Two statements in which Venezuelan President Hugo Ch�vez compared the Israeli offensive in Lebanon to the Nazi Holocaust have created an uproar and indignation among Jewish leaders who consider them to have an anti-Semitic tinge. ”They [the Israelis] are doing what Hitler did against the Jews,” Ch�vez said in an interview with the news agency Al Jazeera, broadcast Friday from Dubai.The second statement came during Ch�vez’s Sunday radio program, Hello, President, when he condemned the Israeli attacks and accused the Jewish state of committing a ”new Holocaust” with the help of the United States, which he described as a ”terrorist” country.

”Israel has gone mad and is inflicting on the people of Palestine and Lebanon the same thing they have criticized, and with reason: the Holocaust. But this is a new Holocaust,” Ch�vez said.

He also denounced the United States for “refusing to allow the [U.N.] Security Council to make a decision to halt the genocide Israel is committing against the Palestinian and Lebanese people.”

Just hours before his first statement, Ch�vez had withdrawn Venezuela’s top diplomat in Tel Aviv, charge d’affaires Hector Quintero. Venezuela does not have an ambassador in Israel. In response, Israel recalled its ambassador in Caracas, Shlomo Cohen, for consultations. Ch�vez said Tuesday the next step for his administration would be to end diplomatic relations with Israel.

On Monday, the New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the organization that combats anti-Semitism worldwide, wrote to Ch�vez, asking him to consider the impact his statements might have in Venezuela.

In Miami, Art Teitelbaum, southern area director of the ADL, also complained about Ch�vez’s statements.

”When a president of a nation chooses to distort history and tortures the truth, as he has done in this case, it is a dangerous exercise which echoes classic anti-Semitic themes,” Teitelbaum said.

”That’s what you expect from someone who surrounds himself with the dregs of the world,” said Ernesto Ackerman, president of the Miami-based Independent Venezuelan-American Citizens. “He seeks out terrorists and dictators. It’s predictable that he wouldn’t defend a democratic country like Israel.”

Ch�vez’s statements added to the alarms in the Jewish community in Venezuela, whose population is uncertain but is sometimes estimated at up to 20,000.

Since the Israeli-Lebanon conflict began, Jews there have experienced attacks, protests outside synagogues and anti-Semitic campaigns in official media such as Venezolana de Television, the newspaper Vea and the Internet portal Aporrea, Jewish leaders in Caracas said.

A high-ranking leader of the community told El Nuevo Herald by phone from Caracas that Ch�vez’s statements have created a situation of ”fear and discomfort” among Venezuelan Jews.

”The president is not the president of a single group but of Venezuelan Jews as well,” said the leader, who asked for anonymity because he’s not an official spokesman for the community.

It’s not the first time Ch�vez has made comments deemed anti-Semitic. In 2005, he attacked “some minorities, the descendants of the people who crucified Christ, [who] seized the riches of the world.”

He later said he meant greedy businessmen, not Jews. In an ad published Thursday in Venezuelan newspapers, the Federation of Israeli Associations of Venezuela, the political arm of the Jewish community, called for accord among all Venezuelans and rejected “attempts to trivialize the Holocaust, the premeditated and systematic extermination of millions of human beings solely because they were Jews … by comparing it with the current war actions.”

Jews around the world also have been alarmed by the growing friendship Ch�vez has established with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust ”a myth” and been reported to have said that Israel should be “erased from the map.”

MHC: