New documents obtained by a an Argentinian news website suggested that the Venezuelan secret services have been spying on the country’s Jewish community amid fears staunch rivals the US and the Israel may use key contacts to destabilise the dictatorship in the wake of longtime authoritarian leader Hugo Chavez’s death earlier this month.
According to the information published by Analisis24 and verified by independent experts in Buenos Aires, Carcas intelligence agencies have been closely monitoring and photographing the movements of Jewish community leaders and Rabbis.
As well as establishing “a network of informers and collaborators” from among “the patriotic loyal citizens” of Venezuela, claim recommendations supposedly from SEBIN, the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service of Venezuela.
Further documents purportedly in connection to arrangements surrounding Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) 2010 advised offering security services for the capital’s synagogue in order to facilitate the illicit filming of its members.
The sensitive documents also instruct intelligence operatives to intercept any communications between the country’s Jewish contingent and their contacts abroad, particularly in Israel, as well as tracking the activities of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in South America.
Fears have risen of the impact Chavez’ March 5 death might have on the country’s estimated 10,000-strong Jewish population. Despite cutting diplomatic ties with the Jewish State in 2006 during the Second Lebanon War, as well as referring to Israel as a “genocidal state” following the 2010 flotilla incident with Turkey, for which Israel recently sought to build bridges with its former ally, Chavez always publicly maintained a policy of condemning state-sponsored anti-Semitism. His official mantra claimed “a revolutionary cannot be an anti-Semite”, despite his government being accused by some of being behind a 2009 attack on a Caracas synagogue, as state policeman became implicated in its operation.
More than half of the 20,000-strong Jewish community living in Venezuela when Chavez came to power in 1999 have since emigrated, predominantly to Israel as well as the US. The majority of the remaining community lives in Caracas, which is home to high levels of criminal activity.
Responding to the news of the controversial leader’s death, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Venezuela, Isaac Cohen, insisted that “we were always received with great respect, and our requests and statements were positively received by him”. Israel and Venezuelan Jewry have since awaited the forthcoming elections, which will feature opposition leader Henrique Capriles, whose Jewish maternal grandparents escaped the Holocaust to Caracas, whilst his father is a Catholic with Sephardi Jewish roots. He is also thought to be more sympathetic to the Jewish State than his predecessor.