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Michal Shmulovich
Times of Israel
May 13, 2013
Nicolas Maduro defends Caracas’s policies toward Israel, says his grandparents were Sephardic Jews who converted to Catholicism
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has dismissed accusations that his country’s ties with Iran are fostering anti-Semitism in Latin America, explaining that Caracas is critical of Israel’s policies, not the Jewish people.
In an interesting twist, Maduro, the political successor of the late president Hugo Chávez, told the press last week that he himself was descended from Sephardic Jewish ancestors. Maduro and his predecessor, Chávez, have widely been regarded as anti-Semitic, in part for their close relations to Iran, vocal criticism of Israel, and rough treatment of Venezuela’s Jewish population.
Maduro, from the United Socialist Party, is a former bus driver and union leader. He was a member of Chávez’s inner circle and previously held the posts of vice president and minister of foreign affairs. He assumed the day-to-day responsibilities of the presidency after Chávez’s death, and then won the top spot by a small margin in April, defeating Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda, who is the Catholic grandson of Holocaust survivors.
“My grandparents were Jewish, from a [Sephardic] Moorish background, and converted to Catholicism in Venezuela… The mother of [Minister of Communication and Information] Ernesto Villegas also comes from a similar background,” Maduro said last week, according to Aporrea, a Venezuelan news portal supportive of Chávez’s socialist platform and reform initiatives.
“I’m sorry to hear about the statements made by Claudio Epelman, director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, who I know and have received many times, saying that there’s anti-Semitism in Venezuela and implicating Chávez and me in it,” Maduro said.
“He can accuse me, but he should leave Chávez out of it,” he added.
