Free Republic

Jewish community raises concerns with US diplomats in Caracas regarding the hostile environment created by the Chavez government. Venezuelan Jews raised concerns with US diplomats regarding the increasingly hostile environment against them created by the government of President Hugo Chavez, saying they see a "dark horizon" for their community, according to a document released by WikiLeaks Thursday morning. The document dated November 2009 and labeled confidential, the third highest level of classification, was the first of its kind that focused on Jewish communities in the Diaspora since WikiLeaks unleashed an avalanche of US diplomatic documents to the Web earlier this...

A report by the human rights watchdog of the Organization of American States warns of a possible “threat to the life and physical integrity of the Jewish community in Venezuela” due to the Chavez regime’s violations of the political and human rights of its citizens. In a lengthy report publicized in late February, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) accused the government of Venezuela of fostering an atmosphere of “political intolerance” and “a climate hostile to the free exercise of dissenting political participation.” It blasted the prevailing “citizen insecurity” in the country and saved its harshest criticism for “the...

PARIS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people, telling a French newspaper that the bombing of Gaza late last year was an unprovoked attack. "The question is not whether the Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinians. They're doing it openly," Chavez said in an interview with Le Figaro published on Wednesday. The Venezuelan president, who has just completed a tour of Middle Eastern and Arab countries, brushed aside Israeli assertions that its attack on Gaza was a response to rocket fire from Islamist group Hamas which rules the coastal enclave.