The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is on the brink of collapse. The tragedy has simmered over decades, culminating in civil unrest, barren shelves, looting, riots and lacking institutions, which have captured headlines for two years. President Nicolas Maduro continues to shift the blame externally for Venezuela’s woes, faulting an axis of foreign companies, the United States and other dark foreign forces. In reality, the challenges stem from a melding of socialism and authoritarianism that has systematically destroyed Venezuela’s capacity across industries. According to the International Monetary Fund, the Venezuelan economy is expected to shrink 8% this year, with inflation rising to a staggering 720%. And the government has dug its heels in. Venezuela has avoided technical assistance from the I.M.F. and other international institutions for economies in crisis. Maduro’s public is fed up. The Venezuelan Institute of Data Analysis found that 68 percent of Venezuelans want Maduro gone. At the beginning of May, the national coalition of opposition parties got the ball rolling on a recall referendum to remove him from power before his term is set to end in 2019. The coalition delivered over 1.85 million signatures, nearly 10 times the number required to launch the recall process. All expect that the referendum may be hard to push through, with the understanding that the National Electoral Council is staffed by loyalists to the Bolivarian revolution. As if that weren’t enough of an obstacle, rolling blackouts have the workweek reduced to two days. The ostensible effort to preserve electricity will strangle the agency’s already stagnated capacity to a slow drip. For years, Venezuela has employed petro-diplomacy to buy regional allies, and has counted on the support of both those still loyal to Maduro and those simply reluctant to criticize. But Petrocaribe influence is curbed by the drying of Venezuela’s reserves and its economic collapse. ![]() Meanwhile, Maduro declared a state of emergency in order "to tend to our country and more importantly to prepare to denounce, neutralize and overcome the external and foreign aggressions against our country." In truth, Maduro is silencing a growing domestic opposition through intimidation. All of that is not to say that Venezuela isn’t feeling any external pressure or criticism. On Wednesday, May 11, Maduro accused Secretary General of the Organization of American States Mr. Luis Almagro of being a traitor and an agent of the CIA. This continued a row that began last year when Almagro accused the Venezuelan government of manipulating judicial independence, stifling political dissent and impeding free media. Almagro, a bold critic of Maduro and his government, retorted with a public letter addressed to the Venezuelan president, likening him to petty dictators that have plagued the hemisphere. “You betray your people and your supposed ideology with your rambling tirades, you are a traitor to ethics in politics with your lies and you betray the most sacred principle in politics, which is to subject yourself to the scrutiny of your people.” Almagro is expected to convene a special session at the OAS invoking the democratic charter to discuss abuses, use of excessive force, censorship and the erosion of other fundamental rights in Venezuela. For years, Venezuela has employed petro-diplomacy to buy regional allies, and has counted on the support of both those still loyal to Maduro and those simply reluctant to criticize. But Petrocaribe influence is curbed by the drying of Venezuela’s reserves and its economic collapse. For the United States’ part, officials have predicted Maduro is not likely to be allowed to complete his term, but acknowledged that Washington has little leverage. In a briefing to reporters, the administration expressed its hope for regional efforts to help keep the country from complete collapse. They also expressed concern for a possible spillover to infect neighboring countries, and rightly so. The stability of Latin America is greatly impacted by the unrest in Venezuela, and vice versa. Venezuela has proven a breeding ground for Iranian infiltration into the region, just another dangerous symptom of unchecked corruption and misery. On the flip side, the calls for referendum are certainly emboldened by the ongoing impeachment scandal of Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff. Drastic steps must be taken to reverse the economic meltdown and erosion of democratic values. But it is highly likely that the government will continue business as usual in order to maintain its power. Would Venezuela consider swallowing the tough pill of privatizing portions of the oil industry and simultaneously convince foreign investors that it will enforce the rule of law and allow the companies to operate unimpeded? It’s doubtful the government will change course. Can Maduro turn the tide on popular distrust and civil unrest? A seemingly insurmountable task. And can regional actors stand up for principled measures to ensure justice and human rights for their neighbors in Venezuela? What’s to follow leaves us with uncertainty, but the status quo is dire.
For more than a year now, the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council document Nostra aetate, on Catholic relations with other faiths, has been celebrated. Though lamentably still unknown by most people irrespective of their religion, Nostra aetate is indeed of great importance in a positive sense. Catholic bishops’ formal post-Holocaust adoption, not without internal struggle, of an essentially constructive approach to Jews marked a pivoting away from the contempt and estrangement that had characterized much of nearly two millennia of relations between the church and the Jewish people. Even more substantial, though, has been the remarkably rapid and continual deepening of Catholic-Jewish friendship in the few decades that followed 1965. At the same time—ironically, since Nostra aetate is probably more often commemorated by Jewish institutions than by Catholic communities worldwide—the document is not quite, from a Jewish vantage-point, a “perfect” one. The text, which makes clear the special status afforded by the church to Judaism in light of Christianity’s Jewish roots, is nonetheless a decidedly Christological one, written by Christians for Christians. Even as it continues to be abhorred by a tiny fringe of Catholic ultraconservatives, its content fell somewhat short of what Jewish communal professionals at the time (and some theologically progressive Catholics) had hoped for. The declaration established, vitally, that “the Church… decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone,” that “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures,” and that a charge of responsibility for the death of Jesus cannot be applied to “all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.” It does say, though, that “the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ,” and that most Jews did not adopt Christianity, adding, “indeed not a few opposed its spreading.” Finally, Nostra aetate affirms belief that while God “does not repent of the gifts He makes,” including to the “chosen people,” “the Church is the new people of God.” Its all-but-explicit eschatological vision is one in which all people ultimately find salvation through acceptance of the truth represented by the church. Accordingly, the text’s assertion that achieving “mutual understanding and respect… is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies,” and not only of “fraternal dialogues” and cooperative coexistence, deserves more attention by Jewish readers. The Holy See and Israel have established diplomatic relations (if rarely convergence on Middle East politics). And successive popes have regularly met with such Jewish organizations as B’nai B’rith, paid tribute at sites where the crimes of the Holocaust occurred (Francis is expected to do so in Poland this July), visited synagogues and made pilgrimages to the Jewish state. ![]() Arguably, Jews should also be better attuned more broadly to the theological framework within which, and the lexicon using which, modern Catholic overtures to Jews have been conducted at the official level. Again, this outreach has been momentous and laudable; the global Jewish community, no less than the Catholic community, can do more to make the genuine progress in relations known to its members; and even any “deficiencies” in the church’s conciliation have been situated primarily in the realm of theoretical belief rather than that of practical engagement. However, while the Vatican has been largely consistent, and uniquely artful, in crafting careful messaging to and about Jews, the nuances of its positions are often lost on Jewish observers keen to take the overtures only at face value. “Constructive ambiguity” that might be overlooked by master diplomats characterized even some of the celebrated relevant pronouncements of Pope John Paul II, who had an undeniable personal kinship with Jews. For example, his written prayer at the Western Wall in 2000, which spoke of being “deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of Yours to suffer… the people of the Covenant,” did not quite spell out the perpetrators and victims to whom he was referring. (Likewise, even Pope Francis’s statement in 2013 that “a true Christian cannot be anti-Semitic” can be interpreted in different ways. Did he mean to absolve all Christians, including senior churchmen across time, of anti-Semitism, or simply that anti-Semitic hatred is incompatible with a faith whose call is to love and whose focal point was a Jew?) More substantively, was John Paul’s 1987 reference to Jews as “our elder brothers in the faith of Abraham” not merely a moving expression of esteem but an attempt to equate and link the “old” and “new” covenants, or, even more problematically, in keeping with the biblical propensity for younger brothers to have spiritual superiority over their elder ones, a subtle nod to the theology of Christian supersession of Judaism? (Pope Benedict XVI—who himself in 2008 reauthorized a Good Friday liturgy that includes a revised prayer for Jews’ hearts to be “illuminate[d]” so that they “acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men”—wrote in a later book that he chooses to call Jews “fathers in the faith” rather than “elder brothers” in order to allay such concerns.) In a gesture at the dawn of Catholic-Jewish rapprochement that could similarly be understood in different ways, Pope John XXIII received an American Jewish delegation in 1960 with the stirring words, “I am Joseph, your brother!” The pope—a champion of the reconciliation with Jews who had personally worked to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust, and whose given middle name was the Italian for Joseph—was invoking the story in Genesis in which the youngest of the patriarch Jacob’s first eleven sons is reunited with his long-estranged siblings, but in which Joseph also effectively reveals to them the fulfillment of the prophecy of his privileged station after they had rejected and persecuted him on account of it. More than a half-century since John XXIII signaled a promising but complex trajectory in Catholic-Jewish ties, the two communities (or one, if you’re a Catholic seeing Judaism as “intrinsic” to the church—a view reflected in the inclusion of its office for relations with Jews within the Vatican’s intra-Christian, not interreligious, affairs wing) continue along this path. By now, interspersed with disputes such as those over papal ties to Kurt Waldheim or Yasser Arafat, sainthood for Edith Stein or the war-era pope Pius XII, a convent at Auschwitz or the taxation status of Catholic assets in the Holy Land, the church has repeatedly denounced anti-Semitism (and, less prominently, anti-Zionism) as a sin. The Holy See and Israel have established diplomatic relations (if rarely convergence on Middle East politics). And successive popes have regularly met with such Jewish organizations as B’nai B’rith, paid tribute at sites where the crimes of the Holocaust occurred (Francis is expected to do so in Poland this July), visited synagogues and made pilgrimages to the Jewish state. And, in late 2015, following several prior publications on Catholic-Jewish engagement since the adoption of Nostra aetate, the Vatican’s commission on the relationship released a new document, “‘The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable’ (Rom. 11:29): A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations.” The text validates some of the hallmarks of the process of relationship-building between the Catholic and Jewish communities, while also attempting to keep in check what Catholic traditionalists can perceive as theological oversteps emanating from the “reforms” of the Second Vatican Council. The result is that the document confirms, most importantly, that “the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews,” and also disputes the suggestion that “Jews are excluded from God’s salvation because they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Israel and the Son of God.” At the same time, the document states that “Christians are nonetheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews,” albeit “in a humble and sensitive manner,” and that because “God has never revoked his covenant with his people Israel, there cannot be different paths or approaches to God’s salvation.” It strongly rejects any “theory that there may be two different paths to salvation, the Jewish path without Christ and the path with the Christ,” saying that this “would in fact endanger the foundations of Christian faith.” It is clear, then, that the theological strains that complicate this exceptional interfaith relationship have not vanished. Neither is the relationship free of political tripwire: the Holy See’s recent agreement prematurely recognizing a “State of Palestine” (and one, it is implied, with oversight in Jerusalem), Arab Christian clerics’ mimicking of one-sided Palestinian narratives concerning Israel and Pope Francis’s surprise 2014 photo-op at an imposing section of Israel’s security barrier near Bethlehem are only a few examples. (Francis could perhaps be counted among those world leaders, with longtime Jewish friends, who have maintained friendships with Jews as well as Israel, but who may be less sentimental than some predecessors about that relationship and most personally invested in other “liberal” concerns that now also resonate more with younger constituents.) This said, in how “normal” and well-established the Catholic-Jewish engagement has become, featuring as it does commonalities and differences alike, this relationship may be optimally positioned to model for other communities the possibility of overcoming even the most longstanding of divides, and even those hardened by a religious orientation. At a time when the challenge of “holy war” overshadows international affairs—nearly 15 years following the 9/11 attacks—any cause for hope in the potential for such peacemaking could not be more welcome. Moreover, as the Jewish community looks this summer to yet another round of proposals in mainline Protestant churches for harming Israel practically—and Israel alone—through economic pressure campaigns, the larger Catholic Church certainly manifests a friendlier interfaith partner. To be sure, the Catholic orbit, too, is not immune to a skewed, astoundingly simplistic post-1967 view of who in the Arab-Israeli conflict represents “David” and who “Goliath.” As disturbingly, some anti-Israel activists in the Christian world are quick to invoke Jesus’ challenge to “the Pharisees” in their treatment of complex contemporary geopolitics. But Roman Catholicism, characterized by more centralized and cautious decision-making than certain ecumenical counterparts, has solidified ties with the Jewish community on a rather firm footing—undergirded by warm personal relationships and by ongoing channels of communication. In this sense, the ostensibly modest 1965 document Nostra aetate demonstrates that a start may be only a start, but it can have a profound and lastingly positive impact on what is to follow.
It is not the best for any democracy to impeach a president who has been elected by the book. But there is no doubt that the impeachment process that Brazil has started, which is going to take six months, is according to the constitutional law of Brazil. The rhetoric of an “institutional coup” comes from populist leaders of the region who believe any politics are above the law and the constitution. When Dilma Rousseff says “I never imagined that it would be necessary to fight once again against a coup in this country,” she is inciting to unrest, something that also populist rulers have used very frequently in the last decade. Corruption brought political and economic distress, and corruption has dragged Brazil to the current situation. Since the calls began many months ago, millions have rallied in the streets of Sao Paulo, Rio and other major cities to demand Rousseff’s impeachment. Responding to this social unrest, Rousseff compared the attempts to impeach her over corruption to the Nazi persecution of Jews. Mauro Wainstock, editor of Alef News, Rio’s Jewish newspaper, wrote of the statement, “Comparing peaceful democratic rallies to the Nazi genocidal machine is an unfortunate and ridiculously absurd insult to all the victims and their families.” The cavalier use of the Nazi regime as a point of comparison serves to desensitize the public to the unique horrors of the Holocaust. Brazil deserves better. The weakness of the impeachment as a political move is that the charges are limited to budget technicalities instead of the Petrobras scandal and investigation of this state-owned oil company, which is tainting almost the entire political class. It is a time of uncertainty, not only for Brazil, but for all South America. The Brazilian situation produces a great damage to South America as a whole. Brazil is the giant, the largest territory, the largest population, the largest production. South America needs a strong and prestigious Brazil, otherwise MERCOSUR will be paralyzed and the rest of the countries will suffer. Brazilian Foreign Policy in the last decade since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came first to power has supported leaders like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela; Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela; Cristina Kirchner in Argentina; Raul Castro in Cuba; Rafael Correa in Ecuador; and Evo Morales in Bolivia. And beyond the region, Brazil started the relationship with the Arab League, with Iran and the ongoing criticism to Israel in every U.N. agency, in MERCOSUR, in OAS. It was Brazil that rejected months ago the appointment of Danny Dayan as Israeli ambassador in a very uncommon diplomatic act of contempt against Israel sovereignty. It is very uncertain if Brazil will make any changes in its foreign policies in the next six months while Rousseff is suspended. Michel Temer is the interim president, and Jose Serra a center right politician who has been governor of Sao Pablo and senator will be the foreign minister. At least, we can hope that the policies vis a vis the Middle East will be warmer with Israel and should be critical with terrorism and states sponsoring terrorism. Argentina immediately recognized the interim president. Uruguay has said that it will keep working side by side with the “Brazilian Government.” Chile has underlined that “there is concern before the situation in Brazil, but we hope that the democratic institutions prevail.” Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, will work with Temer too. Venezuela, which is suffering the worst economic crisis ever known in that country, and is under a very serious political unrest, “supports” Dilma Rousseff. Ecuador and Bolivia are still cautious In 60 days we will know if Interim President Temer has been able to start recovering the Brazilian economy and then the political stability. In 60 days we will know if Interim President Temer and his ministers have been able to show a different face in international affairs, getting closer to democracies and putting aside populist governments that have brought pain and misery to the region. And in a short time, Rousseff will have to show if her party and herself are able to recover and face the impeachment with a strength they do not have today. It is a time of uncertainty, not only for Brazil, but for all South America.
Recently, the Golan Heights has reappeared in the news. The strategic plateau, which Syria used to threaten the Israel’s existence and constantly harassed its communities in the Galilee, was won by Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967, a defensive war forced upon the Jewish state that ensured its survival. Israel maintained its hold on the vital area despite a massive surprise Syrian attack in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Since that period, the Israeli side of the border has been quiet, and the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has been deployed between the two nations’ forces to observe the ceasefire. Since the Syrian civil war started five years ago, however, the Syrian side of the Golan has been one of the major warzones between the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and various rebel groups, including the al-Nusra Front (an al-Qaeda affiliate) and ISIS. Supporting the Assad government is Hezbollah and the even more menacing forces of Iran, both of which have tried to build a presence on the Syrian side of the Golan from which to attack Israel in the future. Israel has endeavored before into peacemaking with Syria, under both Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad, an equally brutal dictator. These efforts failed because Syria was unwilling to normalize relations with Israel or to meet Israel’s demands for secure borders. With this as background, the Golan resurfaced as a news story, not because of any strife on the Israeli side of the plain, but rather because of the civil war in Syria. There has been a renewed international effort for a ceasefire between Assad and some of the rebel groups. Reports came out that, as part of the discussions, world powers would back Syrian claims to the territory. Once again, Israel’s neighbors turn to wanton violence, and the hammer comes down instead on Israel. The Israeli government convened a cabinet meeting in the Golan Heights and declared that the area would remain under Israeli sovereignty forever, hardly a controversial position for the vast majority of Israelis, given the area’s history and the current political realities. The U.N. Security Council met in response, at the request of rotating members Egypt and Venezuela, and rejected this position. ![]() But whom does the Security Council believe Israel should negotiate with—now or in the future—on the final status of the Golan? The Assad government has never shown any seriousness about making peace with Israel. In any event, the Assad regime is now incredibly weak and reliant on help from Hezbollah and Iran, which are both violently committed to wiping Israel off the map. ISIS and al-Nusra also control large swaths of Syrian territory, but their malicious intentions toward Israel are no different. Syria right now is a failed state and a humanitarian catastrophe. Syria may never be a unified state again, split apart into different regions for different groups. A peace-seeking, unified Syria seems incredibly distant to imagine at this point, if not entirely impossible. This is the cold reality that we must all face, but not the U.N., which lives in its own politicized reality. At the last U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) session in March, two resolutions relating broadly to Syria passed—one on the ongoing Syrian catastrophe itself, and one on the Golan Heights. Thirty-one countries voted in favor of the anti-Israel resolution on the Golan; none could bring themselves to vote against it. The resolution on the human rights situation in Syria mustered only 27 votes in favor; Algeria, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Russia and Venezuela voted against it. The U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) is even more disproportionate in its criticism of Israel on this topic. So far, during the ongoing 70th session of the UNGA, there has been one resolution on Syria, and two stand-alone resolutions solely on the Golan (it was also mentioned in numerous other anti-Israel resolutions as well, of course). Keep in mind that Golan Heights is essentially calm (minus the occasional spillover mortar from the Syrian civil war next door) and Syria is a nightmare, where both government troops and terrorist groups have used chemical weapons and where hundreds of thousands are dead and millions are displaced. Yet, more countries felt comfortable voting to condemn Israel than those that voted to condemn Syria at the HRC, and the UNGA was not satisfied with only one resolution on the Golan while only one resolution is somehow appropriate for the roiling cauldron mere yards away. The Golan Heights issue is a good illustration of the persistent and deep anti-Israel obsession. This is what we mean when we talk about hypocrisy at the U.N. and how it takes away from focus on dire concerns. It is no accident. Syria and other states want the U.N. to function that way so that their human rights abuses are not the main focus.
![]() Nearly all of the 10 presentations have been made to victims of Palestinian terrorism, and not one of the encounters, usually in their living rooms, was an easy experience. The process begins with a cautious telephone call to broach our intention to make the grant (at least one guardian refused our largess) and set a meeting to hand over the grant check. I made the latest, particularly heartbreaking presentation, last week just before the Passover holiday to Yael Weissman for the benefit of her 7-month old daughter, Neta. Their husband and father, St. Sgt. Tuvia Yanai Weissman (21), was murdered on Thursday, Feb. 18, while trying to protect them and other shoppers from two 14-year old, knife-wielding Palestinian terrorists at the Rami Levy supermarket at Sha’ar Binyamin. Weissman—a combat sergeant in the IDF’s Nahal Brigade, was on a week-long leave, shopping for the upcoming Shabbat with Yael and Neta when he heard screams from a different aisle. Realizing immediately that a terrorist attack was in progress, Weissman, unarmed, ran to confront the terrorists as other shoppers fled. He was the first to reach the terrorists who had begun their stabbing spree but he was the only victim to die of his wounds. I made the drive to the secluded Binyamin settlement of Ma’aleh Michmas in the quiet, late morning—the Judean Hills were vibrant in the spring sun. With Neta—a sweet, calm, playful infant—embraced in her arms and Yael's older sister, who had just undergone an operation to remove a grown from her head' in the kitchen, Yael told me that she and Yanai were childhood sweethearts who grew up in Michmas, married, and made their home there near both sets of parents. A witness herself to the attack, she vividly remembers every detail as it unfolded. The investigation confirmed that the death toll would have been much higher had Yanai not bravely confronted the terrorists barehanded. She was overwhelmed with the expression of support for her and Neta by B’nai B’rith and other organizations and individuals. The hardest part of this and my other encounters with these bereaved families is bringing the meeting to an end and continuing with my day’s work, knowing that that while perhaps momentarily buoyed by the expression of care and concern by a major international Jewish organization, I would rejoin my hectic reality while the victims will need to spend a lifetime confronting their loss. This was the case with previous years' recipients. Laren Sayif’s father, Druze Police Sgt. Zidan Sayif, was killed in November 2014 as he confronted two Palestinian terrorists who were engaging in a gruesome knife and meat cleaver attack on worshipers at the Kehilat B’nai Torah synagogue in Har Nof, Jerusalem. That attack left 24 children without their fathers and, in recognition of the scope of the tragedy, B’nai B’rith used the B’nai B’rith International Emergency Fund to make an exceptional second grant that year to the four children of one of the four victims, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, Chief Warrant Officer Kasahun Baynesian, 39, of Netivot, served in the Northern Brigade of the Gaza Division and was killed during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, along with three other soldiers, when his military jeep was hit with an anti-tank missile fired by a Gazan terrorist squad, which used a cross-border tunnel to infiltrate southern Israel on July 17. He left behind four children—the youngest born after his death. Yossi Shushan was killed on Augusut 20, 2011 by a Grad rocket fired from Gaza and left behind three children. Udi and Ruth Fogel who were murdered, along with three children, in their beds in the settlement of Itamar on Friday night, March 11, 2011. They left three surviving children. These heartbreaking stories repeat themselves for all of the ten victims whose orphans the fund has touched over the years. The Edith “Pat” Wolfson Endowment Fund has become an expression of caring for the victims of some of the worst terrorist atrocities that have left orphans over the last decade. The B’nai B’rith World Center will continue to execute this difficult and humbling task while seeking ways to maintain a meaningful relationship with those we have touched. The B’nai B’rith World Center has administered the Edith “Pat” Wolfson Endowment Fund for Israeli Youth since its inception in 2005, with Schneider personally presenting the grant to the orphan’s surviving parent or legal guardian each year. The fund supports Israeli youth orphaned by war or terrorism.
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