April 4, 2009
In News
By a correspondent
Together with a friend, the MP Irwin Cotler rose in parliament yesterday to table a petition denouncing “the escalating state-backed anti-Semitism in Venezuela”.[1]
One wonders if it had anything to do with April Fool’s Day because the only incident they mention specifically was “the firebombing of a synagogue in Caracas.”
Though the incident did spark a chorus of condemnation blaming the Venezuelan government, the rabbi’s bodyguard has since admitted planning the robbery with the help of one of the synagogue’s security guards after the rabbi denied him a loan.[2]
When Caracas’ biggest mosque was subsequently robbed, the Associated Press failed to suggest the sort of grand conspiracies that get Mr. Cotler’s juices flowing, noting that it was “located in downtown Caracas, where a scant police presence makes robberies and murders relatively common.”[3]
Either Mr. Cotler is ignorant of basic facts or his parliamentary statements were a conscious fraud aimed at stoking the myth of growing anti-Semitism in an effort to deflect attention from Israel’s many crimes.
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