President Hugo Chavez har pisket opp en stemning mot Israel og jøder som elementer i folket tar bokstavelig. De trakasserer og truer jøder på åpen gate. For noen dager siden brøt folk seg inn i den største synagogen, og stjal en liste over landets jøder. Landets 15.000 jøder er svært bekymret for fremtiden.
Chavez gjør som medier og politikere i Norge, bare enda sterkere: fremholder at Israel har en skyld og har begått forbrytelser som på en eller annen måte må få følger.
As President Hugo Chavez intensifies his anti-Israel campaign, some Venezuelans have taken action, threatening Jews in the street and vandalizing the largest synagogue in Caracas — where they stole a database of names and addresses.
Now many in Venezuela’s Jewish community fear the worst is yet to come.
Chavez has personally taken care not to criticize Israelis or Jews while accusing Israel’s government of genocide against the Palestinians. He vehemently denies inciting religious intolerance, let alone violence.
But Venezuela’s Jewish leaders, the Organization of American States and the U.S. State Department say Chavez’s harsh criticism has inspired a growing list of hate crimes, including a Jan. 30 invasion of Caracas’ largest synagogue.
About 15 people overpowered two security guards at the Tiferet Israel Synagogue, shattering religious objects and spray-painting “Jews, get out” on the walls. Most worrisome, according to Elias Farache, president of the Venezuelan-Israelite Association, was their theft of a computer database containing many names and addresses of Jews in Venezuela.
Chavez slår an en tone, og andre følger opp. Kommentatorer går lenger:
One week before the invasion, a Chavista columnist named Emilio Silva posted a call to action on Aporrea, a pro-government Web site, describing Jews as “squalid” — a term Chavez often uses to describe his opponents as weak — and exhorting Venezuelans to confront them as anti-government conspirators.
“Publicly challenge every Jew that you find in the street, shopping center or park,” he wrote, “shouting slogans in favor of Palestine and against that abortion: Israel.”
Silva called for protests at the synagogue, a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses, seizures of Jewish-owned property, the closure of Jewish schools and a nationwide effort “to denounce publicly, with names and last names the members of powerful Jewish groups present in Venezuela.”
Aporrea later replaced the column with an apology that describes Silva’s posting as anti-Semitic and exhorts Chavistas to show more discipline by criticizing the Israeli government rather than its people or Jews in general.
Silva, a 35-year-old mathematics professor at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, got the message. He told The Associated Press Friday that he couldn’t comment on the “controversial subject,” and that his “position is to condemn any act that goes against the integrity of any faith or conviction.”
But other anti-Semitic writings by Silva remained on the site Friday, including one posted on Jan. 19, a week before the synagogue attack. That posting also crudely criticized a Venezuelan archbishop for failing to condemn Israel’s Gaza offensive; offices of the Vatican have been tear gassed twice since then.
Typisk nok ringte Chavez opp lederen av det jødiske samfunnet direkte på tv tirsdag og lovet å beskytte landets 15.000 jøder. Samtidig som han var generøs, antydet han at jødene selv kunne stått bak overfallet på synagogen.
Det var politisk show. Jødene føler seg slett ikke trygge. Flere er blitt angrepet på åpen gate.