“Pro-Zionist Rats”: Venezuelan Media Attack Chavez Opposition
February 20, 2012 12:38 by Simon PloskerThis article has been adapted from an original communique courtesy of ReporteHonesto, HR’s Latin American affiliate.
With elections approaching in Venezuela, opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski – and especially his Jewish background – has become a lightening rod for criticism from state run media and supporters of Hugo Chavez.
Some of it clearly crosses into anti-Semitism.
Here, HR’s Latin American affiliate, ReporteHonesto takes a look at some of the most virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic press generated by the appointment of Radonsk as head of the opposition alliance, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) / the Coalition for Democratic Unity, who will be competing for the Venezuelan presidency on October 7 against Hugo Chavez.
Chavez supporters have launched an unscrupulous campaign to discredit the opposition candidate. One of the main focuses of these attacks concern Capriles parents’ Jewish religion, and Judaism in connection with Zionism and the State of Israel.
Related content: Chavez Media’s Seeds of Anti-Semitism
Among the articles analyzed by ReporteHonesto’s team, none of the writers evaluates MUD’s policy proposals or Capriles’ plans for government. Instead, the articles are filled with unfounded attacks demonizing and discrediting Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel, with expressions such as “pro-Zionist rats”.
Here are some examples.
1. Venezuelan National Radio published an article entitled: “Zionism is the Enemy: a promise that conceals a pitfall”
It suggests that in order “to understand the interests that embody the candidate of the Venezuelan and transnational oligarchy, Capriles Radonski, it is important to know what Zionism is; the Israeli ideology he covertly represents”.
There follows a vicious attack on Zionism as a colonialist ideology based on racial superiority and Israel as the murderer of “millions” of Palestinians. Zionism is:
undoubtedly the ideology of terror, the most rotten of feelings represented by humanity; supposedly patriotic impulses based on greed… .
Drawing on classic anti-Semitism, the article states:
Zionism is the majority owner of financial institutions in the world, controlling almost 80 percent of the global economy and communications industry almost entirely, while maintaining decision-making positions within the US Department of State and European powers.
Capriles is depicted as an agent of “international Zionism, which threatens to destroy the planet we inhabit”.


Jeff Dodick
5:33 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Question: How could any Jew live in such a hate filled country. It’s time for the Jewish population to leave Venezuela.
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GoonerEll
5:42 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Jeff – I don’t disagree with you, but that’s not the answer. We (Jews) can’t simply run away from antisemitism whenever we encounter it. We must challenge, defy and minimise it wherever possible. In this, HR (and others) play an important role.
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Jenny
5:59 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Jeff, we don’t have much help to leave, HIAS have been talking about a program to help us, but it’s just talking, not any action. The young already left or are looking how to leave, but working visas are very hard to get, and to maintain a student visa is very expensive, besides it doesn’t give you stability for to long. Our parents have it harder, they are too old to start again in another place.
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Connie Almy
6:35 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Jenny – look into Costa Rica. You probably even know people here, we now have lots of Venezuelans! You would be very welcome!!!
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joe majors
5:43 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Chavistas tienen tanto miedo , que no pueden defenderse intelectualmente, pero se resuelven, a insultos y calumnias que an nacido de un cobarde. Chaves a logrado de retroceder la economia, industria, y el progresso de Venezuela por 100 anos. Yo soy el verdadero Bolivariano , naci en Ciudad Bolivar.
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Ely Streicher
5:46 pm
Feb 20, 2012
I am mad as hell and I am not going to take anymore…
Honest Reporting is a great source of information
on the anti-Semitism that is being created by ignorant
and distructive press and leaders (?) of our world.
We must become more assertive and vocal… I am
mad and not going to take this craziest nut cases any
more… I am Jewish and I love our heritage and Israel.
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Connie Almy
6:11 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Charez is nothing but a rabblerouser. I live in Costa Rica and many good people of all religions have left Venezuela. They now live in peace here. Recently one of them told me that the last country club is to be destroyed to build more shacks. How wonderful! Social justice?? Bullshit!
Chavez is certifiable!
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LUIS FROM MEXICO
6:21 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Connie……..Chavez confiscated a new shopping center owned by a venezuelan Jew to give housing to hundreds of chavistas, so where is the respect for the property laws in that country?
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Connie Almy
6:29 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Luis – for many years now Charvez has NOT respected property laws. I used to visit Venezuela in it’s prosperous days! Wonderful place, very like Brazil. No longer. So many have come here,
some have to start over and are not young. They also were not able to get their money out.
Doesn’t this remind you of Nazi Germany??????????
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LUIS FROM MEXICO
6:53 pm
Feb 20, 2012
You are so right Connie…..Venezuela used to be a wonderful country, but now, if it was not for the oil exports, it would be a country just as poor as Cuba.
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LUIS FROM MEXICO
6:15 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Chavez is a real “hijo de puta”……or SOB, and I hope he doesn’t reach the election in October and he dies from cancer soon!!!!
I know it is not nice to wish somebody’s death, but there are certain “personalities” like Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, etc. who don’t deserve to live and do what they do to harm this world.
I have a niece who is Venezuelan and most of her family left Venezuela after the first antisemitic attacks from this “mad dog” (Cavez).
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jeb stuart
6:41 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Iran has sent the Chavez regime special opertatives. It is obvious the level of anti-semitism is extent with or without Chavez but Chavez gives holocaust denial a platform and should be treated the same way the French responded to the Turks for denying the Armenian genocide took place. The ayatollah’s hear the hate speech from chavez and say, “Our kind of guy!” Free speech should still have to conform to the reality of human history and it is not that existential.
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Connie Almy
7:00 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Jeb – I don’t know if you realize that those “special operatives” are also in Nicaragua!!!! Latin America is under threat!
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Avi Jay
6:41 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Timeforthejewstocomehome!EretzyYisraelguysandgirls.mashiachnow!
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Lex
6:50 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Obama neweds to take on Chavez, but he won’t. They are probably too ideologically close within their hearts.
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John WInter
7:18 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Let us face it, Chavez has lost control of his country to the Iranians and the Islamo-Nazis. Everything that this article points out is old Nazi propaganda that is being used by the Iranians and their followers, including Chavez. What Chavez does not realize is that he is being led around by the nose and is or has become a puppet of the Iranians and the Islamo-Nazis and he is being paid handsomely for doing this.
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Les Peterson
7:31 pm
Feb 20, 2012
This is no surprise. Chavez has been moving against Jews for years. His cozying up to Iran is an indicator of his leanings. Funny how Leftist regimes always seem to come around to Jew hate.
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LUIS FROM MEXICO
10:23 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Les Peterson: What is really funny is that leftists say they hate monarchs, dictators, and tyrans, but they love Castro, Chavez,etc, etc. Ahhhhh, but they hate Israel, which is a true democracy and a country where the people rules with their vote. Is this the world upside down????
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Deborah Bochner Kennel
8:43 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Chavez is a disgusting pig and I fervently hope he loses the election. However, I must disagree somewhat with Les Peterson’s commentt. Rightist regimes, such as Czarist Russia and Nazi Germany can also be anti-semitic, obviously. Jews flourish best in a true democracy.
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Ron
9:49 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Nazi are leftist. The second word of Nazi is Socialist.
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Paul Sheaf
9:24 pm
Feb 20, 2012
Venezuela should be isolated for its rasist stance by the western liberal world and all other countries that want to be taken seriously but then again we would have to apply that rule to all the arab countiries too, so I guess it will be business as usual !
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Nathan Zafran
9:39 pm
Feb 20, 2012
This raving “President for Life” is totally subservient to the fanatic Iranian president and his moronic regime. The Jews of Venezuela should be observant and wary. Former antisemitic pogroms and atrocities began mostly with incitement by moronic tyrants.
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Mark
10:35 pm
Feb 20, 2012
The left has for decades been the wellspring of anti-Semitism, couched in either the bromides of anti-Zionism, or in classic leftist class warfare terms against the bankers (they’re all Jews, doncha know?) and the 1% who control the world (conspiracy-mongering right out of Protocols of The Elders of Zion). Whether in Venezuela or the US, one canot vote for leftist candidates without also supporting, explicitly or implicitly, anti-Semitism of the rankest sort. Trying to excuse a vote for the left with the rationalization that ‘I don’t believe in that anti-Zionism stuff, I’m voting for social and economic justice’ is akin to a voter for Hitler ignoring the Jew-hatred and embracing Hitler’s “social justice” economics. It’s a package deal – voting for one is voting for the other, too. I pray that Chavistas and Otards alike waken from their fantasies and put these leftist pols on the unemployment lines where they belong.
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Zilberwasser
2:44 pm
Feb 22, 2012
Mark, you say that, “Whether in Venezuela or the US, one canot vote for leftist candidates without also supporting, explicitly or implicitly, anti-Semitism of the rankest sort. Trying to excuse a vote for the left with the rationalization that ‘I don’t believe in that anti-Zionism stuff, I’m voting for social and economic justice’ is akin to a voter for Hitler ignoring the Jew-hatred and embracing Hitler’s “social justice” economics. It’s a package deal – voting for one is voting for the other, too.”
Don’t forget – American Jews largely supported the presidency of the Conservative Republican Ronald Reagan only to be surprised one day when he laid a wreath at the grave of the SS troops at Bitburg cemetary!
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jacob mandelblum
10:36 pm
Feb 20, 2012
This is what happens when people believe in false “MESSIAHS”…
People believed he was bringing something different than the so called “DISGRACIOCRACY”
that ruled under the so called “Punto Fijo Pact” for 40 years after deposing PEREZ JIMENEZ
dictatorship…
Down to the nitty-gritty, if Perez Jimenez would have had a millionth part of what the
40 years of “Democrats” dilapidated or a tenth millionth part of what this bastard of CHAVEZ and his clique have and keep on stealing, Venezuela would have been the envy of the world…
It takes only what he accomplised with oil at $3 a barrel, compared to the prices “Democrats”
enjoyed and oil at $100 plus a barrel this disgraceful regime enjoys and still borrows money
from CHINA….
However, it would help CAPRILES to publish the fact, that all those family names of trades
or subjets meanings, (Calles, Puertas, Mesa, Maza, etc,.) are all of them of Jewish origin and that even the first one to yell TIERRA ! ! (land) on COLUMBUS caravelles was a Jew, Rodrigo
de Triana and whether he likes it or else, his Foreign Relations Minister, MADURO, is also a
descendent of the same Curacao Jews as Capriles ancestors….
Needless to say, as in the DON QUIXOTE, “lima beans are cooked everywhere” we are
no exception, as in this country we elected another “Messiah” who promised a “CHANGE”
change which has raised our debt to an impossible level and who blames his errors on his whipping boy BUSH, concealing conveniently that the economic debacle of the country
was caused by the manipulations of FREDDIE’s AND FANNIE’s mortgages and that, when
McCain proposed a legislation to curb the abuses of these two institutions, the first one to
fight it tooth and nail was none other than Senator OBAMA…
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LUIS FROM MEXICO
11:09 pm
Feb 20, 2012
I have been giving a second thought to this whole subject of people like Chavez hating us Jews (sorry I called Chavez people). We shoud be proud of the world hating us, or being afraid of us; just think: they are afraid because they believe we own the banks, the media, all the gold reserves, and they hate us because we win so many Nobel prizes, we produce the best musicians and we have the best scientific brains of the world. And of curse, last but not least, we have a first world country called Israel fluorishing in the middle of all the arab crap surrounding it. If I would be a nazi or a Muslim, I would be afraid and/or envy Israel and the Jews!!!!!
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Les Peterson
12:15 am
Feb 21, 2012
It might be worthy for all the haters to consider that if the successful countries of the world are counted as those with advanced healthcare, higher standards of living, low infant mortality, and strong defense, and those countries are supposedly run by “The Jews”, it might be smart for the nations who wish to aspire to order and prosperity to ask we Jews to run their countries for them as well.
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joe majors
2:28 am
Feb 21, 2012
this is Joe Majors born and raised in Caracas VLA. till the age of 13 and moved to NY., Jacob Mendleblum you are correct Dictator Perez Jimenez took Venezuela from the dark ages to the 20 Century,, I remember seeing a beautifull city of Caracas on the private bus of Colegio Moral y Luces Hertzel /Bialick Yeshivah. you gave a nice historical derashah, but you did not mention that it was the Jewish community that moved to the State of FALCON , CORO VLA. from CURACAO that hid in their farm EL LIBERTADOR SIMON BOLIVAR , when the SPANISH soldiers were looking to arrest him, not only THE JEWISH COMMUNITY saved General BOLIVAR life , but also funded the war against SPAIN and gave gold to BOLIVAR to feed his army ,, as far as I am concern VENEZUELA belongs TO AM ISRAEL .
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Tante Laeh
3:23 am
Feb 21, 2012
It’s time for someone to give him the Glock treatment. Like all South American dictators he’s gone too far.
The cancer has rotted Hugo Chavez’s brain.
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Connie Almy
3:33 am
Feb 21, 2012
He never had a brain!
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LUIS FROM MEXICO
3:47 am
Feb 21, 2012
Connie……he has a brain!!!……evil but a brain after all. Stupid he is not, the same way hitler (with small letters) was smart and Castro was smart and all the dictators are smart; but too bad they used their inteligence to do evil things instead of doing good for their people.
You do not get to be a dictator and rule a country for years and years by being stupid; even if the people you rule are stupid, a dictator is less stupid than them and that puts him on top of the masses.
When Chavez was taken by the army a few years ago,it was the golden opportunity to get rid of him once and for all……but some stupid politicians (in Venezuela and in the USA) said he was elected and it was unconstitutional to take the presidency from him……BIG MISTAKE!!!!!!!
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Carol G
4:25 am
Feb 21, 2012
Time for the Jewish people to leave Venezuela. This tin pot dictator will not live forever and will leave a legacy of wickedness. Jews……move to Israel, Canada, USA…..Venezuela will be the poorer for it!
After reading the hate-filled anti-semitic articles, I was moved to increase my donation to Jewish National Fund and plant even more trees in Eretz Israel!
Chavez……….kish mir in toches arein!
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Tony
12:16 pm
Feb 21, 2012
I cant believe some of these comments its seems no one can disagree with zionists
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LUIS FROM MEXICO
5:45 pm
Feb 22, 2012
OK Tony….if you disagree with “zionists”…please explain to us what Zionism is to you!!!
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