Don’t Stay Silent About Venezuela

by Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld and Rabbi Avi Weiss
Special To The Jewish Week

As the world observed the recent referendum in Venezuela, a disturbing event went relatively unnoticed right under its otherwise watchful eyes. JTA reported that Hugo Chavez’s police raided a Jewish social club while 900 Jews were participating in a wedding party in the nearby Union Israelita Synagogue.
Chavez has engaged in a campaign to intimidate all potential opposition to his regime, but the Jewish community is perhaps the most vulnerable because of his profound antipathy towards the State of Israel and his personal anti-Semitism. More than a year ago, Chavez said the following in a Christmas Eve speech: “The world has wealth for all, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ, have taken over all the wealth of the world.”

/>The raid was ostensibly conducted to look for terrorists and explosives, and it was carried out in full force by the same unit that investigates terrorism and drug trafficking. The raid reminded observers of a similar raid on a Jewish school in Caracas in 2005.
Not surprisingly, no weapons were found. Given the recent increase in anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish institutions in Venezuela one wonders why the police were raiding the Jewish institutions instead of protecting them.
Of course, no one really thinks that the police thought that the Jews were working with terrorists. During the close vote on the referendum (Chavez lost his bid for a constitutional amendment giving him the right to seek re-election indefinitely), Chavez was sending a message, intending to intimidate the Jews from voicing opposition to him. Further, and following the playbook of other anti-Semites throughout history, Chavez’s actions were equally intended to send a “you’re next” signal to other less vulnerable regime critics.
If Jewish leaders were to speak out publicly they would no doubt side against Chavez, who has recently embraced Iran’s Ahmadinejad, and has also given strong support to terrorist organizations. On a recent visit to Washington D.C., Gustavo Aristegui, the shadow foreign minister in Spain’s opposition party, sent warning signals to officials that Hamas and Hezbollah are now operating freely in Venezuela.
Understandably, some Jews of Venezuela are afraid to speak out. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but by some estimates close to half of a community that once numbered more than 25,000 has left the country under Chavez’s rule. Moreover, those that have remained live under constant fear of speaking out and thereby making their situation worse.
One understands their fear; but that should not stop those in the free world from speaking out. Yet the American Jewish Committee has adopted the position that the issue of Venezuelan Jewry should not be raised as a public matter in Washington. This reflects the concern that increased publicity for this matter can hurt Venezuelan Jewry. Indeed, members of Congress have been successfully persuaded not to go public on this issue.
We couldn’t disagree more. First, some Jews in Venezuela think we should speak out publicly on this issue. Indeed, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Venezuela, Rabbi Pynchas Brener, told the press about this raid: “I think this was just to scare the daylights out of the Jewish community, to convince us not to vote and to keep a low profile. But since the Holocaust, we don’t scare easily.”
Further, although we understand why some Venezuelan Jews have been silent for fear of risking retribution by speaking out, our responsibility is different. History has shown that silence in the face of anti-Semitism just doesn’t work. It didn’t work when many Jews of Europe begged their brethren not to draw attention to them, and when leaders of the American Jewish community pleaded with President Roosevelt not to appoint a Jew to the Supreme Court for fear of provoking Hitler. It didn’t work in the former Soviet Union at the beginning of the struggle for Soviet Jewry, and it didn’t work when the Jews of Argentina were frightened to speak out against the Menem government that was covering up the 1994 terrorist attack against AMIA, the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. It didn’t work when innocent community leaders were arrested in Iran in 1999.
What does it say to the world when a government can brazenly paint the Jews as enemies of the state, and the rest of world Jewry — let alone the world — remains silent?
What does it say when the Jewish establishment pressures our own elected members of Congress not to speak out publicly on this issue?
As the Talmud says, “Silence is like acceptance.”
Those of us who do not live under Chavez’s rule should be pressing Congress for public hearings and a congressional investigation into the security and religious freedom of Venezuelan Jewry, as well as the religious freedom of other opposition groups in Venezuela. n
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld is national vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, AMCHA, and rabbi of congregation Ohev Sholom – the National Synagogue in Washington, D.C. Rabbi Avi Weiss is national president of AMCHA and senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale.

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