KUWAIT (Dispatches) – The
International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation (IWAS) has announced that a Kuwaiti player had refused to face her Zionist opponent in the Wheelchair Fencing World Cup.
“Kuwaiti player Kholoud al-Mutairi pulled out of the International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation (IWAS) World Cup in Thailand in order not to compete against a contestant from the Zionist entity,” the Kuwait Paralympic Committee wrote in a post published on its Twitter page on Sunday.
Kholoud al-Mutairi is one of the most prominent disabled Kuwaiti national players. She has represented her country in multiple international forums.
The second IWAS World Cup of 2022 kicked off in Thailand’s eastern city of Chonburi on May 19 and will wrap up on May 22.
More than 100 fencers are taking part in the tournament.
For her withdrawal, al-Mutairi was hailed on social media as a “heroine.”
Last month her countryman Mohammad al-Fadli also refused to face a Zionist opponent in the group stage of the World Fencing Championships held in Dubai.
In recent years, multiple Kuwaiti athletes withdrew from different international tournaments after being pitted against Zionist opponents. They say their actions are in support of the Palestinian people’s legitimate rights and rejection of normalizing with the occupying regime.
Earlier this month, Kuwaiti chess player Bader al-Hajri snubbed a Zionist opponent at Spain’s Sunway International Chess Championship, in an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people and a blow to the occupying regime’s status in the world.
The Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) master, who had secured first place at the 2015 San Sebastian chess tournament in Spain, withdrew on May 3 from the competitions to refuse to face a Zionist competitor.
On social media, Arab activists lauded al-Hajri as a champion of “rejecting Arab countries’ normalization” with the Israeli regime by refusing to face “an Israeli settler.”
The activist said they are “proud of him” while noting that the Israelis must be “mad at him.”
Back in May last year, Kuwait’s National Assembly unanimously approved bills that outlaw any deals or normalization of ties with the Zionist regime.
Anti-Israeli sentiments run high in Kuwait. A poll conducted in 2019 by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an American think tank, showed that 85 percent of Kuwaitis oppose normalizing ties with the Zionist regime.