Posted on 09/17/2006 7:17:35 AM PDT by dennisw
President Hugo Chavez's early friendship with a Holocaust denier was the first jolt.
Venezula has grown hostile to its dwindling Jewish community. Chavez's fierce criticism of Israel, repeated on recent trips to China and Syria So is the 2004 state police raid of a Jewish elementary school in Caracas.
Most troubling is Chavez's close alliance with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel's destruction.
"I have Jewish friends in Caracas wondering if they should remove yarmulkas when they go out in the street," said Victor Amram, of Boca Raton. "Never in our lives did we imagine Jews would think that way in Venezuela."
Amram, 60, was head of the Zionist Federation of Venezuela 1998 to 1999. He was also second in command in the Policia Tecnica Judicial, Venezuela's investigative law enforcement agency. In May 1999, his Chavez-appointed boss accused him of "Jewifying" the agency's store, which sold clothes and furniture, by stocking it with merchandise from vendors who happened to be Jewish, Amram said.
Amram already had planned to leave Venezuela because of its civil instability and corruption. He retired later that year and in 2000 moved to Florida, where he owns a security company.
Roughly 25 percent of Venezuela's 30,000 Jews have left for South Florida since Chavez was elected in 1998, according to the American Jewish Committee. Most fled a rising tide of crime, kidnappings and economic uncertainty, including government encroachments on private property, that sparked a general exodus of middle-class Venezuelans.
Norberto Ceresole, the late Argentinian left-wing thinker who denied the Holocaust, had a brief stint as Chavez's adviser in the early days of the populist leader's presidency.
In a 2005 Christmas radio broadcast, Chavez referred to the Jews as "descendants of those who crucified Christ" and have "taken over the riches of the world."
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
Jewish friends in Caracas wondering if they should remove yarmulkas
Get out of that country before it's too late. We're witnessing the 30s all over again. Get out now before it's too late
Why would Jews in South Florida fear Chavez in Venezuela?
Why not. Just a quick look at what's going on should answer that question.
My point was the totally misleading headline.
Mexico is now rethinking it's relationship with Venezuela now that Chavez says that Obrador is the REAL president. This is after Venezuela famously said that the election in Mexico was clean as they monitored it.
Oh, I do hope there isn't any kind of problem with his aircraft. We all know how many problems the Iranians have been having with aircraft maintenance and accidents. It would be a plausible "accident," er, ah, I mean a horrible accident if Ahmadinejad should disappear somewhere over the Atlantic.
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