{"id":50240,"date":"2025-08-07T11:16:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T11:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/50240\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T11:16:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T11:16:10","slug":"belfast-is-very-pro-palestine-tyrone-mckenna-says-local-boxing-community-jumped-at-chance-to-welcome-west-bank-boxers-to-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/50240\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Belfast is very pro-Palestine\u2019 \u2013 Tyrone McKenna says local boxing community \u2018jumped\u2019 at chance to welcome West Bank boxers to city"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professional boxer Tyrone McKenna<\/a> has said that the Belfast boxing community \u201cjumped\u201d at the chance to welcome a group of West Bank children<\/a> to the city for a special fundraising event on Thursday. <\/p>\n

The 35-year-old west Belfast<\/a> boxer recently spent two-and-a-half weeks at the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

During his trip, he helped children learn to box at the ACLA\u00cd Palestine gym, which was founded by Ainle \u00d3 Caireallain, the brother of Kneecap member M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap (Naoise \u00d3 Caireallain)<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Read more: Gaza surgeon describes atrocities at Israel\u2019s \u2018death trap\u2019 aid distribution points<\/a><\/p>\n

\"‘A<\/a>\"PSNI<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking to The Irish News, Mr McKenna said that the experience was \u201ceye-opening\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"BelfastHe said that he plans to return to the camp following his upcoming fight in September PICTURE: COLM LENAGHAN <\/p>\n

\u201cI was over there and was training with these kids that don\u2019t even have running water in their camps for the last ten months,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s six thousand people there that have to share the one tap; there\u2019s families getting trailed out at four in the morning, getting arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having previously visited Palestine<\/a> prior to October 2023, he added that there had been a \u201cdramatic change\u201d since the last time he was there. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no reason for there not to be water in that camp, it\u2019s just that the IDF, the Israelis turned off the water. They can turn it off at the flick of a switch, the water and the electric,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re treated like sub-humans out there \u2013 you see that first-hand when you go out there and it breaks your heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BelfastThe 35-year-old said that the local boxing community ‘jumped’ at the chance to host children from the West Bank at a special fundraising event PICTURE: COLM LENAGHAN <\/p>\n

He said that he will be returning to the camp following his upcoming Windsor Park fight on September 13. <\/p>\n

\u201cI will be going back out after this fight for longer, maybe a month or two to help out even more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got a lot of family members in Gaza; they don\u2019t know if they\u2019re alive or how sick they are. They can\u2019t phone to even ask \u2013 there\u2019s a lot of stress in camp.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe boxing gym, growing up for me, if I was in hard times, I always thought boxing was a brilliant place to let out the frustrations and forget about the outside world. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s what I was trying to help the kids there [with] \u2013 just get in the gym, try and forget about the outside and let out your frustrations and have a bit of fun while you\u2019re doing it. <\/p>\n

\"TyroneTyrone during his recent trip to Gaza. PICTURE: TYRONE MCKENNA \/ INSTAGRAM <\/p>\n

He added that the \u201cspirit and the resilience\u201d that he witnessed in the children was \u201cunbelievable\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever they were going through in their day, they were still showing up to boxing every single day with a smile on their face,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On Thursday evening, a group of five Palestinian children from the El Barrio Boxing Gym in Ramallah take on a select Irish team in a special fundraising event at the Devenish in connection with St Paul\u2019s Antrim ABC.<\/p>\n

The group have visited Waterford and Dublin before making their way to Belfast. <\/p>\n

\u201cBelfast is very pro-Palestine and big supporters of Palestine, so just to give back to them and to give a bit of joy to kids that wouldn\u2019t see much joy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re over in the West Bank seeing things that kids shouldn\u2019t see. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo come over here and be treated nice and go to the host houses that they\u2019re staying in and just having normality for a couple of days or week, it\u2019s a big experience for them and it\u2019s something that Belfast boxers, as soon as they heard they could help out, they jumped at it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Professional boxer Tyrone McKenna has said that the Belfast boxing community \u201cjumped\u201d at the chance to welcome a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,35003,16485,802,6898,6899,85,42524],"class_list":{"0":"post-50240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-belfast","11":"tag-boxer","12":"tag-boxing","13":"tag-gaza","14":"tag-palestine","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-west-belfast"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}