Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022, and the war is still going on today.
Just a few days after the start of the war in Ukraine, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) initiated the process of a chess blockade of Russia and Belarus, which assisted Russia in the war.
A few months later, a decision was taken that Russian and Belarusian chess teams would not be allowed to participate in FIDE international tournaments, while individual chess players would not be allowed to play under the Russian or Belarusian flag.
Online chess platforms soon joined the campaign.
The blockade was eventually joined by the International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF).
FIDE also imposed a temporary ban on participating in international tournaments on international chess grandmaster Sergei Karyakin. As a result, Karyakin, one of the world’s strongest chess players, was excluded from the candidates’ tournament for world chess champion.
Karyakin was accused of publicly “justifying” Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. It is indeed what Karyakin did, referring to the systematic crimes committed by Ukraine against people of Russian nationality.
Karyakin was of the opinion that, in the name of stopping the genocide in Ukraine, Russia was justified in going to war.
However, the civil war in Ukraine, which started in 2014, had killed around 20,000 civilians by 2022. But, by November 2023, the Russian invasion that began in 2022 had already killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers.
However, there have been several shortcomings in the sanctioning actions of international chess organisations concerning the war in Ukraine.
These organisations did not have rules for chess blocking of Russia and Belarus. The bans were imposed by introducing new rules on the fly, ad hoc. These rules were applied retrospectively. Also, these restrictions amount to collective punishment, which is prohibited by international law. The decisions in question also violated the accepted moral principles of sport and chess-sport. It was a politicisation of sport.
However, one of the main drawbacks was that the punishment of Russia and Belarus was discriminatory, selective.
For example, there have been no barriers to chess players from other countries that have started unjustified wars, occupied or annexed foreign territories, committed war crimes, etc.
For example, international chess organisations have not imposed any barriers on US chess players despite the US starting unjustified wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, occupying these countries for many years and committing war crimes there. At the time when the Russian and Belarus chess players were being punished, the US had just finally withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan, but some US military bases are still in Iraq today.
On 07 October this year, 2023, the Palestinian armed group Hamas, exiting the Gaza Strip, suddenly attacked Israel. Over a thousand Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in the attack.
Israel then declared war on Hamas and started military operations in the Gaza Strip, an area separated by a wall and barbed wire, where more than two million people live on a few hundred square kilometres. It is one of the most densely populated areas on the planet and has essentially been turned into an open-air prison.
In the course of this military action, Israel imposed an absolute blockade on the Gaza Strip, with no water and no electricity. Food and medicine could not be sent there either. Finally, the blocking of internet access was added. People have not been allowed in and out, with a few exceptions.
In the walled area, Israel started destroying homes with powerful aircraft bombs and rockets, hitting and/or damaging hospitals and refugee shelters.
A month later today, 9,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza, more than half of them women and children. More than 10,000 people are still trapped under the rubble.
International organisations confirm that Israel has managed to kill more children in the Gaza Strip in one month in 2023 than were killed in all the war zones on the planet in the whole of 2022. In fact, significantly more children have been killed by Israeli bombs in one month than in two years of war in Ukraine. See also, e.g.:
“GAZA: 3,195 CHILDREN KILLED IN THREE WEEKS SURPASSES ANNUAL NUMBER OF CHILDREN KILLED IN CONFLICT ZONES SINCE 2019”
Save the Children, 29 October 2023
The statistics on civilian casualties are similar.
The United Nations has raised suspicions that Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip are a war crime.
However, the Colombian President has explicitly called it genocide.
Returning now to the game of chess, international chess organisations such as FIDE and the ICCF, as well as the major chess platforms, have done nothing about Israel.
Therefore, I call on all chess organisations to either immediately lift the restrictions imposed on Russia and Belarus or to impose the same restrictions on Israel, whose disproportionate and indiscriminate military action is killing a catastrophic number of civilians in the Gaza Strip every day.
Suppose it is permissible to obstruct Russian sports persons to get Russia to stop its military aggression against Ukraine. In that case, it must also be permissible to obstruct Israeli sports persons to get Israel to stop its war crimes and to punish the perpetrators.
Since there is obviously no hope that the politically biased international chess organisations will impose such restrictions on Israel, I will make a proposal to all individual chess players - a proposal that I myself will follow:
- Refuse to play chess with anyone who plays under the Israeli flag.
- Refuse to play chess with anyone who is an Israeli citizen and who does not publicly, clearly and loudly condemn Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
- Refuse to play chess with anyone who publicly supports or justifies Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
These restrictions would remain in place until Israel has lifted the blockade of the Gaza Strip and stopped the bombing of its residents, and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his henchmen have been convicted of war crimes in court.
Of course, local chess clubs, local chess tournament organisers, etc., can also impose similar restrictions.
However, at a non-individual, organisational, official level, the third point above, which calls for public condemnation of Israel’s actions, should be avoided. Notably, the Israeli police have threatened to severely punish anyone who criticises Israel’s current military action in the Gaza Strip. It is unreasonable to formally demand that a sports person should make such a statement, which would result in him being punished by the authorities in his own country.
As for Hamas, the European Union has already declared Hamas a terrorist organisation, so there is no need to impose such sporting sanctions on the group. After all, you are not going to meet a chess player playing under the Hamas flag anywhere, anyway.
As far as the Jews are concerned, collective punishment must not be applied to them. No one may be accused or discriminated against based on their nationality.
03 November 2023, Tallinn
Jüri Eintalu, chess player and philosopher
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