Latin American Jews contend with spike in anti-Semitism

[Behind the Aegis]

Buenos Aires - A Sunday afternoon, the perfect family day.

Hordes of Jewish families in Buenos Aires headed downtown to celebrate the 61st anniversary of the state of Israel, an event sponsored by the city.

But the afternoon, in May, was interrupted when about 30 young men and women began wielding sticks amid the dancing and singing, leaving 10 wounded and the Jewish community shocked.

"If it happened once, it can happen again," says Jorge Elbaum, the executive director of the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations, which includes schools, synagogues, and social clubs. He has called off all public events until further notice.

Across Latin America, Jewish leaders say they are contending with a new level of anti-Semitism that heated up after Israel's military operation in Gaza in December.

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[Lakrosse]

1. we'll never forget when Hezbollah murdered

those innocent Jews 15 years ago in South America. And Chavez is letting Hezbollah fester in South America. Its amazing, how the far right is always gonna be anti-semitic, but so few ever susepcted the far left, with people like Chavez and Morales would allow, tolerate, or foster anti-semitism. Chavez does to. he recently likened himself to Gamel Nasser, who gave Nazi war criminals haven, not to mention his anti-semitism.

[Vegasaurus]

2. The far left is no friend of Israel or Jews

The so-called progressives in some "peace groups" actually have a really anti-semitic message and are no better than Stormfront skinheads.

Strange when the far right and left meet in hatred of Jews, but that seems to be their common ground.

[IndianaGreen]

3. The far left is opposed to racism and all its permutations, even when it is cloaked in Zionism

But you people never get that.

[shira]

5. yeah, right - were Marx, Lenin, and Stalin opposed to anti-semitism?

[IndianaGreen]

6. I am so glad you mentioned Lenin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ1jlbS0bTg

Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews. When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organized pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews.

In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to divert their attention from the real enemy of the working people, capital. Hatred towards the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants.

Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the lies and slander that are spread about the Jews. This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants lived in slavery, and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes of the people are being opened.

It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations.

The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers.

Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.

Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital.

V.I. Lenin, Anti-Jewish Progroms, Speeches on Gramaphone Records #8, March 1919, CW, Vol. 29, p.252

http://www.willtotruth.com/2009/04/12/anti-jewish-pogroms-a-speech-by-vladimir-lenin/

[Kurska]

8. I always liked Lenin, he had very sensible opinions on most things.

Shame that the revolution was claimed by Stalin instead of being guided by Trotsky, the world might be a very different place if Not for Stalin's power mongering.

[IndianaGreen]

9. Stalin was an anti-Semite

but he did have one endearing quality: there was no Religious Right!

[LeftishBrit]

10. There was a Religious Right

It was not a religion that believed in a God; but Stalinism was used in exactly the same way that traditional religion is used in theocracies - to maintain the power of the rulers, and punish heretics.

Stalin was not only an antisemite but a mass murderer. I would not use the word 'endearing' to describe any aspect of him. The only good thing about him is that he did fight Hitler.

[proteus_lives]

14. Yeah, Stalin was a dear, dear man.

Forget the Blood of millions of his own people on his hands, just as long as there were no religious people! :puke:

[Vegasaurus]

11. The "far left" gives a pass to human and civil rights abuses

even when they are cloaked in "understanding of cultural differences" or excused because of being third worlders, or affected by imperialism, colonialism, Westernism.

In other words, it is America's or Israel's or the Western world's fault that women are stoned, killed, kidnapped, denied freedoms, that there is no freedom of the press, religion or speech.

You people never get that.

[LeftishBrit]

4. There is no such thing as *the* far left.

For that matter, there is no such single entity as the far right.

Many far right groups are antisemitic. But not all.

There are some far-left individuals and groups that have antisemitic tendencies (especially those still influenced by old Soviet propaganda); but antisemitism does not characterize the left as a whole, if you can use the phrase 'as a whole' for such a factionalized set of people.

Some people at present are sometimes called 'far left' when they are not far let at all: they are against the Iraq War for other reasons. These include xenophobic-isolationists of the BNP/ Pat Buchanan variety; some supporters of radical Islamism; and anti-government conspiracy theorists who think that the 'Zionists' did 9-11 and got us into Iraq, along with Obama being born in Kenya and vaccines being a plot to kill us all off. Unfortunately, the presence of such people at anti-war demos and on anti-war sites can give real left-wingers and peaceniks a bad name.

[LeftishBrit]

7. There is unfortunately some increased antisemitism everywhere

Part of it is people fighting Middle Eastern battles elsewhere; but quite a large part IMO is the generally increased racism during an economic crisis. People look for scapegoats. The immigrants are taking our jobs; non-whites are getting special privileges; and of course the Jews own all the banks! :sarcasm:, in case it's needed.

[Meshuga]

19. History supports your claims

Jews are allowed to thrive when things are good but they are used as scapegoats when things are bad. That is a common pattern.

[shira]

12. Colombian cocaine ring linked to Hezbollah

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/22/world/fg-cocainering22

Jews should be worried about Hezbollah infiltrating S.America.

Pretty sad that Hezbollah uses drug money they get from western druggies in America and Europe to finance their terror state in Lebanon.

[shira]

13. EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah uses Mexican drug routes into U.S.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/27/hezbollah-uses-mexican-drug-routes-into-us/print/

Hezbollah is using the same southern narcotics routes that Mexican drug kingpins do to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, reaping money to finance its operations and threatening U.S. national security, current and former U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials say.

The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America's tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S.

Hezbollah relies on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels," said Michael Braun, who just retired as assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

<snip>

:eyes:

[LeftishBrit]

15. I would trust an 'exclusive' in the Washington Times as much as I would trust one in Aftonbladet

It is known for being extremely unreliable, as well as extremely right-wing.

ETA: it's been known for a long time that the international drug gangs give funding to all sorts of unpleasant groups and governments. No doubt including Hezbollah. That's not quite the same thing as 'Hezbollah are infiltrating South America' unless you identify South American countries with their local drug barons.

[shira]

16. how's HuffPo for you?

via Yediot Ahranot:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/27/mexican-drug-cartels-hezb_n_180062.html

Washington Times is good enough for liberal/centrist news sources.

There's this one too, from 3 years ago:
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/30/223801.shtml

[LeftishBrit]

17. Certainly better sources...

As I said in the other post, there is lots of evidence that the drug gangs support all kinds of nasty stuff. What I was concerned about was some sort of leap from 'there are nasty drug gangs, with links to where many of the drugs are grown, i.e. South America, and they fund nasty governments/parties including Hezbollah' to 'South American governments/ parties are linked to Hezbollah, and we should thereby regard the South American governments/parties as enemies'.

[shira]

18. it's the kneejerk partisan shrieking at "rightwing" sources that annoys me

if they have facts to back up what they're reporting and we judge their opinions on the merits of their arguments (logically coherent, consistent with liberal values, etc...) then I have no big issue with mainstream RW sources. Otherwise, I agree with you on hardcore RW sources like Arutz Sheva, Stephen Plautt, Caroline Glick.

Hard-left opinion columns and news sources are just as problematic in my view, as I find many columnists like Gideon Levy and Amira Hass examples of the SLES that Carlo Strenger reports on - their opinions are not always consistent with liberal values.