Venezuela picking the wrong role models

Germany in the 30's. [Link]

On May 1, Melanie Kirkpatrick wrote about the deteriorating condition of the Jews in Venezuela.

In 1998, the year Hugo Chavez was elected president, there were 22,000 Jews in Venezuela. Today the Jewish population is estimated at between 10,000 and 15,000.

Those numbers tell a story, and it’s not a happy one. The Jews of Venezuela are fleeing to Miami, Madrid and elsewhere because of the anti-Semitism they face at home. In an interview this week in Washington, D.C., the country’s chief rabbi sounds a warning bell: “There’s anxiety in the Jewish community because of what has happened,” says Rabbi Pynchas Bremer, “and of course because of what may happen.”

Sounds like a place Roger Cohen would like to visit.

Kirkpatrick also points out that Catholics are also being targeted by Chavez. But this is really disturbing.

In January, a professor published an article online calling on citizens to boycott Jewish-owned businesses and confiscate the property of Jews who support Israel. He urged Venezuelans to “summon publicly every Jew found in the streets, squares, shopping malls, etc. and force them to take positions, screaming at them slogans in favor of Palestine and against the abortion-state of Israel.” Change the language from Spanish to German, and this could be an anti-Semitic tract from the 1930s.

No wonder an American Rabbi who recently visited Australia concluded:

Rabbi Herzfeld is blunter: “I think we’re in the early stages of something catastrophic.”

Scapegoating Jew makes for a handy diversion while the economy’s tanking. But President Chavez isn’t sitting on his hands:

Troops were mobilised over the weekend to assist Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, in seizing the assets of some 60 oil service companies, after a law was approved last week that paves the way for the state to take increasing control over its all-important oil industry.

With the drop in oil prices and the economic crisis, what does Chavez do when the money for bread and circuses starts running out? Even more than it already is, I mean.