As was pointed out at the time, there is no mention of "Jews" in the quote, and that it was in fact implausible given that Jews were not responsible for expelling Bolivar from Venezuela, nor are they the 10% of the population that owns more than half of the riches of the world

Here is the full Chávez quote that I think "Gringo" had in mind:"The world has an offer for everybody but it turned out that a few minorities--the descendants of those who crucified Christ, the descendants of those who expelled Bolivar from here and also those who in a certain way crucified him in Santa Marta, there in Colombia--they took possession of the riches of the world, a minority took possession of the planet’s gold, the silver, the minerals, the water, the good lands, the oil, and they have concentrated all the riches in the hands of a few; less than 10 percent of the world population owns more than half of the riches of the world."

Maybe you can convince Greg Grandin to send in a response too. He knows Israel's involvement in Lat Am very well, having been on the Guatemalan Truth Commission.

The basic point, of course, as Richard Estes points out is that "excessive" criticism comes from two factors: (i) the presence of a huge community of Arab descent people (Levantine mostly: Lebanon, Syria, Palestine), (ii) the long standing and "excessive" if you will involvement of Israel in Latin America in support of rightwing military regimes.

My own impression from comments in Vzlan official sites or sites that are independent but close to the govt. is that some of the criticism of Israel does cross the line into hostility towards Jews generally, but that's by no means a majority view, in fact you see intelligent debates among govt. supporters on the matter. I should say, that state TV has also carried programming explicitly repudiating antisemitism, etc. Also, the march against Gaza was not "govt. sponsored", in fact, it was organized by pro-Palestinian groups that are ideologically close to the govt. and attended by many intellectuals and people from the Arab community in Vzla (which is very large), and of course some govt. officials (Maduro, for ex.) But that makes it no more "govt. sponsored" than the march in Madrid, Spain, for example, which had exactly the same characteristics. The Vzlan govt. has, by the way, co-sponsored Jewish film festivals (yes, in the literal sense of the term "sponsored".

I would also check what Mario Silva actually said. If I remember the show, he was referring to a certain Jewish businessman (with name and surname) rather than "Jewish businessmen" as a group. Of course the ethnicity of said person should be irrelevant, but I am not even sure he was emphasizing that.____