Last Shabbat, more than a dozen armed hoodlums and thugs stormed Tiferet Israel Sephardi synagogue in Caracas, Venezuela, the city’s oldest shul, overwhelmed the two security guards, ransacked the place, defaced it with brutish graffiti threats and damaged the synagogue’s sifrei Torah.

 It was the second time in the past month that the synagogue has been attacked.

The physical violence however is the predictable, if also ugly, worrisome result of the rhetorical violence against Jews and the Jewish state by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

In 2002, he described an attempted coup against him as “a Zionist plot masterminded by the Mossad.” In 2005, as part of his Christmas address, Chavez said that “some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ… took all the world’s wealth for themselves.” Two weeks ago, during the Gaza war, Chavez again menacingly browbeat the Jews of Venezuela by emphatically suggesting that they condemn “Israel’s barbarism.” He then expelled the Israeli ambassador and cut diplomatic ties with Israel. Last week  Israel reciprocated and asked the Venezuelan ambassador to leave.

Chavez has been an enthusiastic, vocal supporter of Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and all the other sinister forces intent on eliminating the State of Israel. His open allegiances and brazen rhetoric are an unambiguous invitation – if not actually, too, the directing hand behind  – the emboldened hostility towards Jews in Venezuela. Chavez condemned the Shabbat attack on the synagogue, but the statement was seen by most observers as insincere and hollow.

David Harris, executive director of the  American Jewish Committee, said on the weekend, “There are strong indications that what we are witnessing is a state-sponsored campaign of anti-Semitic persecution, spurred by both Venezuela’s alliance with the Iranian regime and the surge of anti-Israel rhetoric during the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas.”

Rabbi Pynchas Brener of Venezuela told the Jerusalem Post that “reason makes us believe that this was done with the consent – if not the instigation – of some central power in Venezuela. I do not know if in this environment there will be a future for the Jewish community here.”

With both a trembling stir and the swell of deep outrage in our heart, we note that the attack against the Caracas synagogue is a stark reminiscence of a far darker time in Jewish and world history some 70 years ago in Germany.

We must do all we can to let our fellow Jews in Venezuela know that they are not alone, that we will stand by them and help them should they need our help. And we must also urge the government of Canada to protest the desecration of the Caracas synagogue and the burgeoning culture of hatred towards Jews that inspired it.