11 January 2008 - Hugo Chavez goes after Jews

Hugo Chavez’s, having recently suffered the rejection of Venezuelan voters who denied him sweeping new powers in a constitutional referendum, is looking for new targets to attack. Jews are a tiny minority in Venezuela—but we have seen this sort of behavior before, most recently in Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe went after whites, and Jews in particular, after losing a similar constitutional referendum.

From the :

Venezuelan Jews, long uneasy with the Chávez government's alliances with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries that espouse anti-Israel views, are concerned that the government is sponsoring anti-Semitism in this hemisphere, a prominent journalist said Tuesday.

''The situation we have now in Venezuela is that for the first time in modern history we have government-sponsored anti-Semitism in a Western country,'' said Sammy Eppel. ``That is why this is very dangerous, not just for the Jewish community in Venezuela but for the Jewish community as a whole.''

Among the examples offered by Eppel:

Venezuelan government intelligence services twice have raided the country's most important Jewish center in a vague, ultimately unsuccessful search for weapons. Publications of the government's cultural ministry run articles entitled ''the Jewish Question,'' along with a Jewish star superimposed over a swastika.

I think what Chavez needs is another dose of what Spain’s King Juan Carlos dished out earlier this year: