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Iran-Style Anti-Semitism Spreading in Latin America

First Venezuela, now Honduras

by
Michael Weiss
October 05, 2009

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez fondess for Iranian-style anti-Semitism is irrefutable (see especially here and here). Now it seems his tendency has been taken up in Honduras by supporters of that country’s deposed President Manuel Zelaya, whose return to power has lately been a minor cause célèbre of Sen. John Kerry and President Barack Obama. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady lays out the case that Zelaya, who was driven from power on June 28, is just as paranoid and conspiracy-minded as Chavez when it comes to Jews.

Upon returning to Honduras on September 21, where he was offered refuge at the Brazilian Embassy, Zelaya said that “Israeli mercenaries” were subjecting him to “high-frequency radiation.” One ardent zelayista O’Grady cites is Honduran radio host David Romero Ellner, who spouts charming insights like this one: “Sometimes I ask myself if Hitler wasn’t right when he wanted to finish with that race, through the famous holocaust, because if there are people that are harmful to this country, they are the Jews, the Israelites.”