Looks like Hugo Chavez’s attempt to terrorize Jews into staying home and not voting against him didn’t work.
A few hours before the polls opened in Venezuela on Sunday morning, federal police raided the main Jewish social club here, La Hebraica, ostensibly looking for weapons and explosives.
Though they left empty-handed and no major damage was done, the incident stoked Jewish fears in Venezuela’s capital about the government of President Hugo Chavez.
So when hundreds of voters lined up a few hours later around the corner from a kosher bakery in the affluent Caracas neighborhood of San Bernardino to cast their vote under the watchful eye of soldiers toting machine guns, many said it was the most important political decision of their lives.
[…] “Baruch Hashem,†said Alicia Truzman, the Moroccan-born owner of the kosher bakery in San Bernardino. “All of us are happy. We can breathe easier now.â€
Truzman voted ‘no.’
“Originally we were not going to vote because we’re always getting tricked anyway,†said Truzman, 60, who lived in the Israeli city of Kiryat Malachi for eight years before immigrating to the Caribbean island of Curacao and finally Venezuela in 1974. “But at the last minute we decided to vote because there have been many demonstrations by students, so we began to have some hope.â€
The names change. The players change. The thing that remains constant: Scapegoating and terrorizing the Jews.
Don’t think you can breathe easily yet. Chavez isn’t finished. He’s regrouping.
Chavez is a dangerous man. I don’t trust banana republic dictators.
Another thing that remains constant: when you threaten Jews, you end up motivating them into becoming stronger opposition. As the article said, many of those Jews weren’t planning on voting before they were threatened.
This reminds me of a famous Rashi on Exodus 1:10 (hopefully remembered correctly.) When Pharaoh said, that he must oppress the Jews “lest they increase” (“pen yirbu”), God replied to the Jews (via divine inspiration), “ken yirbu” – and therefore you must increase.
In other words, God responds to oppression by inspiring His people to become and do exactly what the oppressors are most afraid of.
That really is pretty scary. And such a flimsy pretense for that raid. It’s hard to believe he can get away with it.
The scary part is that 49 percent of the voters voted to sell their freedom for a mess of pottage, or rather of socialist, government issue moldy potatoes. And 40 percent did not vote.
Chavez is a chimaera, a buffoonish combination of Fidel Castro, Juan Peron, and Benito Mussolini.
John
Its not hard to believe, it’s Jews. It will end when Chavez has a bullet in his head.
Democracy has its downside, the foolishness of the masses.