Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I have not seen any media outlet make that connection.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I have no insider information on what's happening. Certainly that's what is so scary for the Jewish community, that nobody quite knows what is happening. But no, I don't have any hard evidence on what's happening. In the level of cooperation between Iran and Venezuela, the fact

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  As Chávez himself asserted this past week, it's the “cursed Israelis” who are sponsoring his opposition in his own country. I don't live in Venezuela, and I can't speak to the status of the opposition party, other than the fact that it's a country in which the media outlets hav

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I've been there once.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Absolutely. The media reports all this, but of course within a controlled manner. Everybody knows that these events are happening. Everyone is aware. That's the point of these attacks. No one knows who does them, except for the government raids. The government raids didn't break

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Connected to these incidents, there have been no physical attacks. The attacks have been early in the morning when no one was present. There have been physical incidents that most likely relate more to the lawlessness of Venezuela, in particular for those who might have visited C

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I want to respond as well and to go back to a previous point. You mentioned that there are those in the community who said things are progressing, things are going in the right direction. This is the message that I received from the community leadership: speak up and continue to

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you for those thoughtful remarks. I'll just make a few comments. It's important to remember that the Venezuelan media is not the Canadian media. When we say a 60% decrease, the media is government-controlled, which means that there's still a certain percentage of governmen

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The raids were simply well-coordinated militaristic raids.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, absolutely.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you for those wonderful questions. I certainly am open to the suggestion that anti-Israel sentiments are not by definition anti-Semitic, or that they could potentially not be anti-Semitic. However, the proof is in the pudding. The Jewish community in Venezuela was attacked

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The connection with Iran is one that is, of course, very frightening, not only to the international community but also to the Jewish community in Venezuela. The timing of the attacks, many have suggested, were to coincide with, I believe, the first official meeting between Chávez

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  First, I would like to express my gratitude for the invitation and for your considering me for this testimony. I can only speak based on my interactions with the Jewish community and my experience there. However, when I visited, the community did remark that one unique aspect of

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I will first address the question of numbers. Ten years ago there were 24,000 members of the community; now it is 12,000 and diminishing. In terms of the student population, the head of the school mentioned to me that a number of years ago--I'm assuming it was 10 years ago as wel