The Media Line: Chile Moves Closer to Israel with New Ambassador Amid Pro-Palestinian Pushback 

Chile Moves Closer to Israel with New Ambassador Amid Pro-Palestinian Pushback 

The appointment of Gabriel Zaliasnik ends 947 days without a Chilean ambassador in Israel and turns a long vacancy into one of President José Antonio Kast’s first major foreign policy tests  

By Gabriel Colodro/The Media Line  

For nearly three years, Chile had no ambassador in Israel. The vacancy began as a protest by former President Gabriel Boric’s government less than a month after the Hamas-led massacre of October 7, 2023. It ended last week with one of President José Antonio Kast’s most visible foreign policy corrections so far: the appointment of Gabriel Zaliasnik, a prominent Chilean lawyer and former Jewish community leader, as ambassador to Israel.  

In Chile, in Israel, and among the more than 10,000 Chileans living in the Jewish state, the decision is being read as more than a routine diplomatic appointment. It closes a 947-day absence, restores political weight to the Chilean Embassy in Tel Aviv, and reopens a question that has followed Chilean politics for years: whether Israel should be treated as a strategic partner or as a symbol inside a domestic ideological fight over Palestine, the United States, and the West.  

Zaliasnik confirmed the appointment after Chile’s Foreign Ministry announced a new group of ambassadors whose approvals had already been granted. In a post on X, he thanked Kast for “the trust placed in me by appointing me ambassador to the State of Israel” and said Chile would “take care of the strategic bilateral relationship of more than 70 years.” He added that, together with Chile’s Foreign Ministry, he would assume the role “with strength and hope.”  

The Foreign Ministry described Zaliasnik as a University of Chile-trained lawyer, founder of the Albagli Zaliasnik law firm, head of its litigation practice, professor of criminal law at the University of Chile, and former Justice Ministry adviser on criminal procedure reform. But the political meaning of the appointment goes beyond his resume. He is also a former president of the Jewish Community of Chile and a public figure closely identified with Israel, antisemitism issues, and Chilean Jewish affairs.  

Kast did not choose a low-profile diplomat to lower the temperature. He chose someone whose biography signals, even before his first official meeting in Jerusalem, that the relationship with Israel is meant to matter again.  

The post Zaliasnik inherits was emptied on October 31, 2023, when Boric ordered Ambassador Jorge Carvajal back to Santiago for consultations after the October 7 attack and the opening weeks of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Carvajal did not return to Tel Aviv and was later reassigned to the Netherlands. The Chilean Embassy remained without a full ambassador while Chile-Israel relations moved from tension into open crisis.  

Boric’s break with Israel had started before the war. In 2022, only months into his presidency, he initially refused to receive the credentials of Israeli Ambassador Gil Artzyeli on the scheduled day, citing the death of a 17-year-old Palestinian during an Israeli military operation near Jenin. The account that reached Santiago was partial. Israeli reports described the incident as taking place during clashes linked to an arrest raid, not as a stand-alone killing. That distinction did not change Boric’s decision. Israel protested, Chile later rescheduled the ceremony, and the immediate crisis was contained. For many in Israel and in Chile’s Jewish community, it was the first sign that Boric was willing to use protocol with Israel as a political tool. 

After October 7, the list grew. Chile recalled its ambassador. Chile and Mexico referred the situation in Gaza to the International Criminal Court. Boric later announced that Chile would join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, a move welcomed by Hamas. His government also excluded Israeli companies from FIDAE, Latin America’s largest aerospace and defense fair. 

 In 2025, Chile withdrew its military attaches from Tel Aviv, and in his final State of the Nation address, Boric said he would put urgency behind a bill to ban imports from territories his government described as illegally occupied by Israel. In the same speech, he backed Spain’s call for an arms embargo on Israel and ordered Chile’s Defense Ministry to prepare a plan to reduce dependence on Israeli military suppliers.  

By then, the pattern was no longer hard to read. Boric’s government had gone well beyond statements of concern over Gaza. It had used diplomatic protocol, international courts, defense policy, and trade language to distance Chile from Israel. Near the end of his presidency, that line also created friction with Washington. The Media Line reported in 2025 that US officials were considering possible visa and trade measures as Chile moved further away from Israel.  

For Chileans in Israel, the matter is less abstract. Five Chileans were killed in the Hamas-led massacre of October 7. Chilean citizens were also among the hostages. Members of the community say Boric never gave those families the public recognition they expected from the Chilean state and instead moved within weeks toward diplomatic punishment of Israel.  

That complaint began almost immediately. Boric recalled Carvajal on October 31. The next day, on November 1, the Chilean Community of Israel accused the Boric of choosing to “ignore our security.” The organization said that instead of showing solidarity with Chileans murdered on October 7 and others then believed to be missing or kidnapped, the government had downgraded Chile’s presence in Israel at the very moment when its nationals were under threat. One of those cases was Loren Garcovich, whose death was confirmed after her remains were identified in her burned home.  

The case of Mia Schem made the argument even more sensitive. Schem, kidnapped by Hamas at the Nova music festival and later released, was widely described in Chile as the granddaughter of a Chilean. Community leaders in Israel saw that language as part of the problem. They argued that Boric’s Foreign Ministry leaned on categories such as “daughter of a Chilean” or “granddaughter of a Chilean” to create distance from people who, under Chile’s own nationality framework and consular practice, belong to the Chilean national community. For them, the issue was not paperwork alone. It was whether the Chilean state would treat its people abroad as citizens to be defended, or as inconvenient relatives of a war it preferred to discuss only through Israel’s conduct.  

 

The new appointment has therefore been received by the Chilean Community of Israel less as a routine personnel change and more as a step toward repairing relations. “Today is a great day for Chilean democracy,” the organization’s June 4 statement said. “Today, an act of repair is being carried out: 947 days without an ambassador of Chile in Israel, since President Boric called Ambassador Carvajal for consultations on October 31, 2023.”  

The statement, signed by Hernán López, president of the Chilean Community of Israel, and Sivan Gobrin, its vice president, accused Boric of having “instrumentalized the figure of the ambassador as a weapon against the government of Israel” and, through that move, against “the more than 10,000 Chileans who live here.”  

Speaking with The Media Line, López said the break under Boric should not be treated as an isolated diplomatic accident. He described it as the high point of a longer Chilean curve toward the Palestinian cause, with earlier shifts under the second government of Michelle Bachelet and then under Sebastián Piñera, whose administration recognized a Palestinian state even as it expanded ties with Israel.  

“My reading is that it was an ascending curve,” López said. Boric, he argued, took that curve into open confrontation. “From the beginning, they tried to separate the Jewish community from the State of Israel,” López said. When that failed, he said, the government moved not only against Israel at war with Hamas but also against the Jewish community that refused to detach itself from Israel after October 7.  

For López, the recall of Carvajal became the clearest expression of that policy. “The ambassador basically became a hostage of the president to punish Israel,” he said. “And, along the way, whether intentionally or not, he also punished the Chilean community in Israel and the 10,000 Chileans who live here.”  

He also described a brief moment after October 7 when the Chilean public reacted with genuine shock to the Hamas-led massacre. “For two or three weeks before Israel responded militarily to Hamas, there was an oasis of empathy toward Israel,” López said. That changed, he argued, once Israel began its military response and the government’s old political reflexes returned.  

Gabriel Silber, a former member of Chile’s Chamber of Deputies and a member of the Jewish community, described the Boric years in similar terms, but from the perspective of Chilean politics and Congress. “Unfortunately, these years were marked by an absolutely ideologized bilateral agenda,” Silber told The Media Line. For decades, he said, Chile had looked at Israel through its own national interest, including technology, security, water scarcity, mining, agriculture, and innovation. “Chile, under governments of the left and the right, saw Israel as a relevant ally,” he said. “What mattered was Chile’s own agenda.”  

That changed under Boric, Silber asserted. “The previous administration radically changed that relationship from a geopolitical point of view,” he said. “It moved toward an agenda centered on anti-Israel sentiment.” In his view, ideology prevailed over Chile’s practical interests. “It was no longer about putting Chile first,” he said.  

 

Zaliasnik’s Jewish identity, Silber said, should not obscure the basic point that he is representing Chile. “Gabriel Zaliasnik, above all, is Chilean,” he said. “He knows Chile needs to resume its agenda in security, cybersecurity, agriculture, climate resilience, and water.”  

The Chilean Community of Israel welcomed Zaliasnik in unusually direct language. “The dignity of the ambassador of Chile is reincarnated in Tel Aviv in the person of the distinguished lawyer Gabriel Zaliasnik,” its June 4 statement said. “The choice of President José Antonio Kast could not have been better,” the organization added. “Who is more appropriate than a distinguished Chilean public figure, with a deep bond with Israel, to rebuild what the discourse of hatred established in Boric’s state apparatus destroyed?”  

The same statement connected the appointment to investment and technology. It said Zaliasnik’s negotiating skills could help make Chile “a preferential place for Israeli investments in Latin America” and Israel “a faithful partner of Chile in its development as a power of innovation and technology.” It closed by addressing the new ambassador directly: “Ambassador Zaliasnik, be welcome. Baruch Habá. Here we are, each and every one of us, available to make the bridge between Chile and Israel strong and luminous again.”  

The Jewish Community of Chile also welcomed the appointment in a separate statement, congratulating Zaliasnik and describing him as “a lawyer and university professor.” Its message was more institutional, focused on restoring normal diplomatic ties and looking beyond the years of confrontation. “We deeply value the full restoration of diplomatic relations between both countries, which share a long history of cooperation between their peoples of more than seven decades,” the statement said. It added that the “normalization and strengthening of bilateral ties” would create “new opportunities for cooperation in areas of great relevance” and could open “a new stage of encounter and bridge-building between Chile and Israel.”  

Dafne Englander, executive director of the Jewish Community of Chile, said the appointment matched what Kast had told Jewish leaders during the campaign. At the time, she said, he avoided public promises about Israel because he did not want to turn the issue into another campaign flashpoint. “He told us he was not going to make big statements about what he would do with Israel, because that would only create controversy,” Englander told The Media Line. “What he told us was that, once in power, he would act. This appointment is a clear act.”  

For Englander, the decision is important not only because Chile is restoring its ambassador to Israel, but also because President Kast chose someone who would inevitably draw criticism. “It is a very powerful signal,” she said. “It means putting Israel back in a relevant place as a strategic partner for Chile. It is also a double gesture, because the president knows Gabriel will be criticized. He knows that, and he appointed him anyway, because he believes he is the right person to do the job.”  

Englander said the new government considers Israel a strategic ally in areas where Chile is seeking practical solutions and expertise.“There is a lot of awareness in this government that Israel is a strategic partner in the issues Chile needs most today,” she said, citing cybersecurity, public security, innovation, water, and agriculture. “The government is doing more than making declarations. It is making a gesture by restoring the relationship.”  

 

She also said the appointment matters for Chileans living in Israel. “There are 10,000 compatriots there who need support,” Englander said. “People need to feel that their country of origin is protecting them, and that signal is given through an ambassador.”  

The appointment was also welcomed outside Chilean Jewish institutions. AJC Latino, the Spanish-language arm of the American Jewish Committee, described Zaliasnik as “a close friend of AJC for decades” and said his “multiple talents” and “permanent commitment” to strengthening Chile-Israel ties would help his mission “at such crucial moments.” Israel’s ambassador to Chile, Peleg Lewi, also congratulated him, calling the designation “an important step to strengthen the ties between our countries after more than two years without an ambassador.”  

The criticism came from the other side of Chile’s Middle East divide. The Palestinian Community of Chile called the appointment “a very serious decision,” “contrary to the national interest,” and “deeply offensive” to Chileans of Palestinian origin. In a statement reported by CNN Chile, the group said its objection was not based on Zaliasnik’s origin, religion, or right to maintain ties with Israel, but on “his own public statements” and what it described as a lack of suitability to represent Chilean interests. It asked the government to reverse the appointment.  

Antonia Orellana, a Frente Amplio (Broad Front) figure and former minister for women and gender equality under Boric, also criticized the decision. She called the appointment “a terrible signal for Chile’s interests” and said Zaliasnik had defended positions “contrary to Chile’s historical position” and to international law.  

Englander said the Jewish Community of Chile does not take positions on Israel’s internal politics because Chilean Jews span the political spectrum and because the institution’s role is to defend Israel’s right to exist, not a particular Israeli government. “The Jewish community does not vote in Israel and does not participate in Israel’s internal political decisions,” she said. “We support the right of the State of Israel to exist. But we do not say whether we support one Israeli government or another.”  

By contrast, Englander said, leaders of the Palestinian Community of Chile have taken a formal role in Palestinian national politics. “Today, members of their leadership are also leaders in the PLO,” she said. “That is a clear political definition.”  

That point has become central to the debate over Zaliasnik. Chile is home to one of the largest Palestinian diasporas outside the Middle East, and that community has long had weight in politics, culture, media, and public debate. Its current leadership has also moved into Palestinian national institutions.  

In April 2025, Maurice Khamis, president of the Palestinian Community of Chile, and Marcela Sabat, its director of public affairs and a former lawmaker, became the first Chilean-Palestinian representatives to join the PLO Central Committee during a session in Ramallah. Khamis described the move not as a symbolic honor, but as a right. “We do not understand this participation as a gift, but as a right,” he said at the time.  

 

That matters because the same leadership challenging Chile’s appointment of an ambassador to Israel is not acting only from within Chile’s domestic political arena. It is also tied to a transnational Palestinian political framework whose objectives are defined beyond Chile’s immediate bilateral interests. This is more analysis than straight reporting. It could stay or go.  

Khamis has also been a controversial figure in Chile’s debate over Hamas. In a 2021 interview, he said: “I absolutely support Hamas, because Hamas is a resistance movement.” After October 7, he said the Palestinian Community condemned attacks against Israeli civilians and rejected violence as a method of political action.  

Asked about the Palestinian Community of Chile’s influence, Englander said its leadership has little interest in separating local coexistence from the Middle East conflict. “Their objective is to keep the conflict permanently in the public arena,” she said. “We have tried to speak with them about common issues in Chile, about dialogue, about projects that could benefit both communities here. They are not interested in that. They want to keep the conflict alive.”  

Englander said the Boric years left a mark on the Jewish community. She noted that the community maintained ties with some ministries, especially on interreligious dialogue, internal affairs, and public security, and that officials visited Jewish institutions after synagogues were vandalized. But Boric himself, she said, never received the community and never gave the kind of direct public condemnation of antisemitism that Jewish leaders had requested.  

“With his discourse, President Boric created a context in which antisemitism could appear more openly,” Englander said. “Through the constant demonization of Israel and the way the conflict was brought into the Chilean public debate, antisemites felt validated. What we never achieved was a clear public statement from him condemning antisemitism directly.”  

López said the Chilean Community of Israel welcomes the opening created by Zaliasnik, but with caution. “Clearly with Zaliasnik, a space of great potential opens, because Zaliasnik is a powerful political figure,” he said. But he also warned that the new ambassador is arriving in a difficult setting, with “a Foreign Ministry that does not have great resources” and an embassy that is “semi-dismantled in terms of staff and budget.”  

The appointment may end the 947-day vacancy, but it does not by itself repair the relationship. Agreements stalled under political pressure will need to be revived, and defense and technology ties will have to be handled carefully. The embassy will need staff, budget, and political backing. Chile’s domestic debate over Israel will continue long after Zaliasnik lands in Tel Aviv.  

For López, the goal is to move beyond the defensive posture of the Boric years. “We do not have to continue being the opposition to an antisemitic government,” he said. “We can be a normal, constructive civil organization.”  

He spoke of reviving frozen agreements, advancing recognition of professional degrees, connecting Chilean and Israeli civil society, and rebuilding a bond between peoples rather than only between governments. “This is the moment for both peoples to come closer and collaborate in a better future,” López said.  

After 947 days without a Chilean ambassador in Israel, Kast has taken the first step. The harder part will be proving that the appointment of Zaliasnik is not only a reversal of Boric’s policy but also the beginning of a durable strategic repair.