
Israeli Players Banned from World Chess Championship in Saudi Arabia - meri_dian
https://forward.com/fast-forward/390758/israeli-players-banned-from-world-chess-championship-in-saudi-arabia/
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mankash666
Ludicrous! Why the world keeps going back to Saudi Arabia for hosting secular
events and donning UN leadership positions on it is a mystery. 2018 was
supposed to bring us flying cars and AI manufacturing, not a fatwa bleeding
into sports!

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dogma1138
That is intentional most of the UN bodies are structured around the
geographical groups for which each group would elect a member. Due to how the
groups are structured you have effectively only a single group which is for
the most part nearly purely democratic and western that is the Western group
which includes NA Most of the EU/EEA, Australia and Turkey.

The Eastern region is basically Russia its newly formed vassal states and a
few EU countries that got shafted they like Japan also want to move into the
Western group.

Then you have Africa which gets its own region.

APAC which is the dominated by the Arab Peninsula, China and India and
Pakistan and the Latin American region which shifts constantly from being ok
to being quite loony.

The 5 region basically elect representatives to the various UN bodies like the
human rights council since the elections are internal it’s basically regional
politics and rotation of the crazy for 3 out of the 5 regions.

This is how you get Syria on the Human Rights Council, China as the monitor of
press freedom and Saudi Arabia as the champion of Women’s right in the UN.

Israel was not a member of any group as the Arab states blocked its membership
to the APAC and the African blocks, in 2013 if finally got to be a member of
the western block which meant that it was the first time in 65 years it could
send a representative to be elected to a UN position.

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akoster
I wonder why Saudi Arabia's privilege of hosting this competition was not
revoked when they decided to prevent players from attending based on their
country of origin. This is quite petty and stupid from a government which is
attempting to re-brand itself these days.

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gonvaled
You mean like the new immigration laws approved by the US government?

EDIT

To the downvoters: [https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-
canada-38785028](https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-38785028)

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akkat
Allowing players from all over the world to attend one event is very different
than allowing anyone to get permanent residency.

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xref
it shows how out of touch FIDE is as an organization, they're more about
marketing and selling the product of chess than being stewards of the game.

FIDEs weakness also shines through by not pulling the tournament from Saudi
Arabia. even an awful, corrupt organization like FIFA wouldn't allow say,
Qatar to start banning teams from the World Cup.

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gonvaled
But FIFA has allowed slavery like conditions in the run up.

We would better improve our own institutions instead of criticizing others.

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testouts
being compared to FIFA... not a good thing

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tzs
I wonder if anyone else bid to host this?

In 2015, they received no bids to host the rapid/blitz championship by the bid
deadline. They had to extend the deadline, and finally were able to get one
bid, from Berlin.

However, Berlin could only host if the date was moved, so FIDE had to accept
that. The only date available in Berlin conflicted with the Millionaire Chess
Open, which some top rapid/blitz players (such as Nakamura and So) had already
committed to.

A similar thing happened with the 2017 Women's World Championship. No bids.
FIDE rescheduled and tried again, getting one bid, from Iran. Because of
Iran's restrictions on women many players declined to attend, including some
who would have been favorites to win if they had attended.

It seems that it is getting harder and harder to find organizers interested in
hosting these events.

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ramgorur
Plot twist, playing chess is considered as "haraam" (forbidden/degeneracy)
according to most Sunni Islamic clerics.

