While we in the DailyKos Israel/Palestinians debate try to temper down our rhetoric to improve the dialogue, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez cranks the dial to 10:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, on a visit to Damascus on Thursday, lambasted Israel as a "genocidal" and "killer" state and demanded the return of the Golan Heights to Syria.
"The state of Israel has become a genocidal state, a killer state, enemy of peace," he said at a press conference with Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad.
And if you were afraid he missed any of the key Israel-hating buzz words, don't worry:
"Israel has become a country that annihilates people and is hostile to peace," Chavez was quoted as saying through an interpreter. "I believe it is a fateful battle. It's either now or never in order to liberate the world from imperialism and change the world from a unipolar into a multi-polar world."
But what would you expect, honestly, from an dictator who pushes anti-Semitism as government policy in Venezuela:
The president of the Jewish community in Venezuela on Monday accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of promoting anti-Semitism and giving the phenomenon legitimacy.
Speaking at the World Jewish Congress conference in Jerusalem on Monday, Abraham Levy Ben Shimol said "you probably hear of many anti-Semitic incidents, but where we live, the anti-Semitism is sanctioned; it comes from the president, through the government, and into the media. Since the government is very involved in the day-to-day lives of its constituents, its influence is much more effective."
Hugo Chavez also seems to be quite confused about the drive behind the Zionist movement and the motivation for the creation of Israel:
"The entire world knows it. Why was the state of Israel created? ... To divide. To impede the unity of the Arab world. To assure the presence of the North American empire in all these lands," he said.
The entire world knows it? Well, maybe the "world" that Hugo Chavez surrounds himself with, which includes his rabid, Holocaust-denying, anti-Semite bff Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But not to anyone who has studied even a little bit of history.
I think it's important to bring this to the attention of the DailyKos community. ColorOfChange has done an incredible job organizing a boycott of Glenn Beck sponsors if they don't pull their advertising support for his disgusting, hateful rhetoric. We should do the same here. Boycott Citgo, which is owned by the Venezuelan government and finances racist hate speech and attacks on Venezuela's Jewish community. I already refuse to give money to ExxonMobil because of then-Exxon's horrific handling of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, so boycotting Citgo as well, to me, is a no-brainer.
I hope you join me.