Photo: Flickr/ Bernardo Londoy

Notorious friend of Iran, foe to Israel, and president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez died this Tuesday.

Because of his camaraderie with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his support for Hamas, and the public message he spread of anti-Semitism, life for Venezuelan Jews under Chavez has been difficult, to say the least.

Today in Israel Hayom, Ayelet Ben Naim published a poignant piece appropriately titled Being a Jew Under Chavez. Here’s an except detailing the most dramatic parts of life under the president, but the whole post is worth a read.

Chávez’s many anti-Jewish statements in the media, like calling Jews pigs, denying the Holocaust and accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians, contributed to an atmosphere of anti-Semitism that grew worse year by year. Suddenly it became frightening to walk down the street after dark, for fear of being harassed. Our synagogues and Jewish community buildings were spray-painted with swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans and there was a feeling that Chávez was egging on the populace and speaking the “people’s language” against the Jews.

Controversial British MP George Galloway is at it again.

Once expelled from his own Labour Party for calling the prime minister a liar, Galloway has now been caught on tape storming out of an Oxford University debate. The reason? His opponent, a 21-year-old medical student, is Israeli.

“I don’t debate with Israelis, I have been misled,” Galloway huffed as he stormed out of the debate.

Galloway is a longstanding supporter of Hezbollah and Hamas, and a virulent opponent of Israel. His claims that he was “misled” were met with harsh criticism from the attendees of the debate you can hear shouting on the video, “Racism!” and “He’s a human being!”

According to JPost, the Israeli student Galloway was to debate said, “To refuse to talk to someone just because of their nationality is pure racism, and totally unacceptable for a member of parliament.”

We agree.

Watch Galloway’s tantrum here:

Emblem of the Muslim Brotherhood

Zvi Mazel, writing in the Jerusalem Post, explores the roots of Muslim and Muslim Brotherhood anti-Semitism, which he says has become a staple of Egyptian culture. From the Koranic incitements against Jews to the early 20^th century founding of the Brotherhood and beyond, the toxic influence of Jew-hatred has been a foundational element of the Muslim Brotherhood which now controls Egypt. Read the whole thing and prepare to be appalled.

It would be impossible to enumerate the countless books, essays, pamphlets and fatwas that the Muslim Brothers have published against the Jews – and are still publishing.

The Jewish Chronicle Online published a disheartening, though not entirely unexpected report, on the continued rise of anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom. We say “not entirely unexpected” because we just recently posted on this exact problem. In late January, two public acts of anti-Semitism in the UK hit the mainstream media and this report explains that those were far from the only two.

“Figures released by the Community Security Trust show there were 640 reported attacks against Jews, up from 608 the previous year and representing a national increase of five per cent year-on-year.”

Figures also rose between 2010 and 2011. But the most disturbing  findings came when the report shared specifics on the violent and non-violent acts reported throughout 2012. For example, “One of the most serious cases involved an attack on a Jewish schoolboy in Northern Ireland who was kicked unconscious following a lesson about the Holocaust.”

These stories are unacceptable, and we pray that the efforts across the pond increase so that these horrible statistics decrease.