On the eve of the international London Conference on Anti-Semitism, Venezuelan Jewish community leader Sammy Eppel, director of the human rights commission of B'nai B'rith and columnist for the Caracas daily El Universal, accused President Hugo Chávez of leading a state-sanctioned campaign against the country's Jews. Eppel said the campaign of anti-Semitism that hit world headlines with this January's Venezuelan synagogue attack actually began with a raid on a Jewish school in Caracas in 2004. The police were looking for weapons and explosives, but he pointed out that the raid coincided with a high-profile visit to Iran by Chávez. "It was, if you like, a gift for Ahmadinejad, to say that 'this is how I treat my Jews,'" Eppel said.

An analysis this week by the Council for Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), "Venezuelan Synagogue Vandalizing Takes New Turn: The Culmination of a Number of Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel Incidents," accuses President Hugo Chávez and his government of creating a climate that fostered the Jan. 31 attack on the Tiferet Israel Sephardic temple in Caracas.

The blog Green is the New Red notes Feb. 5 that environmental activist and mother of two Marie Mason was sentenced to 21 years for her role in an arson attack 10 years ago at a Michigan State University biotech lab—in which nobody was injured. The FBI nonetheless hyped the case as "domestic terrorism." Lansing's WLNS TV reported that the town was on "high alert" following FBI warnings that Animal Liberation Front "terrorists" might attend the sentencing at the federal courthouse. Three days earlier, an FBI press release announced guilty pleas from four young men who carried out racist assauls on New York's Staten Island the night of Barack Obama's election victory. As we noted, one of the victims, a teen-aged Liberian immigrant, had his scalp ripped open with baseball bats. The press release informs us that another, "whom the defendants mistakenly believed was African-American," was run over with a car and remained in coma for weeks. Three of the men received 10-year terms; a fourth who held out before copping a plea received 12 years. Mason, like the Staten Island thugs, also copped a plea—but on significantly harsher terms.

Venezuelan investigators announced Feb. 8 the arrest of seven police agents and four civilians in connection with the Caracas synagogue attack. The Venezuelan public prosecutor's office said the civilians included at least one security official from the synagogue. "These people were apprehended during raids carried out between Saturday and the early hours of Sunday in different parts of Caracas. They will all be charged by the Public Prosecutor's office," the office said in a statement.

From The Telegraph, Jan. 28:

Benjamin Netanyahu, the favourite to win next month's Israeli general election, yesterday predicted al-Qaeda would blow up the purported burial place of Jesus Christ if the country relinquished control of Jerusalem.

In his unlikely New York Times op-ed of Jan. 22, "The One-State Solution," plugging his utopian scheme for a single country uniting Israel and Palestine as "Isratine," Muammar Qaddafi (this appears to be the Colonel's preferred spelling), the one-time bad boy of intransigent Arab nationalism, actually mimics Zionist revisionism on the 1948 Nakba. To wit:

Pope Benedict Jan. 24 rehabilitated a breakaway "traditionalist" bishop who denies the Holocaust—ignoring warnings from Jewish leaders that it would seriously harm relations with the Catholic church and foment anti-Semitism. The Vatican said the pope issued a decree lifting the 1988 excommunication of four traditionalist bishops for being ordained by the late "traditionalist" Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without Vatican consent. The four bishops lead the ultra-conservative Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which has about 600,000 members and rejected modernizations of Roman Catholic worship and doctrine. The Vatican said the excommunications were lifted after the bishops affirmed their acceptance of Church doctrine and papal authority.

Media accounts are generally not recalling the similar incidents earlier this year. Why is nobody seeing patterns here? From Network World, Dec. 22:

Undersea robot searches for severed cables
A robot submarine was scouring the seabed 200 meters under the Mediterranean Sea on Monday trying to locate the ends of undersea cables that were cut on Friday, disrupting voice and Internet traffic.