On Sunday, the young, far-left candidate Gabriel Boric was elected president of Chile. A committed anti-Zionist, Boric has previously described Israel as a “genocidal and murderous state,” an opinion he stood by in a more recent interview. Ben Cohen writes that many of the country’s 18,000 Jews are worried about what Boric’s election might bring, and with good reason:

Several Jewish groups posted screenshots of Boric’s response to a gift from the Chilean Jewish community in October 2019 in honor of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, in which he suggested that his Jewish fellow citizens were accountable for Israeli policies towards the Palestinians.

“The Jewish community of Chile sent me a jar of honey for the Jewish new year, reaffirming its commitment to ‘a more inclusive, supportive, and respectful society,’” Boric tweeted at the time. “I appreciate the gesture, but they could start by asking Israel to return illegally occupied Palestinian territory,” he continued.

Boric has also drafted legislation in Chile’s parliament imposing a boycott of goods and services produced by Jewish communities located in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. During his election campaign, Boric enthusiastically reaffirmed this position at a meeting with leaders of the 350,000-strong Palestinian community in Chile—the largest Palestinian diaspora outside of the Middle East and one with heavy political clout.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.