Chile's Palestinian Community voiced deep outrage over Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)'s participation in Fidae 2026, set for April 7-12. In a four-page statement, the group called the President José Antonio Kast government's decision a grave moral offense.
The group, representing over 500,000 Chileans of Palestinian origin, rejected the state-owned Israeli firm's presence, which specializes in military systems. "Permitting the promotion in Chile of weapons and technologies used to perpetrate the genocide of the Palestinian people (...) constitutes a grave, painful, and unacceptable moral offense," they stated.
They noted that previous administrations, like Sebastián Piñera's exclusion of Russia from Fidae 2022 over Ukraine and Gabriel Boric's with Israeli firms, upheld a principled stance on human rights. The current decision breaks that state tradition and risks Chile's international responsibility before the International Criminal Court, per the community.
They accused IAI of links to systems used in Gaza, where the International Court of Justice issued provisional measures over genocide risks, and in Myanmar against the Rohingya. Nations like Spain, France, and the Netherlands have restricted such participations.
The group urged Kast's government to reverse course and is considering legal actions against individuals involved in war crimes. President Maurice Khamis said: "Chile under this government is for the first time abandoning its state principles."
