‘Just Don’t Come Here’: Israeli Chess Players Nix Competition in Spain

A press conference outside the Sestao Chess Club in the Basque Country in Spain, September 2025. (Source: Social media via JNS)

Natan Galula | JNS

Erez Kupervaser, 25, had been eager to participate in the 40th Basque Country Open competition in Sestao, a town in Bilbao in northern Spain, from Sept. 12-18. He and three friends who registered for the tournament rented an apartment in advance, about a 15-minute walk from where the competition was to be held.

But after it was made public in the local and national press that the tournament’s organizers, the Sestao Chess Club, had asked the Israelis to pull out in protest over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, the owner of the apartment pleaded with them to cancel their reservations.

“People are waiting for you here. Take your money back. Just don’t come here,” the woman told the four Israelis, according to Kupervaser, who spoke with JNS on Sept. 14.

He stressed that the reservation policy did not include a refund, but the apartment owner insisted. “When someone tells you something like that, and you already have so many red flags, we said, ‘OK, let’s just take the money and cancel the whole thing.’”

Kupervaser, who is from Haifa and studies systems engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, noted that the event’s organizers had refused to employ security arrangements for the Israeli players. He said that the president of the competition had inflamed the issue in the press in what seemed like a preparation for a political event, not a chess tournament.

The apartment owner told the Israelis they had appeared all over the news, saying that “you don’t understand what you’re coming to,” according to Kupervaser.

Even at this stage, he was willing to fly to Spain and compete, to defy Israel’s detractors. But his friends opted out, and he did not want to travel alone. “Overall, our safety is more important than prizes and a sense of pride. At the end of the day, no Israeli flew there. They scared us, which is a kind of terror,” said Kupervaser.

He went on to say that two Israeli registrants, who currently serve in the Israel Defense Forces, also had concerns that they might get arrested in light of the recent sanctions Spain imposed on the Jewish state.

On Sept. 8, the Spanish government announced nine measures “to stop the genocide in Gaza, to prosecute its executors, and to support the Palestinian population.” One of the measures stipulates, “Prohibition of access to Spanish territory for all persons directly involved in genocide, human rights violations and war crimes in Gaza.”

Lior Aizenberg, an organizer of chess tournaments and an activist against boycotts of Israelis in sports, told JNS on Sept. 14 that what had unfolded in the Basque Country could lead to ominous consequences.

“It’s a total disgrace,” he said. “If they can boycott in this manner, they can boycott any Israeli in every sports competition and in every cultural event.”

As a representative of the players, Aizenberg noted that it was the first time that he felt that antisemitism had impacted him personally. “We live here [in Israel] in a kind of a bubble. [But] here I felt like we were second-class citizens.”

Recounting the chain of events, Aizenberg said that the Sestao Chess Club sent the Israelis an email on June 26, saying that they could not participate in the event. The organizers backtracked upon demand for an explanation, albeit adding that the players’ safety could not be assured.

In early September, the Israelis received another email stating that they would not play under the Israeli national flag, but under the neutral International Chess Federation (FIDE) flag.

Aizenberg immediately launched a campaign to rescind the decision. The next day, FIDE issued a statement that it “strongly condemns” any form of discrimination. The Sestao Chess Club folded, reinstating Israeli flags to the tournament’s website and physical grounds.

Meanwhile, the club’s president, Miguel Ángel del Olmo, spoke to the local press, telling chess and poker outlet Damas y Reyes that the Israelis were not welcome, and, “if there’s any luck, none of them will come.”

On Sept. 7, the event’s organizers released a statement that condemned the “genocide that Israel is carrying out in Gaza.” It added that to avoid suspension from FIDE, the club had no choice but to return the Israeli flags. However, as the symbols in the venue are “the exclusive responsibility of the tournament,” the organizers decided to display only Palestinian and local Basque Country flags at the tables.

Erez Kupervaser playing a game of chess, September 2025. (Courtesy via JNS)

Del Olmo convened a press conference with local pro-Palestinian groups in which he encouraged “noisy” protests to accompany the tournament. The Israelis withdrew 24 hours before the competition began.

Aizenberg said he had recruited Spanish lawyers to deal with this case to compensate the Israeli players and strip the Sestao competition of its international recognition so that such incidents do not recur.

Pressure against Israeli participation in international sports escalated on Sept. 14 when pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with police forces in Madrid, forcing the Vuelta a España cycling competition to end abruptly before riders reached the final stage through the center of the city.

The demonstrations were expected in light of the participation of the Israel-Premier Tech team, which suffered multiple disruptions by activists throughout this year’s Vuelta, a multi-stage road cycling race.

Speaking the following day at a meeting of his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that such disruptions with Israeli participants “should widen and spread to all corners of the world,” according to The Guardian.

“It’s already happening in some parts of the world, and we’ve seen how European governments are saying that as long as the barbarism continues, Israel can’t use any international platform to whitewash its presence,” he added.

‘They Forgot About Oct. 7’

Kupervaser started playing chess when he was five years old. “My father taught me how to move the pieces. Then I started going to chess classes and playing in tournaments,” he related.

“I won Israel’s championship in chess for ages under 20,” he noted casually, adding that he had defeated international masters Guy Levin and Yotam Shohat — who also withdrew from the competition in Sestao — before chess became more of a hobby for him.

A chess board is seen in a chess tournament held at the Knesset. (Photo credit: Hadas Parush/Flash90 via JNS)

One of Kupervaser’s two sisters, Shani, 27, was murdered at the Nova music festival during the Hamas-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2023.

Terrorists murdered her alongside her close friend and roommate, Itay Banjo, while they were trying to escape. She had recently finished a master’s degree in economics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and was accepted for a job at an accounting firm.

“On Oct. 7, they drove the knife in, and now they twisted it,” said Kupervaser about his feelings regarding the Sestao competition. “It hurts even more, knowing that after everything we’ve gone through, we still don’t have a place in the world. … We don’t forget, but these people have already forgotten about Oct. 7.”

He continued, “Israelis are less interested in chess and cycling, but this can happen in soccer, basketball, tennis, judo … This will harm our national sports.”

‘Street Terrorism’

Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM), a Spanish NGO that aims to strengthen Spanish-Israeli relations, released a seething statement against the Open Basque Country on Sept. 11.

It decried the “unbearable atmosphere of violence, coercion and intimidation” against the seven Israeli players, and branded the events as “explicit antisemitism” that wrecks “sporting neutrality.”

ACOM compared the actions of the organizers to the “mafia playbook: intimidation, harassment and discrimination carried out with the impunity of street terrorism.”

A FIDE spokeswoman told JNS that the body’s “position remains resolute: we condemn any form of discrimination or hostility against players based on their nationality. We are taking these reports very seriously and will take all necessary action to ensure that FIDE’s values and regulations are respected.”

She added that the display of flags in the playing hall for open tournaments “is typically at the discretion of the local organizers. However, we are in the process of reviewing the full facts of the matter to gain a complete understanding of the situation. FIDE’s goal is to ensure that chess remains a safe and welcoming sport for all.”

The Sestao Chess Club did not respond to a request for comment.