Israel Matzav

Venezuela's Jews on the run

The Miami Herald reports that Jews no longer feel safe in Venezuela. The community is shrinking as many Jews flee to Miami - and probably to Israel. The main motivation for fleeing is an education law that requires even private schools like the local Jewish schools to teach something called “Bolivarian doctrine,” a vague catchall for whatever Hugo Chávez wants it to be. The schools will be supervised by “communal councils” (read: commissars from the socialist party) and the central government will decide who can and who cannot enter universities and the teaching profession. They have also restricted the teaching of foreign languages, i.e. Hebrew.

As it happened in Cuba under Fidel Castro, the number of Jews in Venezuela has dramatically decreased since Hugo Chávez came to power. The Hebrew community has been the object of invectives from the president himself and the government media. Which prompts me to ask: What will be the fate of the vibrant Jewish community in the land that gave refuge to my ancestors and served as a model to the Jewish diaspora?

``The fact is, many members of the Jewish community have left Venezuela,'' said Abraham Levy Benshimol, president of Venezuela's Confederation of Israeli Associations. ``The more people we lose, the more difficult it becomes to maintain our institutions.''

Such an exodus carries two inevitable consequences. Among the expatriates are leaders who were vital for the community to function and develop. But now that so many have emigrated, donations to Jewish social service groups have decreased and it becomes harder for institutions to aid those members most in need -- precisely the ones who lack the resources to emigrate.

The number of Jews in Venezuela varies. The Jerusalem Post reports that, according to conservative estimates, the Venezuelan community is currently down to 9,000 members from a peak of 30,000. However, a census conducted by Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola concluded in the early '90s that the community did not reach 20,000.

I was able to confirm with principals of private Jewish schools that from kindergarten to high school the number of students has dropped 50 percent in a decade.

Writing at National Review Online, Mona Charen reports that the Obama administration's reaction to all this has been to cozy up to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (pictured above with the President).

Hugo Chávez has invited Hezbollah into Venezuela, and chased most of the Jewish community out. He has sent advanced weaponry to the FARC Communist insurgency that has been terrorizing neighboring Colombia for 40 years, and has spawned a bevy of imitators in Latin America. Next month he will visit his good friend, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Tehran.

And yet President Obama has been silent. It isn’t as if he has a strict policy against criticizing other nations. He’s been quick enough to condemn Israel for its settlement policies and Honduras for ousting Chávez wannabee Manuel Zelaya.

No, the Obama administration has kept mum because Barack Obama, schooled in leftist fairy tales from the cradle, seems to believe that what the region requires from the United States is not leadership but contrition. He was hopeful after the Summit of the Americas, he said, because the leaders of Latin America could “at least see that we are not dug in into policies that were formulated before I was born.” Chávez didn’t need to hand Obama a copy of The Open Veins of Latin America, because our president probably already believes 80 percent of what’s in the book.

Far from condemning our hemisphere’s little Mussolini, the Obama administration has courted Chávez. The Department of State declared Venezuela’s willingness to exchange ambassadors a “positive development.” And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, displaying the cold-blooded indifference to human rights that has characterized her approach to China, said, “Let’s see if we can begin to turn [the] relationship [with Venezuela].”

Meanwhile, our beleaguered ally Colombia, which has done so much to stem the drug trade and to develop centrist and stable governance, still waits for ratification of the bilateral free-trade agreement. And it will continue to wait. When Sens. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) and Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) learned that the U.S. and Colombia were in negotiations to enhance cooperation against narcotraffickers, they expressed their dismay in a letter to the secretary of state, warning against closer ties with our most loyal ally in the region.

Charen's article is entitled "Obama screws up Latin American policy." But is it 'screwed up' if that was his intention all along?

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey reports that the Obama administration has suspended the granting of visas for Hondurans who wish to come to the United States, because Honduras' democratic institutions have refused to reinstate Chavez wannabee Manuel Zelaya.

The OAS Foreign Ministers mission is in Honduras seeking support for the San Jose Accord, which would restore the democratic and constitutional order and resolve the political crisis in Honduras. In support of this mission and as a consequence of the de facto regime’s reluctance to sign the San Jose Accord, the U.S. Department of State is conducting a full review of our visa policy in Honduras. As part of that review, we are suspending non-emergency, non-immigrant visa services in the consular section of our embassy in Honduras, effective August 26. We firmly believe a negotiated solution is the appropriate way forward and the San Jose Accord is the best solution.

And Ed points out:

The White House firmly believes in negotiation rather than law enforcement so much that they will suspend visa services with an American ally in order to enforce a policy cheered by Cuba and Venezuela. That makes as much sense as getting involved in the dispute in the first place. Zelaya broke the law and abused his power, both with his constitutional plebiscite and with his attempt to sack the military commander, which required parliamentary approval. The matter is entirely internal, and should be left to the Honduran parliament and courts.

This is beyond 'screwed up.' It's downright sabotage of America's and its (former?) allies' interests in Latin America with the goal of remaking the United States' alliances to favor dictatorships rather than democracies. The White House believes in negotiations except with countries like Israel, to whom it believes it can dictate. The fact that Hezbullah is being allowed to establish bases in Venezuela and in other Latin American countries may come back to bite the United States - ferociously - long after the Obama administration has gone off to the sunset. The abandonment of allies like Colombia, Israel and a democratic Honduras (and others) may result in a realignment of the world community that will leave the United States isolated when the long nightmare of the Obama administration - God willing - ends.

Please note also the complicity of Democratic Senators like Dodd and Leahy. Apparently, it's not just the White House that is trying to find the United States a new set of allies, or did Dodd find a Friends of Hugo loan fund in Venezuela? (via Instapundit). Voters should keep in mind next fall that the problem isn't just Obama - it's the entire Left wing of the Democratic party that he represents.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:12 AM