Venezuela
It is true what they say about history; it usually does repeat itself. Take what is happening to the Jewish community in Venezuela that culminated with the January 30 attack on Caracas' oldest synagogue, Tifferet Israel.
This was not an isolated incident of vandalism, but the culmination of attacks on Israel by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has accused the Israeli government of genocide against the Palestinians and more recently to a post on the government website, Aporrea.
On the site, 35 year-old mathematics' professor, Ernesto Silva, called the Jews squalid, anti-government conspirators and called for a protest at the Tifferet Israel Synagogue as well as that of Jewish businesses, the closing of Jewish schools and a nationwide effort to denounce the members of Jewish organizations.
"Publicly challenge every Jew you find on the street, shopping center or park," he wrote, "and shout slogans in favor of Palestine and against that abortion, Israel."
The government later removed the post and apologized, but by then it was too late and the damage had already been done. About a week later, on January 30, about 15 men, allegedly some of them security guards, broke into the synagogue, spray painted, "Jews, get out!" on a wall, destroyed religious objects and broke into the synagogue's database.
Seventy years have passed since Kristalnacht, that November 9, 1938 night when the Nazis looted and destroyed Jewish businesses in the state-sponsored pogrom that is considered the beginning of the Holocaust.
They say that bad things happen not because bad people do things but because good people do nothing.
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Chavez is having problems in Venezuela and to divert the attention on his incapacity to govern properly he reverts to the old trick to blame the Jews. That is an old trick. Nero was having problems in Rome. He blame his problem on the Christians and start to feed Christians to wild animals to the delight of the crowds filling the Colosseum. Christianity became legal. As time went by, all over Europe the various governments in trouble found another one to blame, the Jews. From the Spanish Inquisition to the Russian pogroms it become fshionable to blame Jews and slaughter Jews. Hitler did it, and now Chavez, as a good bona-fide dictator, repeats the same mantra.
Interesting take Dante, but only partly right. The Romans in the first century didn't really recognize Christians as not being Jews. In fact, the word Christian wasn't used till nearly a century later. Followers of Jesus were called Followers of the Light. Up through the burning of Rome, these followers kept kosher and the men were circumcised. Thus, back then, the Romans got a two-fer. They threw Christians and Jews to the lions--and they were the same people.
Understand, this is almost 150 years years before Nicaea and the birth of Christianity as we know it today. Today a Jewish Christian would be an oxymoron--or at least a mixing of religion and ethnicity. But before the Nicaea, the faiths were not fully separated.
Jonathan
Dante,
I agree with you about the motives of all the Hugo Chavezes of the world. My father survived the Holocaust, so it is important for me to do all that I can to see that nothing even remotely like that ever happens again. Thanks for an insightful post!
Gail-Tzipporah
Hello Drober. I'm learning something new every day. Now, I will have to look up and see what or who is Nicae. I'll keep in touch.