Jews in S. America Increasingly Uneasy

"We are blaming the incendiary rhetoric of government officials and media," says Miguel Truzman, at the synagogue vandalized Jan. 30. (By Juan Forero -- The Washington Post)
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After breaking relations with Israel over Gaza and expelling the ambassador and six other Israeli diplomats, Chávez gave a series of speeches in which he called Israel's government "the assassin arm of the United States" that is carrying out "a genocidal policy." Chávez urged Venezuela's Jewish community to "speak out" against the Gaza strikes. "Don't you the Jews reject the Holocaust?" he said. "Isn't that what we're seeing?"

Even more troubling to Jewish leaders has been commentary in the state press and on such Web sites as Aporrea, which is closely linked to the government. Pro-government pundits have waxed on about Jewish control of U.S. foreign policy and banks and offered conspiracy theories about the Holocaust ("Hitler's associates were Jewish," one commentator said last year on state television).

One commentator on Aporrea called on Venezuelans to boycott companies owned by Jews and "publicly challenge every Jew that you find in the street."

At first, the Venezuelan government suggested that opposition figures might have carried out the attack on the synagogue to cast blame on the government ahead of a referendum next Sunday. In that election, the government is asking residents to vote for a constitutional amendment that would allow Chávez to run for office an indefinite number of times.

"All this is part of a great lie that is trying to be built against Venezuela," Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro said in the past week. Five days after the attack, Maduro and Communications Minister Jesse Chacón met with Jewish leaders and promised an investigation.

"Why do they have to blame me for everything?" Chávez said Friday. "They attacked the synagogue, and we condemned the act and we're investigating."

On Thursday in Caracas, Jews gathered outside the synagogue for a solemn ceremony of speeches and prayer.

Suddenly, as Rabbi Isaac Cohen was to speak, a bus carrying the president's supporters, in their trademark red T-shirts, passed. The message, amplified by loudspeakers, was simple: "The United States and Israel, it is they who are spreading terror in Arab countries and in the world."

The crowd quickly responded by holding up their Venezuelan identity cards and singing the national anthem.

Minutes later, Andres Gordan, a Romanian-born Jew who survived the Holocaust, said he felt "sad, very sad." Venezuela had been a refuge for him, he said, a country tolerant of his religion.

"It's disappointing that this can happen in 2009, when the whole world knows the history," he said. "Here, we found a paradise -- until now."

Partlow reported from Buenos Aires. Special correspondent Andres Schipani in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.