JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

144 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 3:141
unprecedented criticism from the Inter-American Commission of Human
Rights (IACHR), a body of the Organization of American States (OAS). In
February 2010, the IACHR issued the report “Democracy and Human
Rights in Venezuela,” which describes the current status quo in that country,
including references to antisemitic incidents 6 :
• Paragraph 780: “. . . the Commission is concerned by reports claiming
that the Jewish community in Venezuela is being especially
affected by violent incidents, including antisemitic statements and
incidents in various media outlets, together with graffiti painted on
the walls of various Jewish institutions and homes.”
• Paragraph 781: “( . . . ) on December 2, 2007, police officers
raided the headquarters of the Hebrew Social, Cultural and Sports
Center (“La Hebraica”) in Caracas. . . . [S]ome 30 officers of the
Intelligence and Prevention Services Directorate forced their way
into the Center . . . [A]bsent a prosecutor from the Attorney General’s
Office, the police officers presented an order ( . . . ) that
allegedly gave no grounds for the operation . . .”
• Paragraph 782: “In response to the situation ( . . . ) the Commission
asked the State to submit information on the incident and on the
reasons for the operation carried out at La Hebraica. ( . . . ) [T]he
State told the Commission that “the operation in question was
intended to conduct a detailed search of all the facility’s rooms in
order to locate evidence of criminalistic interest related to the
alleged commission of a crime against public order . . .” ( . . . ) The
IACHR believes that the information furnished by the state regarding
the operation at the Hebrew Center is inadequate to explain the
incident that occurred at the institution’s headquarters.
• The report also refers to the desecration of the Tiferet Israel synagogue
in January 2009, as well as the series of incidents that happened
in that month (Paragraph 783). It also mentions, as a
precedent, the speech given by President Chávez on Christmas Eve
in 2005, in which he stated that “the world has enough for everyone,
indeed, but it happens that some minorities, the descendants of
those who crucified Christ ( . . . ) seized the world’s riches” (Paragraph
784).
The Caracas–Tehran axis is also trying to influence regional politics.
In June 2010, the ALBA bloc proposed to pass a condemnation against
Israel at the 2010 OAS General Assembly in Lima, Peru. This initiative was
presented at the opening of the first plenary and was voiced by Ecuador, a
6. The complete report can be found at http://www.cidh.oas.org/pdf%20files/
VENEZUELA%202009%20ENG.pdf.