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.
AJC maintains a formal partnership agreement with the Jewish Community of Estonia, and AJC’s Warsaw-based Shapiro Silverberg Central Europe Office and Brussels-based Transatlantic Institute engage regularly with Estonian officials.
Thank you for inviting me to join in this centenary celebration of the Balfour Declaration – a celebration of the practical wisdom of a war-time British Government, of the triumph of historical obligation over colonial expediency, of the long-delayed recognition of a people’s rightful inheritance.
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.