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.
José Manuel Restrepo, Project Interchange alumnus and Colombia’s Minister of
Commerce, Industry and Tourism wrote in El Espectador about Israel’s success in innovation and nation-building, and lessons that can be learned by Colombia.
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.