Blog : Ragazou

By JANICE ARNOLD, Staff Reporter  (CJN)

 

MONTREAL ? Rabbi Adam Scheier of Montreal is asking Canada to use its influence to have an outside investigation launched into two violent incidents at synagogues in Venezuela last year, which, he said, signal a deteriorating situation for Jews in that country.

 

Rabbi Adam Scheier, above, reported to the House of Commons about last year's vandalism at the Beit Shmuel Jewish school in Caracas, Venezuela. [Flash90 photo] 

 

In a chilling testimony before the House of Commons standing foreign affairs committee June 10, Rabbi Scheier, spiritual leader of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, said the events have terrified the country's Jewish community and that many are fleeing.

 

He alleged that they may be part of a government campaign to intimidate supporters of Israel.

 

He accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of creating ?an environment of fear and terror' for Jews and making anti-Semitism official policy. If his government is not behind the attacks, it is at least inciting them, he suggested.

 

?There is an unspoken consensus in the [Venezuelan Jewish] community that the Chavez government is the only body in the country that possesses the means, the co-ordination and the distorted political desire to carry out such an attack,? Rabbi Scheier told the subcommittee on international human rights.

 

?In January of 2009, in the early morning hours of the Jewish Sabbath, 15 unidentified men broke into the Tiferet Israel Synagogue in Caracas. They destroyed offices, wrote threatening messages on the synagogue's interior walls and desecrated holy objects.

 

?One month later, in February, a bomb was thrown into the Beit Samuel Synagogue, damaging property, and sending a threatening message to the Jewish community,?

 

Those messages echo the anti-Israel language Chavez uses in his speeches, he said.

 

?The synagogue vandals are either agents of the government or following the government's not-too-subtle leadership. Either possibility should be unacceptable to Canada, and unacceptable to the international community.?

 

Rabbi Scheier, who visited Caracas briefly a month after the incidents and has kept in regular contact with Jewish leaders there, told the committee: ?The international community, led by Canada, must demand an impartial, independent, and internationally sanctioned investigation of the attacks'

 

?Canada enjoys diplomatic and economic ties with Venezuela. It is time to leverage this relationship, and it is time to take a principled stance.?

 

The community now numbers 12,000, half the size it was 10 years ago, he said.

 

Chavez, who has openly courted the Arab world and Iran, has led the country since 1999.

 

?The government of Venezuela is sensitive to how it is perceived in the community of nations, and we have been reassured that the international voice of condemnation is the one ray of hope for the future of political and religious freedom in Venezuela,? Rabbi Scheier stated.

 

These attacks were not the first since Chavez came to power. Rabbi Scheier noted that in 2004 and 2007, there were two police raids on Jewish communal institutions, one a school.

 

?The alleged purpose of the raid was to search for weapons and contraband. The real purpose of the raid was to demonstrate that the Jewish community, and all who support Israel, are unwelcome in Venezuela,? according to what Rabbi Scheier has been told by Venezuelan Jews. The searches turned up nothing.

 

The government denied any involvement in the 2009 attacks, and 11 suspects, including seven police officers, were arrested, but Rabbi Scheier terms this ?a façade of justice.?

 

?There have been no trials, and the Jewish community has been left in the dark as to the sentence or the fate of those allegedly apprehended for these crimes.?

 

Relations between the South American country and Israel soured during Israel's war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. The Venezuela government cut diplomatic ties with Israel after its conflict with Hezbollah in Gaza in December 2008-January 2009.

 

Rabbi Scheier thanked Parliament for the support it has shown for the Venezuelan Jewish community through motions tabled, petitions presented and especially Canada's ?courageous' gesture of representing Israel's consular interests since its ambassador was expelled in January of last year.

 

Rabbi Scheier read letters he had received from Jewish children fearful of the anti-Semitism they believe has been whipped up by Chavez since the war in Gaza.

 

After Israel's interception of the flotilla headed to Gaza May 31, Rabbi Scheier said Chavez launched into a ?diatribe,? accusing Israel of financing his opposition, the Mossad of sending assassination teams to Venezuela, and deploying its forces in the Caribbean.

 

He quoted Chavez as saying: ?Curse you, State of Israel, curse you, you terrorist and murder.?

 

Chavez's words are similar to those that the vandals wrote on the walls of the synagogue in January 2009,? he noted, causing Jews to be afraid not only for their institutions' security, but their personal safety.

 

Rabbi Scheier stressed the urgency of the situation. ?If we wait too long, one of two eventualities will occur ? either every Jew will flee the country, or further tragedy will befall the country.?

 

Rabbi Scheier spent 24 hours in Caracas in March 2009 with Rabbis Avi Weiss of New York and Shmuel Herzfeld of Washington, D.C., both leaders of Amcha ? The Coalition of Jewish Concerns. They were invited by Venezuela's chief Ashkenazi rabbi Pynchas Brener, who pleaded with the visitors to make the plight of the community known to the outside world and to urge their governments to intervene.