The 'list' revelation, with that backdrop, then, is unusually ugly. More disturbing still, Machado is about as credible a source as is possible to find in Venezuela.

Which raises questions about what the Chavista raid on the synagogue, and the targeting of Jewish lists was really about. Was it about supplying the mullahs as well as targeting and driving Jewish people from the country? The relationship has continued full blast since Chavez's visit, and Hezb'allah, Iran's little terrorist pawn, has set up shop in Venezuela ever since.

Blogger Daniel Duquenal wrote at the time that it happened just as then-strongman Hugo Chavez was palling around with Iran's mullahs. The raid against the Jewish school, which happened when Chavez was in Tehran, amounted to a Chavista love offering to the mullahs in a bid to establish a tight relationship of honor among thieves with them.

"Furthermore, the fact that the procedure took place while the pupils were arriving at the school, exposed them to a situation which violates any international convention on children's rights, which could have been avoided. We share Venezuela's concern regarding the murder of a National Prosecutor, but do not see the connection with a Jewish school where the principle of civil rights for all citizens was violated," they added.

"We are surprised at this antisemitic action, which seems more like a pogrom than a legal procedure under the rule of law,' said Dr. Shimon Samuels, Director for International Liaison of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Sergio Widder, Latin American Representative in a letter to the Minister of Interior and Justice of Venezuela, Jesse Chac�n Escamillo.

Most watchers of Venezuela know that anti-Semitism has been a problem for years.

Now Maria Corina Machado, Venezuela's most credible opposition leader, has made a stunning revelation in an interview with Ha'aretz:

“There is a deep anti-Semitism campaign whose source is Chavez,” she explains, referring to the 2009 attack in which Caracas’ Tiferet Israel synagogue was desecrated and damaged, among other things, by graffiti reading “Jews out.” "Lists of names of synagogue members were stolen in order to chase down members of the Jewish community. I have many friends who were chased out, attacked and threatened," Machado says. “Anti-Semitism was the main reason that’s caused members of the Jewish community to leave, because of the attack on the synagogue, on Jewish-owned businesses and the regime’s expropriation of factories owned by Jews. We’ve had a complete religious exodus. The religion that was the most hurt and suffered from a negative image was the Jewish religion,” Machado says.

Lists of names of synagogue members?

Imagine the terror Venezuela's Jewish people must have felt when they learned that that was what was being done. This is the sort of thing National Socialists in Germany would have done. How very convenient for avowed anti-Semites to have 'lists' -- stolen from primary sources -- with which to target and violently attack.

The Anti-Defamation League in a major report in 2006 noted that attacks like these were widespread and growing, and made many Jewish people want to flee the country. Another report noted that the Jewish population, by 2007, dropped to about 12,000 people from 20,000, and you can bet it's a lot lower than that now - Machado says it's decimated. Many of these Jews, the ones I knew (they've all fled), had been immigrants to the country who had fled Arab persecutions of Jews in countries such as Egypt, in the mid-20th century. For them, the irony of having to make a second flight, from a country that had seemed so safe and distant from the turmoil of the Middle East, was particularly awful.

It's far from the first raid on Jewish establishments in that socialist regime. In 2004, a Jewish children's school called 'Hebraica,' which was full of kids, was attacked by Chavista goons claiming to be searching for weapons. Ed Lasky at American Thinker wrote about it at the time, noting that the Wiesenthal Center had this to say:

"We are surprised at this antisemitic action, which seems more like a pogrom than a legal procedure under the rule of law,' said Dr. Shimon Samuels, Director for International Liaison of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Sergio Widder, Latin American Representative in a letter to the Minister of Interior and Justice of Venezuela, Jesse Chac�n Escamillo. "Furthermore, the fact that the procedure took place while the pupils were arriving at the school, exposed them to a situation which violates any international convention on children's rights, which could have been avoided. We share Venezuela's concern regarding the murder of a National Prosecutor, but do not see the connection with a Jewish school where the principle of civil rights for all citizens was violated," they added.

Blogger Daniel Duquenal wrote at the time that it happened just as then-strongman Hugo Chavez was palling around with Iran's mullahs. The raid against the Jewish school, which happened when Chavez was in Tehran, amounted to a Chavista love offering to the mullahs in a bid to establish a tight relationship of honor among thieves with them.

Which raises questions about what the Chavista raid on the synagogue, and the targeting of Jewish lists was really about. Was it about supplying the mullahs as well as targeting and driving Jewish people from the country? The relationship has continued full blast since Chavez's visit, and Hezb'allah, Iran's little terrorist pawn, has set up shop in Venezuela ever since.

The 'list' revelation, with that backdrop, then, is unusually ugly. More disturbing still, Machado is about as credible a source as is possible to find in Venezuela.

Image credit: Andres Herut Jaim, via Wikimedia Commons // public domain