Israeli windsurfer not flying the flag

JACK MILNER

What you would be taught in deception school is to ensure you have more than one passport and then be given a bag with many pocket, so you can hide the flag.

Take the case of Israeli windsurfer Ma’ayan Davidovich, a resident of Herzliya, who is currently competing at the World Championships in Oman.

Originally the Israel Sailing Association (ISA) planned to send a team to the event and visas were even issued for the team but, of course, it all got caught up in political red tape. With all the problems Israel is facing right now, ISA announced last Thursday it would not send a delegation to Oman.

Due to the security concerns raised by the Shin Bet, which is responsible for the safety of Israeli national teams when competing abroad, ISA notified the organisers two weeks ago they would not take part in the championships, resulting in the cancellation of the visas originally issued by Oman in July.

But ISA backtracked a day later and decided to send the country’s three most senior surfers, Ma’ayan Davidovich, Shahar Zubari and Nimrod Mashiah. But the organisers insisted they were unable to issue new visas so quickly and it seemed the three would have to watch the championships from their television sets in Israel.

However, Davidovich, who claimed bronze medals in the past two World Championships, has an Austrian passport, so she managed to receive permission from the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) to compete in Oman. The only problem is that they refused to allow her to do so under the Israeli flag as she entered the Muslim Sultanate with a different passport.

Mashiah could have also competed in Oman under his Dutch passport, but ISA decided doing that would give him an unfair advantage in his ongoing battle with countryman Shahar Zubari for Israel’s lone berth in the men’s competition at the Rio Olympics. Zubari doesn’t hold a foreign passport.

The 27-year-old Davidovich, who is sailing with ISAF on her sail rather than ISR, is in ninth place after the first day of competition, ending the first three races in 10th, 11th and 10^th place.

Interestingly, next year’s windsurfing world championships will be held in Eilat in February, so I’m sure we can expect a lot more intrigue.

As Sir Walter Scott wrote in the poem Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive”.