Last night, Chilean voters elected Gabriel Boric, a former left-wing student activist their new President. Boric, 35, will be among the youngest heads of state in the world. Boric is set to take office in March.
However, Boric's election has Chilean Jews concerned as Boric is virulently anti-Israel telling members of Chile's Jewish community that Israel was a "murderous state." Back in 2019, when Chile's Jewish community gave Boric a jar of honey during Rosh Hashanah, he tweeted, "I appreciate the gesture, but they could have asked Israel to return illegally occupied Palestinian territory."
No wonder former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn loves Boric.
As Gabriel Zaliasnik, one of Chile's most prominent Jews put it, “We are of course willing to accept reasonable criticism about Israel, but what we hear from Boric is that Israel is a ‘genocidal’ and ‘murderous’ state. To make matters worse, he blames our Jewish community for Israel’s actions.”
Worse, Boric is essentially demanding Chile's Jews denounce Israel or not be deemed Chilean. There only about 18,000 Jews in a country of 19 million people - less than one tenth of 1% of the population. But it does not take much to single out Jews and I suspect Jews will leave Chile just as they have left Venezuela first under Hugo Chavez and now Nicolas Maduro.
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