Monthly Archives: February 2012

Feb
21
2012
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American Jewish Committee Condemns Anti-Semitic Rhetoric in Venezuela Presidential Campaign

And yet another Jewish advocacy organization – this time The American Jewish Committee (AJC) – has condemned Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s recent anti-Semitic attacks against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski.

In a press release issued Monday, the AJC decried the “steady, systematic barrage of attacks” the Chávez-controlled media has directed at Capriles’ Jewish heritage. Capriles, a practicing Catholic and the grandson of Polish Jews who fled Nazi persecution, has been the target of malicious character assaults by Chávez-friendly media.

Chávez’s allies have sought to exploit anti-Semitic prejudice and fear by calling Capriles an advocate of “international Zionism which threatens to destroy the planet.” At the same time, they have disparaged his Christian faith, likening Capriles’ membership in a Catholic group to participation in a “neo-Nazi” sect.

“In December 2008, Chávez joined with Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a statement against discrimination and racism,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris. “Not for the first time, Chávez has made a mockery of this pledge. By his intolerant and anti-democratic actions, he has proven that he is a key part of the problem, and not, regrettably, the solution.”

The recent attacks against Capriles were also condemned last week by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who called the attacks “hatemongering” and said that Chávez’s failure to stop them “would be an endorsement and encouragement of racism.”  The Anti Defamation League also expressed its outrage at the attacks.

Chavez, who in 2009 called the Israeli government “genocidal,” has also sparked controversy by cultivating a friendship with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier who has called for the destruction of Israel.

These recent, vicious attacks suggest Chávez, who many consider to be in his worst political shape since he gained power in 1999, is genuinely worried about the enthusiasm and high voter turnout seen in the opposition primary. “This is characteristic of this government,” said Ramon José Medina, a coordinator for the opposition coalition known as the MUD. “The government is in attack mode after seeing three million people vote in the primary.”

To read the entire press release from AJC, click here.

 
Feb
21
2012
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ICYMI: Chavez faces an Uprising at the Ballot Box

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez faces an uprising at the ballot box
The Washington Post
By Jackson Diehl
February 19, 2011

On Feb. 12, Henrique Capriles Radonski, a 39-year-old Venezuelan state governor, won a primary election to become the opposition’s candidate against Hugo Chavez in October’s presidential election. He won 1.8 million of an astonishing 3 million votes – double the turnout predicted by most analysts.

The next day, Capriles, a devout Catholic, was greeted by a commentary on the government-run Web site of Venezuelan National Radio titled “The Enemy Is Zionism.” Capriles, it explained, is the descendant of Jews. (In fact, his grandmother was a Holocaust survivor who emigrated from Poland to Venezuela.)

“In order to understand the interests embodied” by Capriles, the commentary declared, “it’s important to know what is Zionism, the Israeli ideology that he sneakily represents. . . . It is, without doubt, an ideology of terror, of the most putrefied sentiments of humanity; its supposedly patriotic impetus is based in greed.” And so on.

“Zionism,” it concludes, “is owner of the majority of the financial institutions of the planet, controls almost 80 percent of the world economy and virtually all of the communications industry, in addition to maintaining decision-making positions within the U.S. Department of State and European powers.”

Thus began the latest – and what will surely be the ugliest – political campaign by Chavez, a ruler who has served as a friend in need to Moammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – and who now is facing his own homegrown democratic uprising. But Venezuela’s spring differs from those of Libya, Syria or Iran: Instead of pouring into the streets, Venezuelans – fed up with the chaos and violence of Chavez’s 13 years in power – are marching to the polls and trying to restore the country’s crippled and compromised institutions.

The opposition Capriles now heads has learned lessons that might benefit some of the revolutionaries of the Middle East. It tried and failed to oust Chavez with mass demonstrations and strikes; it foolishly boycotted elections it believed would be unfair; it indulged in endless internal quarrels. The result was the entrenchment of a strongman who has thoroughly wrecked what was once Latin America’s richest country and who now presides over the highest inflation and murder rates in the Western Hemisphere, shortages of basic goods and power, and a drug-trafficking industry whose kingpins include the defense minister.

Click here to read more.

 
Feb
17
2012
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ICYMI: Chavez foe seen victim of anti-Semitism in Venezuela

Chavez foe seen victim of anti-Semitism in Venezuela
Reuters
February 17, 2012
By Andrew Cawthorne

Two prominent U.S.-based Jewish organizations condemned on Friday as anti-Semitism a wave of verbal and written attacks by President Hugo Chavez’s supporters against Venezuela’s opposition leader.

Henrique Capriles, the grandson of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, has faced a barrage of insults since winning the Democratic Unity coalition’s presidential candidacy on Sunday. One that caused particular outrage was a profile by a state radio commentator entitled “The Enemy is Zionism.”

The full gamut of attacks, though, has ranged from Chavez calling him a “pig” to a prominent TV commentator accusing him of being caught in a car having sex with another man.

With official after official lining up to condemn Capriles as a flag bearer of the “bourgeoisie” and “Yankee imperialism,” some Chavez supporters have even been circulating a cartoon of him in pink underwear with a Nazi Swastika on his arm.

Capriles, who is a Catholic, has kept quiet about the vitriol against him, saying he only wants to fight the problems that really bother Venezuelans such as crime and unemployment.

He is seeking to unseat Chavez in an October 7 election that is shaping into the biggest challenge to the socialist leader’s 13-year rule of the South American OPEC member.

Opposition sympathizers are fuming at the vitriol aimed at Capriles, and two U.S.-based groups have sprung to his defense.

“As we have witnessed in the past, blatant and persistent anti-Semitism is used by President Chavez and his government apparatus as a divisive political tool to scapegoat Jews,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

“What we are seeing at the outset of Venezuela’s presidential elections is an attempt to cast the opposition candidate as a ‘traitorous Jew’ unworthy of the presidency and who, if elected, will subvert the interests of the Venezuelan people for the benefit of some mythic worldwide Zionist plot.”

Click here to read more.

Click here for the Anti-Defamation League press release.

Click here for the Simon Wiesenthal Center press release.