Not if Hugo Chavez has anything to do with it.
When two dozen heavily armed policemen came to search the Hebraica community center in the Venezuelan capital one night last month, the Jewish community here finally snapped.
The government officers who entered the sprawling, country club-like complex were ostensibly looking for a stash of weapons and for evidence of “subversive activity.†They found neither. In the subsequent days, the Venezuelan Jewish community’s umbrella organization, the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela, fired off a statement denouncing the raid as an “unjustifiable act†aimed at creating tensions between the community and the government of socialist President Hugo Chavez.
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One of the first points of tension was the April 2002 coup attempt against Chavez. Michael Penfold-Becerra, a political scientist at Caracas’s institute of superior administrative studies, said that among some government officials, suspicions against Jews were fueled by the alleged support of prominent rabbi Pinchas Brenner for the authors of the short-lived coup, as well as by the perception that Israelis and Jews were active in the arms business.
I also wonder if, now that Hugo is ready to confiscate farms, if Jewish owned business will be next?
President Hugo Chavez threatened on Sunday to take over farms or milk plants if owners refuse to sell their milk for domestic consumption and instead seek higher profits abroad or from cheese-makers.
With the country recently facing milk shortages, Chavez said “it’s treason” if farmers deny milk to Venezuelans while selling it across the border in Colombia or for gourmet cheeses.
“In that case the farm must be expropriated,” Chavez said, adding that the government could also take over milk plants and properties of beef producers.
“I’m putting you on alert,” Chavez said. “If there’s a producer that refuses to sell the product … and sells it at a higher price abroad … ministers, find me the proof so it can be expropriated.”
Addressing his Cabinet, he said: “If the army must be brought in, you bring in the army.”
I’ll be keeping a special eye on the leftist site over the next couple days to see just how supportive they are of these maneuvers. They didn’t mind it when he started shutting down the media in the country, and we all know for a fact that it is the American left who are the anti-Semites, so this shouldn’t take too long.
What was that Jonah Goldberg was saying about Liberal Fascism?