As the largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East advances an aggressive anti-Israel agenda bordering on anti-Semitism, Chile is facing constant attacks on its democracy and its heritage of inclusiveness.
Former President Sebastián Piñera won Chile’s presidential election on Sunday, December 17. His triumph demonstrates a turn towards the center-right in a region that has been dominated by leftist movements for over a decade. In 2012, Piñera became the first Chilean president to visit Israel, a fact that sets great expectations for the future of bilateral cooperation.
Both the State of Israel and post-colonial Africa were culminations of long-held messianic dreams, the first held by a two-thousand-year Jewish diaspora, the second by nations or tribes that chaffed for centuries under colonial oppression in their own lands.
