Venezuela's Jews Defend Leftist President in Flap Over Remarks
By MARC PERELMAN
January 13, 2006
http://www.forward.com/articles/7189
The Venezuelan Jewish community leadership and several major American Jewish
groups are accusing the Simon Wiesenthal Center of rushing to judgment by
charging Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chavez, with making antisemitic
remarks.
Officials of the leading organization of Venezuelan Jewry were preparing a
letter this week to the center, complaining that
it had misinterpreted Chavez's
words and had failed to consult with them before attacking the Venezuelan
president.
"You have interfered in the political status, in the security, and in the
well-being of our community. You have acted on
your own, without consulting us,
on issues that you don't know or understand," states a draft of the letter
obtained by the Forward. Copies of the letter are also to be sent to the heads
of the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee, among other
Jewish groups.
"We believe the president was not talking about Jews and that the Jewish world
must learn to work together," said Fred Pressner, president of the
Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela. The confederation is known
by its Spanish acronym, CAIV. He added that this was the third time in recent
years that the Wiesenthal center had publicly criticized Chavez without first
consulting the local community.
Last week the Wiesenthal Center wrote to Chavez,
demanding that he apologize for
what the center said was a negative reference to Jews during a Christmas Eve
speech. The center also asked the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay
and Uruguay to "freeze the process" of
incorporating Venezuela into Mercosur, a
regional trade bloc, unless the Venezuelan president publicly apologizes.
In his speech, Chavez lamented that while the world had enough resources for
all, "some minorities, the descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ,
the descendants of the same ones who threw out
[South American liberator Simon]
Bolivar from here and also crucified him in a
way in Santa Marta, over there in
Colombia ? a minority took possession of all the planet's gold, of the silver,
the minerals, the waters, the good land, the oil, the riches, and they have
concentrated the riches in a few hands. Less
than 10% of the world's population
possesses over half of the world's riches, and more than half of the planet's
population is poor, and every day there are more poor in the world."
Both the AJCommittee and the American Jewish Congress seconded the Venezuelan
community's view that Chavez's comments were not aimed at Jews. All three
groups said he was aiming his barbs at the white oligarchy that has dominated
the region since the colonial era, pointing to his reference to Bolivar as the
clearest evidence of his intent.
One official noted that Latin America's so-called Liberation Theology has long
depicted Jesus as a socialist and consequently speaks of gentile business
elites as "Christ-killers."
Sergio Widder, the Wiesenthal center's representative in Latin America,
countered that Chavez's mention of Christ-killers and wealth was ambiguous at
best and in need of clarification. He said that the decision to criticize
Chavez had been taken after careful consideration.
The Venezuelan government did not react
publicly, and its embassy in Washington
declined to comment. However, senior government officials met with Israeli
diplomats in Caracas this week and said that the president's remarks had no
antisemitic intent or meaning, according to Livia Link, deputy chief of the
Israeli Embassy. She declined to be more specific or to provide the embassy's
views on the affair, saying that it was a Venezuelan issue.
Complaints of American Jewish high-handedness have been aired by Jewish
organizations in other countries, most notably in France. French Jews
complained in 2003 that American groups were too vocal in criticizing the
French government for not responding
aggressively to incidents of antisemitism.
Such frictions illustrate the difficulty of finding a balance between
American-style aggressive advocacy and the built-in cautiousness of local
Jewish communities.
Pressner said that the Venezuelan Jewish
confederation was not caving in to the
government. He cited several protests by the confederation against antisemitic
remarks broadcast on radio and television in
recent months. "We are not afraid,
but we need to be fair," he said.
In the Venezuelan situation, American Jewish
groups might be reflecting the Bush
administration's displeasure with Chavez's anti-American pronouncements. But
while Chavez's politics may not appeal to mainstream American Jewish groups,
several spokesmen warned that labeling him
antisemitic for no obvious reason is
likely to prove self-fulfilling by provoking a backlash against Jews.
"It appears to us that Chavez did not intentionally speak about Jews," said
David Twersky, director of the AJCongress's Council on World Jewry. "I don't
think we should raise the flag of antisemitism when it doesn't belong."
The Wiesenthal center previously criticized Chavez publicly and urged his
exclusion from Mercosur after he compared Spain's then-Prime Minister Jose
Maria Aznar to Hitler and again when he quipped that his political opposition
resembled the wandering Jew.
The Wiesenthal center is not the only international Jewish group entangled in
Venezuela. Speaking to the media two months ago,
Rabbi Henri Sobel of Brazil, a
longtime World Jewish Congress leader, accused Chavez of antisemitism.
Pressner said that the CAIV sent letters both to Sobel and to the Wiesenthal
center urging prior consultation but failed to get a response.
The Wiesenthal center's Widder confirmed that the center was making its
decisions on its own and did not consult with the CAIV. "We don't speak on
behalf of the Jewish community there," he said.
By contrast, other American Jewish groups that
spoke out on the latest incident
asked the CAIV for guidance.
"Having served in a Jewish community in Latin America that always welcomed
cooperation with international and American Jewish organizations, I understand
the urge to help a community," said Dina Siegel Vann, director of the
AJCommittee's Institute on Latino and Latin American Affairs and a former
political adviser to the Mexican Jewish
community leadership. "But it has to be
tempered by the realization that many times,
those organizations do not have the
full picture of the local dynamics. And the
basic courtesy is to call the local
Jewish community and ask what they can do to help."