Hugo Chavez And Anti-Semitism
Michael Rowan and Douglas E. Schoen,
To win votes, he's using Jews as a scapegoat.
Venezuela's Hugo Chávez has launched attacks against Jews in a campaign to win support for a Feb. 15 referendum that, if passed, would allow him to run for president for life.
On Jan. 22, vandals broke into Tiferet Israel, a Sephardic synagogue only a mile from Chávez's presidential palace in Caracas, trashing Torah scrolls and spray-painting the walls with threats of death for Jews and Israel.
While he lamented the synagogue attack in a one-line statement, for weeks beforehand Chavez had vociferously rallied his supporters to protest Israel's war in Gaza, which he called a "genocidal holocaust against the Palestinian people."
He also expelled Israel's ambassador and demanded the presidents of Israel and the U.S. be prosecuted for mass murder. Immediately afterward, a pro-Chávez Web site called for boycotting Venezuela's small Jewish community, expelling Jews from the country and launching protests against the Israeli embassy and Jewish synagogues.
That's just what happened. A week before the vandalism at Tiferet Israel, vandals covered the outside walls of the synagogue with insulting phrases while anti-Semitic demonstrators gathered at the Israeli embassy--and Chavez's police stood by silently. The synagogue's security cameras captured images of the violators, but Chávez's police confiscated the tapes for an investigation that produced no arrests. In the later break-in, those same security cameras were taken by the offenders, so police currently have no tapes available for review.
In any case, in Caracas, Chávez controls the police force, which he nationalized rather than let opposition Mayor Antonio Ledezma lead them. In fact, soon after that election, Chávez thugs took over Ledezma's mayoral office, saying it was "liberated for the revolution." Since then, the office-less mayor has been powerless to address the anti-Semitic attacks or anything else, while his mum police report only to Chávez.
This is not the first time Chávez has used Jews as a scapegoat. Several times in recent years his military police have invaded Jewish schools and community centers searching for weapons, assassination plots and regime change conspiracies; naturally, they found nothing. Nevertheless, Jews have been traumatized or silenced by this scaremongering, and thousands of them have left Venezuela.
Jewish fear of Chávez mushroomed in 2007, when he entered into $20 billion worth of joint ventures with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including a shared bank and an airline with opaque operations that is frequented by Hezbollah terrorists. Plus, the U.S. government has designated a Chávez diplomat in Lebanon and a travel agent in Caracas as Hezbollah operators.
Indeed, Chávez and Iran speak with one voice about Jews. Chávez is a vehement supporter of Iran's nuclear ambitions and is a frequent visitor to Iran and Syria. He tends to link Israel, the U.S. and Jews in a conspiracy to rule the world through war and capitalism.
In an infamous Christmas Eve speech several years ago, Chávez said the Jews killed Christ and have been gobbling up wealth and causing poverty and injustice worldwide ever since. Chávez has declared war against the U.S.' "evil empire" and sees Israel in the same way Ahmadinejad, his partner, does.
Voters are strongly against Chávez's election-for-life referendum, and Venezuela suffers from the worst inflation and corruption rates in the hemisphere--as well as the highest murder rate in the world. But Chávez might still rig the election so it appears he won it; he has total control over who votes and how they vote through centrally controlled electronic voting machines.
There's evidence that he switched the yes and no votes on a recall referendum in 2004, that he changed a 5% victory to a landslide 28% so he could claim a mandate for his revolution in 2006, and that he planned to rig a 13% margin rejecting his president-for-life referendum but then settled for a 1% loss when General Raul Baduel and hundreds of thousands of students demanded a fair count in 2007.
The anti-Semitic campaign could provide cover for Chávez's electoral legerdemain. Always in search of an enemy to blame for his failure at dealing with poverty and corruption, Chávez has steadily vanquished opposition political parties, while Chávez's "devil"--former president
George W. Bush--has exited the scene.
In a shameless display of cynicism, Chávez wants to scare his dwindling supporters into believing that the Jews are going to destroy the revolution, assassinate him and take away whatever goodies he may hand out. Chávez figures enough voters might just fall for it, making him look like an underdog who has challenged those with money and power. Meanwhile, his strategic allies in Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas stay satisfied.
Chávez needs an enemy to blame for missing eggs and meat at the market, soaring prices, rampant unemployment and crime--and who better than the Jews?
Michael Rowan and Douglas E. Schoen are political consultants and writers who have lived or worked in Venezuela since 1993. They are the co-authors of
The Threat Closer to Home,published in January by the Free Press.
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