On April 22, 1993, the opening ceremony of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum took place in Washington, D.C., in the presence of numerous dignitaries, including U.S. President Bill Clinton and Israel’s president, Chaim Herzog.

As an active member of the Jewish community in Chile, a small minority making up only 0.1% of our country's population, far too often I have had to step up and defend you, Israeli tourists, as well as other Jews visiting here. 

They left after Venezuelan secret police raided a Jewish club in 2007, and after the local synagogue was ransacked by unidentified thugs two years later. They left after President Hugo Chavez expelled Israel's ambassador to Caracas, and when he called on Venezuela's Jews to condemn Israel for its actions in Gaza in 2009.

Even in the easygoing, laid-back environment of modern-day Los Angeles, bringing Muslims and Jews together to talk about the Arab-Israeli conflict is viewed as playing with fire. For decades, “the Muslim-Jewish dialogue that existed in L.A. only took place at the leadership level, among a handful of left-leaning Muslim and Jewish leaders,” recalls Edina Lekovic, policy and programming director for the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Several weeks ago, Club Deportivo Palestino, a top Chilean football team, was banned from wearing their shirt after it caused an international dispute, because the shirts depicted a map of pre-1948 Palestine in the shape of the number 1, denying any Israeli claim to the land. The cartographical choices we make are a fairly accurate barometer of an individual’s perspective. It shows how we wish to frame a debate.

Not too long ago I was standing in line in a holiday resort in the Dominican Republic when a man in front of me bellowed at his son: “Yuval, atah honek et ha-tur” [“Yuval, you’re holding up the line.”] Most American Jews have been here before: We overhear Hebrew, we discover a surreptitious Israeli in our midst, the Diaspora Jew’s sense of kinship is triggered.

The kitchen of Pope Francis’ Vatican residence was made kosher for a day last week, as the pontiff hosted a delegation of rabbis from his native Argentina. The gesture was a sign of the close personal relationship between Francis and the Jewish community, and continued efforts to strengthen the institutional relationship between Jews and the Church.

This month, thousands of African migrants to Israel, many seeking asylum, marched in Tel Aviv to demand more rights and protections from the Israeli government. In an email interview, Dov Waxman, associate professor of political science at Baruch College and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), as well as the co-director of the Middle East Center for Peace, Culture and Development at Northeastern University, explained Israel’s immigration policy.