'Nothing against sportsman spirit': Pakistan explain decision to boycott Israel

Pakistan refused to play Israel in the opening round of the 2026 Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, handing Israel a 4-0 walkover. Pakistan’s chess federation said the decision followed the government’s policy of not recognising Israel and was also meant to show solidarity with Palestinians. Officials stressed the boycott was about state policy, not the players or sporting spirit.

This story was originally reported by Times of India — Sports. As an automated real-time news aggregator, NewsToolBar provides multi-perspective indexing and AI summarization while directing full readership directly to primary publisher sources.