NOTE: I've been worried about the rising Latin and South American anti semitism for years. This article just adds to my worries. Once again we're losing a propaganda and media war. Will Aliyah be the only answer?
Sammy Eppel, activist and director of The Commission for Human Rights at B’nai B’rith Venezuela, said on Monday that anti-Semitism in Latin America has significantly increased in recent years.
“The problem is that there is big damage that has been done in the last 12, 10 years,” he said. “I was born in Venezuela and I lived there all my life and I never felt anti-Semitism from anybody… we were never discriminated and all of a sudden in 2004, it explodes.”
Eppel made his comments as a panelist at a special conference held at the United Nations in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In 2006, he said, the Venezuelan Jewish community had to open an office and hire five professionals to monitor anti-Semitism in government and government-sponsored media.
In April 2011, while former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was in Cuba undergoing treatment for various health problems, a correspondent for Venezuela’s national radio, Radio Nacional de Venezuela, did a series of programs promoting theProtocols of the Elders of Zion. The book, which is the second most printed publication in the Arab world after the Koran, describes a popular anti-Semitic notion that the Jewish people are planning global domination. The book is also available at book fairs in Venezuela promoted by the government, Eppel added.
