JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

2011] THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND 55
aragua, Ecuador, and Brazil. High-ranking Latin American civil servants
traveled to Tehran reciprocally.
Of all the Latin American nations, Venezuela has been the most hospitable
host of Iran. In addition to the hundreds of signed economic agreements
throughout the years, it is possible to mention other areas of
cooperation. A transoceanic flight between Tehran and Caracas exists, with
stops in Damascus. The flight is not commercially profitable, does not
admit ordinary passengers, and is not subject to regular customs control.
Some Venezuelan universities teach Farsi. Iranian factories, clearly dedicated
to bicycles and tractor manufacture or to uranium processing, were
built in the remote countryside and are guarded by Iranians. Recall that
Chávez intended to support the nuclear program of ayatollahas and Hizbullah,
while the extremist groups like the CRAF and Spain’s ETA receive
Venezuelan state sponsorship.
Last year, leaders of Hamas, Hizbullah, and the Islamic Jihad Palestine
met with Húgo Chávez in Caracas’s Venezuelan military intelligence
center. Hizbullah’s Tarek el-Aissami was placed in charge of the Venezuelan
passport agency and named its minister of justice and interior and vice
chancellor; his father has praised Sadam Hussein and Osama Bin-Laden
publicly, and his brother is linked to Walid Makled, a Syrian-Venezuelan
dealer. In 2008, Washington identified the Venezuelan diplomat in Damascus
and Beirut, Ghazi Nasr al-Din, as an agent of Hizbullah, whereas Nawaf
Musawi, director of international relations of the Party of Allah, participated
that same year in the Venezuelan embassy in Beirut commemorating
the failure of a coup d’etat against Chávez. (Recall that Chávez was the first
world leader to congratulate Ahmadinejad’s electoral victory in 2009.) The
island of Daisy, once a tourist paradise, has become a zone for training
Islamist operatives. By the end of last April, The Arab Times reported that
citizens of Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia are being trained in Venezuela
in armed violence, committing murders, kidnappings, and transporting
hostages by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Venezuela, which has expelled ambassadors from the United States
and Israel, officially promotes antisemitism and anti-Zionism; close to 50
anti-Zionist or antisemitic items can be found daily in the Venezuelan press.
“Damn you, State of Israel!” Chávez said on television just a short time
back. In 2006, he accused Israel of being Nazi, called Colombia “the Israel
of Latin America” in 2009, and in 2005, speaking to on an anniversary of
the discovery of America, proclaimed that “You were expelled from your
mother country like the heroic Palestinian town.” The Venezuelan Jewish
community, lacking access or otherwise ignored by the government, has
suffered the harassment of the chavista regime. In Caracas, a major Hebrew