The two South American countries are known to have close ties with Iran, but this is the first allegation that they are involved in the development of Iranâ€s nuclear program, considered a strategic threat by Israel.

“There are reports that Venezuela supplies Iran with uranium for its nuclear program,” the Foreign Ministry document states, referring to previous Israeli intelligence conclusions.

It added, “Bolivia also supplies uranium to Iran.”

The Jerusalem Post has a bit more:

According to a Foreign Ministry document that was published on Ynet on Monday, Iran and Hizbullah are indeed making deep inroads into South America. According to the document, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela was not only helping Iran bypass UN Security Council economic sanctions, but also, along with Bolivia, was providing the Iranians with uranium.

But the JPost presents the news about the uranium as only one part of the report. In general the report is focused on the inroads Iran has made in South America.

According to the document, Iran moved into Latin America in 1982, through Cuba, and eventually opened a number of embassies in the region, in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and Uruguay. Teheran developed extensive economic ties with these countries that continue to this day.

Chavez was also responsible for Iran’s developing ties with the leftist, anti-American bloc in Latin America made up of Bolivia, Nicaragua and – increasingly – Ecuador, according to the document.

(More here, for a non-secret report.)

Need I tell you that Press TV sounds skeptical.

Iran says it pursues only the peaceful applications of nuclear technology via fuel it generates using its own uranium mines.

Israel, however, accuses the country of making efforts to develop nuclear weaponry. Under the allegation, officials in Tel Aviv have repeatedly threatened to launch military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
…
Israel goes even further with its new document and links Bolivia — whose relations with the White House are also strained — to the issue, adding the Latin American country to its list of alleged uranium suppliers to Iran.

You gotta love this though:

The document also takes a shot at Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez — whose image in the United States has been marred by years of propaganda –, claiming that he played a key role in boosting relations between Iran and Bolivia.

“[M]arred by .. propaganda!” Just your average benevolent power grabbing dictator who’s a victim of bad press.

Mahmoud Ahmdinejad let North Korea have it for its temerity to explode a nuclear device. So if anything was untoward about the South American help for the Iranian nuclear program, obviously he’d have nothing to do with it. Iran would never do something so retarded.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

In 1998, the year Hugo Chavez was elected president, there were 22,000 Jews in Venezuela. Today the Jewish population is estimated at between 10,000 and 15,000.

Those numbers tell a story, and it’s not a happy one. The Jews of Venezuela are fleeing to Miami, Madrid and elsewhere because of the anti-Semitism they face at home. In an interview this week in Washington, D.C., the country’s chief rabbi sounds a warning bell: “There’s anxiety in the Jewish community because of what has happened,” says Rabbi Pynchas Bremer, “and of course because of what may happen.”

Sounds like a place Roger Cohen would like to visit.

Kirkpatrick also points out that Catholics are also being targeted by Chavez. But this is really disturbing.

In January, a professor published an article online calling on citizens to boycott Jewish-owned businesses and confiscate the property of Jews who support Israel. He urged Venezuelans to “summon publicly every Jew found in the streets, squares, shopping malls, etc. and force them to take positions, screaming at them slogans in favor of Palestine and against the abortion-state of Israel.” Change the language from Spanish to German, and this could be an anti-Semitic tract from the 1930s.

No wonder an American Rabbi who recently visited Australia concluded:

Rabbi Herzfeld is blunter: “I think we’re in the early stages of something catastrophic.”

Scapegoating Jew makes for a handy diversion while the economy’s tanking. But President Chavez isn’t sitting on his hands:

Troops were mobilised over the weekend to assist Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, in seizing the assets of some 60 oil service companies, after a law was approved last week that paves the way for the state to take increasing control over its all-important oil industry.

Instapundit comments:

More stuff for him to run into the ground. “The move is the latest sign of the deepening cashflow crisis that has bedeviled the state oil company for at least two years as it has become overburdened with responsibilities far removed from its core business – in particular funding and running the massive social programmes that have become the bedrock of Mr Chávez’s support.” And capital is being scared away, because of “regime uncertainty.”

Is there a cost to refusing to stand up to the likes of Chavez?

Lorne W. Craner, a former assistant secretary of state for human rights under Bush, said he thinks Obama and Clinton had strong records on human rights before they came into office. But he said he has been surprised at the administration’s initial steps.

“I am finding these guys very reactive and not creative. You can’t just offer hope to Castro, Chávez and Mubarak,” Craner said, referring to the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Egypt. “You have to offer hope to others” toiling in those countries for greater liberties.

Obviously the Obama administration differs:

Administration officials counter that they have a consistent vision of how to emphasize human rights in international discourse, which includes taking on tough issues but in a respectful and less rhetorical manner. “Any fair reading of this set of issues over the course of a broad sweep of time underscores that it’s a fundamental issue for the president,” said Denis McDonough, director of strategic communications at the National Security Council.

However as Abe Greenwald observed:

In President Obama’s very first interview (on Al Arabiya television) he was deferential toward the theocratic regime in Iran and effusive about the bravery of the oppressive Saudi king. He offered not a word of encouragement or solidarity for the Muslim world’s reform movements. Then came Hillary Clinton’s dismissal of human rights concerns in China, silence on human rights in North Korea, hints of easing sanctions on Burma and Sudan, and a loosened trade relationship with the Castro dictatorship. People focused on the Venezuelan handshake, but Obama’s biggest shame in Latin America was his failure to criticize Hugo Chavez’s bullying domestic policies.

If you don’t oppose, you encourage.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Despite the results of November’s election, Mr. Obama’s critics are judging him on the basis of the old Bush calculus. Whether it is Venezuela or Cuba, they assess Mr. Obama’s actions based on whether or not they immediately contribute to the downfall of a regime. If not, then they go off in high dudgeon.

Worse yet, Mr. Obama’s critics are using the same logic that contributed to early failures in Iraq. They say the president’s politeness to Hugo Chávez, for example, should be judged by the standards of the Cold War. They point to the fact that dissidents in Eastern Europe were heartened when President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” But that truth doesn’t always translate to other parts of the world. If Iraq has taught us anything, it is that not all countries respond the same way when a dictator falls. Unfortunately, many heirs to the Reagan tradition haven’t learned that policy by analogy is a risky business.

This is poorly reasoned. What does heartening dissidents have to do with after a dictator falls? Heartening dissidents is something that ought to weaken (at least slightly) a dictator’s hold on power.

It’s a point that those who were dissidents in the past understand. (h/t Dr. Sanity)

In the case of Venezuela, the Jewish community could use a little encouragement at the expense of the man who has targeted them.

Jews not only fear the petty criminal, but being subjected to abuse because they are Jewish and identify with Israel. Today, the Jewish community is a target of a vicious campaign instigated by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who compared Israel’s entry into Gaza to Nazi aggression.

In fact, on the cover of the most recent edition of PDVSA, the monthly magazine of the Venezuelan state oil company, there is a picture of a concentration camp with a watchtower and barbed wire. Flying over the camp is an Israeli flag. The caption emblazoned across the picture reads “NUEVA ADMINISTRACION” (“under new management”).

Or as Seraphic Secret puts it:

When the President of the United States warmly greets and embraces a Jew-hating tyrant, there are consequences.

The tyrant’s cruel rein is legitimized.

The tyrant’s Jew-hatred is legitimized.

Those who oppose the tyrant are dealt a terrible blow.

And of course, the lives of victims of totalitarian regimes—the unjustly imprisoned, the tortured, the murdered and the maimed—are devalued.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I was uncomfortable with how the reporters framed the antisemitism as a reaction to Israel’ s war against Hamas. In fact, as Travis Pantin wrote last year in Commentary, Hugo Chavez’s antisemitism has been a feature of his politics for a decade.

Since Chávez took the oath of office at the beginning of 1999, there has been an unprecedented surge in anti-Semitism throughout Venezuela. Government-owned media outlets have published anti-Semitic tracts with increasing frequency. Pro-Chávez groups have publicly disseminated copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early-20th-century czarist forgery outlining an alleged worldwide Jewish conspiracy to seize control of the world. Prominent Jewish figures have been publicly denounced for supposed disloyalty to the “Bolívarian” cause, and “Semitic banks” have been accused of plotting against the regime. Citing suspicions of such plots, Chávezâ€s government has gone so far as to stage raids on Jewish elementary schools and other places of meeting. The anti-Zionism expressed by the government is steadily spilling over into street-level anti-Semitism, in which synagogues are vandalized with a frequency and viciousness never before seen in the country.

While the Post article mentions a 2007 raid on a Jewish club it ignores that the raid was part of a pattern. It was a repeat of a raid that happened three years earlier.

Ostensibly, the raid was part of the investigation into the November 18 assassination by car bombing of State Prosecutor Danilo Anderson. Anderson (who was initially appointed to prosecute environmental crimes) was handling high-profile political prosecutions — including that of the plotters of the April 2002 coup attempt against Chavez. The assassins are unknown, but the Chavez, his allies, and the state-controlled media have blamed the Venezuelan opposition, Venezuelan expatriates in Miami, and various foreign forces including the Mossad. This putative Mossad connection was the excuse for the raid on the Colegio Hebraica.

Without providing a fuller accounting of Chavez’s cultivation of antisemitism the Post’s third paragraph stands out.

Anger at Israel’s recent military strikes in the Gaza Strip against the Islamist group Hamas have sparked demonstrations here and in two countries closely allied with Venezuela: Bolivia and Argentina.

Meanwhile Chavez is campaigning to get voter approval to become dictator for life once again; having failed to achieve that goal in late 2007.

The Washington Post, instead of focusing on Chavez’s tyrannical tendencies, views the problem through its typical prism:it’s Israel’s fault.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.