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 well--there were 3,000 students in the school; today there are 1,100.
One of the shocking visuals upon visiting the school is to see the graduation rosters, the banners that are hanging from the ceiling in the school. Over the years the banners get shorter and shorter, and the names on the banners get larger and larger to fill the space there.
They fear that this coming year the number of students in the school will fall below 1,000, which would be a huge blow to the community's level of self-regard, the level of pride they have in the attendance in their Jewish schools. To go from such a high number to such a low number severely impacts the community.
In terms of Chávez's rhetoric or the rhetoric of his close associates, not only has he not distanced himself from this rhetoric, but, as I tried to point out, in these last speeches and in his speech last week, it was almost as if he was getting the cues for his speech...or as if his speech writers were the actual terrorists who wrote on the walls of the synagogue. They were the very same words, the very same sentiments. We shouldn't ignore this fact.
On a number of occasions he himself has made some very carefully veiled threats. I believe on one occasion, in a Christmas speech, he mentioned “those who murdered our Saviour”, and spoke about their control of the world in that context. It's not only his advisers; it's his rhetoric as well that's very threatening to the community.