networks leading to Gaza years ago and created a buffer zone and border fortifications that prevent smuggling.
