Lame-duck administrations can still inflict damage.
Media outlets in Chile recently revealed that three days after the election of conservative Republican Party leader José Antonio Kast as the country’s new president, the outgoing far-left administration of Gabriel Boric delivered a sneaky, underhanded jab at the victorious candidate’s pro-Israel policies.
As cars in the capital, Santiago, were still honking their horns in celebration of Kast’s victory on the ballot in December, Paula Narváez, appointed by Boric as the Chilean ambassador to the United Nations, formally requested that Chile be admitted to the membership of a U.N. committee that is dedicated to the demonization of Israel.
The unwieldly named “Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People” (CEIRPP) was created by the U.N. General Assembly on Nov. 10, 1975. That same day, the General Assembly passed arguably the most notorious resolution in its history, Resolution 3379, determining Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, to be a form of “racism and racial discrimination.”
Throughout more than 50 years of existence, the CEIRPP has faithfully embodied both the spirit and the letter of the resolution that defamed Zionism, despite the fact that the General Assembly rescinded it in 1991. Among its many activities, the committee organizes the annual Nov. 29 International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, where past speakers have compared Israel to Nazi Germany and raised the slogan “from the river to the sea,” effectively calling for the elimination of Israel, a sovereign U.N. member state.
Francesca Albanese, the world body’s “special rapporteur” for Palestinian rights, who has been sanctioned by the United States for pushing false war-crimes charges against American and Israeli citizens, appears frequently at the committee’s events. At one of its sessions last October, she excoriated Israel as an “apartheid” state carrying out a “genocide” in Gaza, lamenting that Arab states were “on their knees” as the world witnessed “the realization of Greater Israel on our watch.”
For Boric, whose term as Chilean president ended on March 11, the CEIRPP is a perfect fit, given his denunciation of Israel as a “genocidal and murderous state,” and his enthusiastic backing for South Africa’s allegations of “genocide” against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Boric’s personal hatred of Israel has been incubated over many years: Back in 2019, when the Jewish community in Chile sent him a jar of honey to mark the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, he responded curtly, telling his well-wishers he would rather they focused their efforts on demanding that Israel “return illegally occupied Palestinian territory.”
Kast is altogether different. During Boric’s tenure, he targeted the left-wing government on more than one occasion over its attitude to Israel and its alleged antisemitism. “Boric, once again, evidences his antisemitism by leaving Israel out of FIDAE (Santiago’s international air show), in an irresponsible and markedly ideological decision,” he stated in 2024. Hours after the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Kast declared that the slaughter “deserves our complete and unequivocal condemnation. No cause justifies these brutal crimes.”
For his part, Boric had already withdrawn the Chilean ambassador from Israel and denounced Israel’s subsequent war on Hamas in the days that followed the massacre.
The CEIRPP was more than happy to welcome Chile into its fold, a move that technically still requires approval from the General Assembly. But the committee has also been stung by the departure of a different Latin American state from its ranks. On Feb. 2, Ecuador—one year after the re-election of the resolutely pro-American and pro-Israel Daniel Noboa as president—formally announced its withdrawal from the committee. By ensuring Chile’s admission to the committee in the twilight of his presidency, replacing Ecuador, Boric is seeking to further undermine Chile’s relations with Israel as Kast takes over the presidency.
Kast can follow Noboa’s example by issuing instructions to the U.N. ambassador that he must now appoint to exit the CEIRPP and declare Chile’s membership null and void. What might complicate his path domestically, however, is the likely political pressure from Chile’s wealthy and disproportionately powerful Palestinian lobby, rooted in the Chilean-Palestinian community of 300,000, the largest outside the Middle East. Kast will need to resist their intense lobbying by reminding Chileans of Palestinian origin that his first loyalty, as theirs should be, is to the interests of the country of which they are citizens—a nation of more than 20 million people that annually conducts nearly $300 million of trade with Israel.
For Chile to depart almost as quickly as it arrived would go down as a major embarrassment to the CEIRPP, as well as to the United Nations, which finances its endless stream of anti-Zionist propaganda from its general budget despite claiming to support an equitable political solution for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
That, in turn, could trigger the departure of other members of the committee—eight of whom, including Ecuador, are prime candidates for resignation due to their bilateral ties with Israel, as identified in a recent Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) study that I co-authored.
Ultimately, the goal must be to dismantle the committee entirely. It serves no purpose other than to defame Israel from within a U.N. system that has institutionalized discrimination against the Jewish state. Hungary, Romania and Ukraine all realized that by resigning from the committee several years ago. Ecuador has now followed suit.
As a friend of Israel, Kast should ensure that Chile is next.
