Posted on 07/19/21
| News Source: Arutz-7
In a stunning upset, Gabriel Boric defeated Daniel Jadue in the left-wing primaries for the Chilean presidential race.
Boric, a former student leader, received 60% of the vote, handedly beating Jadue, the Communist party representative who was considered the frontrunner.
Jadue, the mayor of the Santiago-region, is a member of Chile's large Palestinian Arab community. He has faced accusations of anti-Semitism since images from his high school yearbook surfaced.
In the yearbook, Jardue's classmates wrote that the best "gift" they could provide him would be "a Jew to target." The yearbook describes him as an "anti-Semite" and jokingly predicts that he would become the “Chief of PLO, to clean the city of Jews.”
Accusations of anti-Semitism have dogged Jadue over statement she has made as mayor as well. He has referred to Chile's Jewish community as the “Zionist community” and said: “I get along very well with Jews… I have some problems with Zionists.”
This month, Jadue gave an interview in which he said that “the alternative media in the country are being bought by the Zionist community of Chile."
Chile’s Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution in June in which it urged Jadue “to publicly and categorically deny the statements made in the biographical sketch of his school yearbook, which classifies him as anti-Semitic.”
Instead of denouncing the sentiments in the yearbook or apologizing, Jadue tweeted: “A country in the midst of a health and economic crisis, hundreds of deaths a day, families do not make ends meet. But right-wing MPs vote for me to explain what others wrote, in a school yearbook, 35 years ago! # Get Serious.”
Boric is considered a more moderate voice than Jadue.
In another upset, Sebastian Sichel defeated Joaquin Lavin in the primary for the right-wing candidate.