The thing that always bothers me about people who expect the worst is that they’ll always find what they expect whether its there or not.
So it is we find JTA – which bills itself as the ‘Global News Service of the Jewish People’ – issuing this report:
Chavez makes anti-Semitic slur
Venezuela’s president said in his Christmas speech that ‘the descendants of those who crucified Christâ€? own the riches of the world.
‘The world offers riches to all. However, minorities such as the descendants of those who crucified Christâ€? have become ‘the owners of the riches of the world,â€? Chavez said Dec. 24 on a visit to a rehabilitation center in the Venezuelan countryside.
A report which has then, rather embarassingly (for reasons which will become apparent in a moment), been picked up by Norman Geras, who clearly buys into the whole ‘anti-semitic’ line with his reference to Bebel’s comment that:
“Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools.”
Unfortunately, it seems that Geras’s knowledge of the Bible is as limited as his ability to read and/or translate Chavez’s speech into English from its original Spanish (or at least use Babelfish as I have).
The relevant section of Chavez’s speech is given below – excuse the fractured English as it is a machine translation.
I finish reading this dawn the last report of the Organization of Nations United on the situation of the world and is alarming for that reason it is that I say that today more than ever before never in 2005 years the Christ needs to us Jesus, because the world, the world, is finishing to the world every day, every day, the wealth of the world, because God, the nature is wise, the world has sufficient water so that all we had water, the world has sufficient wealth, earth sufficient to produce foods for all the world-wide population, the world has sufficient stones and minerals for the constructions, so that there was not anybody without house.
The world has for all, then, but it is that minorities, the descendants of such who crucificaron to Christ, the descendants of such which they threw to Bolivar of here and also crucificaron it to their way in Santa Marta, back in Colombia.
A minority was appropriated the wealth of the world, a minority was appropriated gold of the planet, the silver, minerals, waters, good earth, petroleum, the wealth, then, and have concentrated the wealth in few hands: less than the ten percent of the population of the world she is owner of more than half of the wealth worldwide and to… more than half of the settlers of the planet they are poor and every day there are more poor men throughout the world.
Now for a little Biblical question…
Who exactly, according to the Bible, crucified Jesus Christ?
The Jews? (Which is how JTA and Geras are both interpreting this comment).
Wrong.
According to Bible, while the orthodox Jewish hierarchy might have worked to engineer Christ’s crucifixion, the actual deed itself was carried out by the Romans, not the Jews.
The relevance of this to Chavez’s comments can only be understood of you bother to translate the next part of Chavez’s speech where he says (again machine translation):
To a true Indian, I am I mediate Indian, but Evo is Indian and average. That is Indian complete, Evo Morales, from we are going here to give a applause to Evo Morales and to the Bolivian town, companions.
To unmangle the machine translation, what Chavez is saying is that he is of mixed race heritage (actually a mix of Amerindian, African and European) where Evo Morales, the newly elected President of Bolivia, is of fully native descent.
Here Chavez is distinguishing himself, and Morales, not from Jews but from Europeans. It’s Europeans (the Romans) who crucified Christ and whose descendents make up the 10% of the global population who own more than 50% of the world’s wealth. It’s Europeans that are being painted here as the oppressors.
Even using a ropey machine translation, if you actually read Chavez’s comments in their full context rather than take a short and misleading extract to suit your prejudices and anxieties, then what you find is not anti-semitism at all, merely a fairly blatant play on liberation theology by an astute politician.
UPDATE
And with due reference to the anonymous commenter fron Canada who thinks I’m smearing Norman Geras in this piece rather than pointing out an error of context, Norm has now posted this update:
Update at 8.25 AM on December 31: ‘Those who crucified Christ’ is often used as an anti-Semitic trope, but from the context of the remark, in particular, what follows about the fate of Simon Bolivar, it isn’t clear that there was anti-Semitic intent on Chavez’s part.
Which I agree with entirely.
Come off it. Do you really think that Chavez is a close reader of the Bible? Isn’t it much more likely that he’s buying into the latent anti-Semitism that’s still a feature of Catholicism (and not only in Latin America)? Ask the average Christian, not a theologian, who killed Christ – most would still say the Jews did it.
Sorry, but you’ll have to try harder, and with somewhat less obviously strained convolutions, if you’re going to smear Norm Geras as paranoid – which was clearly your main purpose here, after all.
Hah, yeah, when I read the quote, I wondered that too…
I read his speech a bit differently actually, as far as I can see, he’s only giving examples of minorities, before going on to say that a minority owns half of the world’s wealth, rather than assigning that wealth to any specific minority.
Whatever was originally intended, it’s clear he has been grossly misquoted, and that – in itself – is a sin.
I’ve commented on this on my blog. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Norm’s ‘update’ goes anywhere near far enough – I think it’s reasonably clear that there wasn’t any anti-semitism involved. Hey ho.
Fun being up and about on NYD morning, init? Happy 2006 to you and yours.
My tentative interpretation of the Chavez quote basically agrees with the blog, but with some difference: that he is probably talking not about “Europeans” as the “descendants” of those who crucified jesus and fought against Bolivar; but that he probably means the equivalent today, you might say the “heirs,” of the Roman and Spanish Empires. But in either case, probably not the Jews.
Please note the following section:
>
Please note the parallel between those who crucified Jesus and those who fought against Bolivar.
I know of no one who accuses the Jews of fighting against Bolivar.
While I am by no means fluent in reading Spanish, this sounds to me like an attack on what in English we might call the “heirs,” not the “descendants,” of those who killed Jesus and fought against Bolivar — that is, the heirs of the Roman Empire and the Spanish Empire.
For Chavez, as he has said again and again, that means the American Empire.
Whether one agrees with his hostility to the present US government or not, it is not anti-Semitism. Now even IF that is the correct understanding of the speech, the phrasing is both careless and dangerous. It is hardly surprising, given the history of the Jewish people, that a reporter reading the speech without knowing much about Chavez would take it as anti-Semitic. And it certainly behooves us to find out — I would say, neither assuming it is nor assuming it is not.
I would like to hear the views of someone who both knows Venezuela the Chavezian rhetoric well, and knows Spanish fluently. If it was intended as anti-Semitic, we must not only denounce it but try to reeducate Chavez. If it was not so intended, then he needs to understand what dangerous language he is flirting with.
Unless we discover that indeed he DID mean “the Jews,” surely we need not recruit a new and powerful anti-Semite into the bands of them. There are already more than enough without our recruiting for them!
I suggest that until more is learned, serious Jews and responsible citizens of all communities should take this assumption as not yet substantiated, and hold in abeyance either believing it or not believing it.
How do we learn more?
Shalom,
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director
Awaskow@aol.com
The Shalom Center
http://www.shalomctr.org
The Shalom center ios a prophetic voice in Jewish, mukltioreligious, anmd American life — seeking peace, justice, and healing of the earth.