For some Muslim countries, the boycott of Israel extends even to child athletes. This is particularly evident in chess, a sport rich in young prodigies. At the World Youth Chess Championships (U7–U17) in Roquetas de Mar, Spain, which covers age categories from under-7 to under-17, players from Syria, Lebanon and Algeria are required to forfeit if paired against an Israeli opponent. But not everyone complies. There have also been heartwarming displays of sportsmanship, especially in the under-7 category.
The Syrian player Talab Rami, born in 2013, is among the world’s top 35 players for his age group and not far from the top 10 among under-13s. Travel difficulties delayed his arrival in Roquetas, causing him to forfeit the first two rounds. He then won the next five games (the tournament consists of 11 rounds), despite the Syrian Chess Federation doing everything it could to prevent him from facing the Israeli player Michael Dorfman in Round 5.
The main action from Beirut was a written request to the chief arbiter in Roquetas, the highly respected and experienced Greek official Panagiotis Nikolopoulos. Nikolopoulos was unequivocal: “I told them that I cannot prevent anyone from playing if they want to play.”
The Greek arbiter acknowledges that until 2018, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) followed an informal and opaque approach in such situations. “Although nothing was written down, arbiters tried to avoid pairings, both among children and adults, between Israeli players and opponents from countries that refused to play them,” he says.
That changed dramatically at the end of 2018 with the election of Russian official Arkady Dvorkovich as FIDE president. “Since then, the directive we have received has been to reject any pressure based on political considerations and not to avoid or alter any pairing,” Nikolopoulos explains.
So Rami played and won. He then went on to win three more games in a row, six consecutive victories in total, before finally losing on Monday to the remarkable Kazakh player Danis Kuandikuly, who had scored 8.5 points out of a possible nine. After congratulating his opponent and discussing the game’s critical moments with him, Rami told EL PAÍS that he had arrived late in Roquetas because he did not get his visa until the day of the first match.
He did not shy away from questions about his game against the Israeli player. “That day I woke up late, just in time to get to the game, and I didn’t know that the Syrian Chess Federation didn’t want me to play,” he said.
Would he have played if he had known? After some hesitation, he replied: “In a normal tournament, no. Even though I live in the United Kingdom, not Syria, and I don’t want anything to do with politics, I think those two arguments carry less weight than an instruction from the federation. Having said that, this is a world championship, and I had a lot at stake. Maybe I still wouldn’t have played, but it would have been a very difficult decision.”
Of the other two countries that refuse to play against Israel, Lebanon and Algeria — unlike Egypt and, in recent years, the United Arab Emirates, among others, which do not boycott Israeli players — the Lebanese team delegate, Mohammad Al-Habbash, agreed to speak to this newspaper after stressing that it was “a very unpleasant matter.”
His under-11 player, Majd Kaafarani, produced a medical certificate to justify his forfeit against an Israeli opponent in the seventh round. The tournament’s official doctor, Everardo Ricardo, explained: “I signed the certificate because if I’m told that the child spent the night vomiting, I have no way of proving that isn’t true.”
Al-Habbash offered the following explanation: “Our children have relatives or acquaintances who have been killed in Israeli attacks. When they are paired against an Israeli player, they often have a bad night.”
Would Kaafarani have played if he had not been given a medical certificate? “The Lebanese Chess Federation does not have a rule requiring players to forfeit against Israelis,” Al-Habbash replied. “But the Lebanese government does.” He declined to add anything further.
At these world championships for children and teenagers, there is often more tension among parents and coaches than among the players themselves. Some participants who find themselves in a losing position will drag out a game unnecessarily rather than resign when defeat is already inevitable, for fear their relatives or trainers will think they gave up too quickly. Fortunately for the arbiters, all other adults — apart from accredited journalists — must leave the playing hall a few minutes after the start of each round.
The most uplifting, and least tense, of these playing halls is the one occupied by the under-7s who are not among the tournament leaders. Walk in, and it feels like entering a wonderful world, where things happen that would be almost unthinkable in most sporting competitions.
In the third round, the Scottish player Alexander Porta stopped the clock and called over the chief arbiter for that hall, Asun Martínez, because his opponent, the Lithuanian player Mangirdas Savickas, had burst into tears as a seemingly inevitable defeat drew near. Play resumed after a while, the Lithuanian lost, and the tears started flowing again. The winner walked over to try to comfort him, and was heard saying: “You’ll feel better soon. If you want, I can tell you the advice my mother usually gives me to help me get over being sad more quickly.”
The youngest of the tournament’s 715 participants from 81 countries is five-year-old Israeli player Idan Wexler. On Sunday afternoon, he was due to face the Lebanese player Tim Adam Khalife, who also produced a medical certificate and did not show up for the game.
Idan’s mother says, and even regrets a little, that her son is not more competitive: “My husband and I would like losses to bother him a bit more. But he doesn’t flinch when he loses. He turns on the TV to watch soccer, as if nothing happened. He’s a big [Lionel] Messi fan.”
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