Venezuela's Jews adopting Plan B
With nightly riots (of which you read practically nothing in the media) going on around them, Venezuela's Jews are
contemplating leaving.
With Venezuela now roiled by anti-government demonstrations-the death
toll reached 18 last Saturday-Venezuelan Jews who remain have yet
another reason to leave their country: growing despair.
"There's
less hope about the future," said Andres Beker, a Venezuelan Jewish
expatriate in the United States whose parents still live in Caracas. "My
parents are huge fans of Venezuela. Until last year I thought they
would stay no matter what. Now, for the first time, they're talking
about Plan B: leaving Venezuela."
Over
the last 15 years, from the time Chavez came to power and in the year
since Nicolas Maduro has ruled the country, the Venezuelan Jewish
community has shrunk by more than half. It is now estimated at about
7,000, down from a high of 25,000 in the 1990s. Many of those who left
were community leaders.
It's
not just Venezuelan Jews who are leaving. Hundreds of thousands of
middle- and upper-class Venezuelans have relocated in recent years,
swelling the size of expat communities in places like Miami, Panama,
Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
The exodus of Venezuelan Jews has put a great strain on the community's institutions.
"Emigration
has really played a big factor in the community-that's our main
problem," said Sammy Eppel, a Caracas journalist and Jewish community
member who also serves as director of the B'nai Brith Human Rights
Commission in Venezuela.
"When
we were a numerous and prosperous community, we built numerous and
heavy institutions," Eppel said. "A lot of our members have left, and we
are left with the same institutions but with less people to take care
of them. We have to make serious adjustments while making sure the
services we provide to the community don't suffer."
There's a Venezuelan Jewish community that's been building in one of the neighborhoods in Jerusalem. One has to wonder why there are not more.
Labels: Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela, Venezuelan Jewry
Chavez protege 'wins' elections
Nicolas Maduro, a former bus driver and protege of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, has been declared the narrow winner of that country's elections. But
the opposition is not accepting the results.
Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles said he did not recognize the
official results that gave Maduro 50.7 percent support versus 49.1
percent for him, a difference of just 235,000 ballots.
"Mr.
Maduro, if you were illegitimate before, now you are even more loaded
with illegitimacy," Capriles said, adding that his team had identified
more than 3,000 "incidents" during the voting.
Capriles' refusal to accept the result raised fears of political
unrest in Venezuela, an OPEC nation with the world's biggest oil
reserves.
The National Electoral Council earlier said that more
than 99 percent of votes had been counted and that Maduro's victory was
"irreversible."
Government supporters immediately gathered to
celebrate outside the Miraflores presidential palace, where Maduro paid
an emotional tribute to Chavez, the socialist leader who named him as
his successor in his last speech to the nation before dying last month
from cancer.
"The fight continues!" Maduro, 50, told the victory rally.
The Nazis were 'elected' too.
If you're a Jew in Venezuela, it's long past time to get out.
Labels: Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela, Venezuelan Jewry
Being a Jew in Venezuela
For those who believe Hugo Chavez was anything other than an anti-Semitic thug, or even that he 'wasn't so bad,' please consider this account by Ayelet Bar Naim who
lived in Venezuela and was not sorry to see Chavez go.
Chávez's
many anti-Jewish statements in the media, like calling Jews pigs,
denying the Holocaust and accusing Israel of genocide against the
Palestinians, contributed to an atmosphere of anti-Semitism that grew
worse year by year. Suddenly it became frightening to walk down the
street after dark, for fear of being harassed. Our synagogues and Jewish
community buildings were spray-painted with swastikas and anti-Semitic
slogans and there was a feeling that Chávez was egging on the populace
and speaking the "people's language" against the Jews.
He was always quick to
say that Venezuela's large businesses are controlled by Jews "stealing
the nation's money," and we felt the results directly in our bottom
lines. Everyone in the Jewish community felt their financial situation
decline over time. I particularly remember the closing of a large
Jewish-owned shopping mall in Caracas. Chávez decided to nationalize the
property for the benefit of the state. Because many of the mall's shop
owners were Jewish, we felt that the motive was anti-Semitism, pure and
simple.
The Jewish community
did not merely suffer from economic harassment. Government operatives
would frequently follow children from rich Jewish families in order to
kidnap them and demand ransom. In other instances, after Chávez had
gained control of the police and the army, the defense forces would
occasionally place a closure on the Jewish community schools, with the
children inside and their parents unable to gain access to them. The
pretext was that the Jews had hidden weapons inside and that searches
had to be conducted to confiscate them.
The harassment, restrictions and
overall atmosphere made my life as a Jew in Venezuela unbearable. But I
hoped that the nation would have its say and replace Chávez with another
leader. What finally broke my resolve and "persuaded" me to leave
everything behind and accede to my husband's urgent pleas to leave was a
law passed by Chávez concerning children. This law stipulated that
children up to the age of 3 belong to their parents, afterward until the
age of 10 they move to a school that is under control of the
government, and from 10 until age 18 they study in a military boarding
school. From that moment I understood that my future and the future of
my children lies elsewhere. Almost all of our family agreed to come to
Israel with us, and the rest fled to the United States, Spain, Peru and
other countries.
More
here.
Labels: Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan Jewry
Obama sending delegation to Chavez funeral
President Hussein Obama plans to
send a delegation to the funeral of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
(Reuters) —
The United States is expected to send a delegation to Hugo Chavez’s
funeral later this week in a move that could send a conciliatory message
to Venezuela now that its stridently anti-American leader has died.
Senior US officials also said on Wednesday that Washington had no
immediate plans to respond in kind to Venezuela’s expulsion of two US
military attaches, which was announced on Tuesday by Vice President
Nicolas Maduro just hours before he told the world of Chavez’s death.
How bad was Chavez? Well aside from the fact that he was a friend of Iran and an enemy of Israel and the US (and his
own country's
Jewish community),
here are some numbers for the Venezuelan economy that ought to make you cringe.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, Venezuelan Jewry
Wikileaks highlights plight of Venezuela's Jews
Aussie Dave and I heard a presentation a few months ago about the plight of Jews in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. We were told not to discuss it out of fear of retribution against the Jewish community there. Unfortunately, thanks to Wikileaks, it's now
out in the open.
Venezuelan Jews raised concerns with US diplomats regarding the increasingly hostile environment created for them by the government of President Hugo Chavez, saying they see a “dark horizon” for their community, according to a document released by WikiLeaks on Thursday morning.
The document, dating from 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 week.
In the dispatch, a US diplomat described a gloomy meeting with members of the Confederacion de Asociaciones Israelitas Venezolanas, a local Jewish organization, who feared the leftist government’s growing ties with Iran, and the language chosen by Chavez to protest against Israeli policies.
“While Chavez’s rhetoric once clearly differentiated criticism of Israel from that of the Venezuelan Jewish community, since 2004 they believe he has merged his anti-Zionist views with anti-Semitic ones,” US Political Counselor Robin D. Meyer quoted the leaders as saying.
Members of the Jewish community complained about having to meet with the foreign minister rather than the interior minister to raise their concerns, giving the impression that they were perceived by Caracas as foreigners. Jewish leaders suggested strengthening ties with the US Embassy in case of an outburst of violence against the community.
“Given the ongoing sense of threat, CAIV members agreed on the need for close relations with the US and other embassies as a form of diplomatic protection for the Jewish community,” Meyer wrote.
There are also some statements about Russian Jewry.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Hugo Chavez, Russian Jewry, Venezuelan Jewry, Wikileaks
