Published: 9 July 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Daniel Jadue was criticised after his high school yearbook page circulated online last month. In it, his 1983 classmates wrote that the best gift they could give him was “a Jew to target”
CHILE’S LOWER HOUSE of parliament asked leading presidential candidate Daniel Jadue to deny that he is antisemitic in the wake of some of his past statements on Jews and Israel.
Jadue, the grandson of Palestinian immigrants who runs the Communist Party of Chile, has taken criticism after his high school yearbook page circulated online last month. In it, his 1983 classmates wrote that the best gift they could give him was “a Jew to target.”
Descriptive paragraphs call him an “antisemite” and says he is destined to become “Chief of PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization], to clean the city of Jews.”
Jadue, who has been the mayor of the Santiago district Recoleta since 2012 and got his political organising start in multiple Palestinian advocacy organizations, has made several controversial anti-Israel statements in the past.
He often refers to Chile’s Jewish community of about 15,000 as the “Zionist community” and has said “I get along very well with Jews… I have some problems with Zionists.”
Chile’s Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution last week urging Jadue “to publicly and categorically deny the statements made in the biographical sketch of his school yearbook, which classifies him as antisemitic.”
Jadue did not respond to the resolution.
FULL STORY Leading Chilean presidential candidate Daniel Jadue faces accusations of antisemitism (JTA)
The new Chile deserves better than the antisemitic Daniel Jadue (Haaretz)
Despite the bad faith insinuations, progressive Chilean Jews like us can’t support Daniel Jadue's presidential bid. Not because he is a communist, but because he is an unrepentant antisemite
Photo: Daniel Jadue in 2015 (Wikimedia Commons)
