Venezuelan Jews, long uneasy with the Chávez government's alliances with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries that espouse anti-Israel views, are concerned that the government is sponsoring anti-Semitism in this hemisphere, a prominent journalist said Tuesday.
''The situation we have now in Venezuela is that for the first time in modern history we have government-sponsored anti-Semitism in a Western country,'' said Sammy Eppel. ``That is why this is very dangerous, not just for the Jewish community in Venezuela but for the Jewish community as a whole.''
Among the examples offered by Eppel:
Venezuelan government intelligence services twice have raided the country's most important Jewish center in a vague, ultimately unsuccessful search for weapons. Publications of the government's cultural ministry run articles entitled ''the Jewish Question,'' along with a Jewish star superimposed over a swastika.
These examples, according to Eppel, an analyst and journalist who has written for El Universal and El Mundo, among other publications, are evidence of a pattern of official intimidation against the country's fast-dwindling Jewish population. Many of them have resettled in South Florida since President Hugo Chávez's rise.
About 30 people attended Eppel's presentation Tuesday, sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League at the Aventura Chabad. Many of the examples were excerpts from government-linked media.
One 2006 article in El Diario de Caracas debates whether it will be necessary to ''expel [the Jews] from the country.'' Another article in the Diario VEA accuses Jews of being involved in the murder of a government prosecutor.
I guess Chavez's supposed love of "the people" doesn't extend to Jewish people.
(Gleaned from QandO)
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