Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-NY) released a statement today praising former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, despite the latter’s record of harsh crackdowns on his political opponents and state-sanctioned persecution against Venezuela’s Jewish population. Serrano tweeted a statement praising Chavez as an a champion of the oppressed, writing that “Hugo Chavez was a leader that understood the needs of the poor. He was committed to empowering the powerless. R.I.P. Mr. President.” Serrano’s office later released a statement expanding on the tweet:

President Chavez was a controversial leader. But at his core he was a man who came from very little and used his unique talents and gifts to try to lift up the people and the communities that reflected his impoverished roots. He believed that the government of the country should be used to empower the masses, not the few. He understood democracy and basic human desires for a dignified life. His legacy in his nation, and in the hemisphere, will be assured as the people he inspired continue to strive for a better life for the poor and downtrodden.”

While even Chavez’s critics admit that he did attempt to address the plight of Venezuela’s poorest, the decline in economic inequality in Venezuela reflected a broader egalitarian trend in Latin America, and can’t be fully credited to Chavez’s policies. However, Chavez’ policies harmed Venezuela’s poorest in other ways: the value of the Venezuelan currency dropped while prices soared, making it harder for people to buy basic necessities, and crime skyrocketed.

Moreover, Chavez hurt the vulnerable in Venezuela in other ways. Chavez’s state-run media hounded Venezuela’s small, beleaguered Jewish population — he himself once said “Don’t let yourselves be poisoned by those wandering Jews.” A study released by the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University found that Chavez’s rule “witnessed a rise in antisemitic manifestations, including vandalism, media attacks, caricatures, and physical attacks on Venezuelan Jewish institutions.” Indeed, roughly half of Venezuelan Jews fled the country because of “the social and economic chaos that the president has unleashed and from the uncomfortable feeling that they were being specifically targeted by the regime.”

Chavez also attacked Venezuela’s democratic political system. Human Rights Watch reported in 2012 that “the accumulation of power in the executive and the erosion of human rights protections have allowed the Chávez government to intimidate, censor, and prosecute critics and perceived opponents in a wide range of cases involving the judiciary, the media, and civil society.” Contra Serrano’s implication that Chavez’s elections were generally certified as “free and fair by international monitors,” Chavez had not invited international election monitors to observe Venezuelan elections since 2006 (though a delegation from the Carter Center did conduct a limited audit of the 2012 election).

Hayes Brown contributed reporting to this piece.

Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday said Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s comment that Zionism is “a crime against humanity” is “objectionable,” echoing the White House’s reaction today, saying his remarks are “offensive and wrong.”

Erdogan made the comments on Wednesday, speaking at a United Nations-sponored event meant to try to bridge the gap between Islam and the West. Instead, Erdogan managed to widen the divide:

“We should be striving to better understand the culture and beliefs of others, but instead we see that people act based on prejudice and exclude others and despise them,” Erdogan said, according to a simultaneous translation provided by the UN. “And that is why it is necessary that we must consider — just like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism — Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.”

“We not only disagree with it, we found it objectionable,” Kerry said during a press conference in Ankara with Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu. According to Reuters, Kerry said he personally raised the issue with Davutaglu and will do so with Erdogan.

“That said, Turkey and Israel are both vital allies of the United States and we want to see them work together in order to be able to go beyond the rhetoric and begin to take concrete steps to change this relationship,” Kerry added.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s office said it’s “unfortunate that such hurtful and divisive comments were uttered at a meeting being held under the theme of responsible leadership.”

CAP’s Matt Duss and Michael Werz also condemned Erdogan’s comments on Thursday. “While Prime Minister Erdogan’s outrageous comments seem intended to isolate Israel, they also threaten to further isolate Turkey,” they wrote, adding that his comments ” seemed like an attitude from a bygone era. Casting Zionism together with anti-Semitism, fascism, and Islamophobia in this way is not only deeply offensive but also quite historically inaccurate and has the potential to promote or justify violence.”

Just days after former Secretary of State Colin Powell went on television to talk about (among other things) his endorsement of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal implied that Powell is an anti-Semite on the flimsiest of evidence.

Bret Stephens, a deputy editor at the Journal, doesn’t outright say that Powell is anti-Semitic. Instead, in a manner reminiscent of Glenn Beck’s “I’m just asking questions!” tactic for avoiding responsibility for his nonsense, Stephens strings together two statements of Powell’s to suggest he has a track record of anti-Semitism:

OK, I get it. An errant slip of the tongue isn’t proof of prejudice. We have all said things the offensiveness of which we perhaps didn’t fully appreciate when we opened our mouth.

Like the time when, according to Bob Woodward, Mr. Powell accused Douglas Feith, one of the highest-ranking Jewish officials in the Bush administration and the son of a Holocaust survivor, of running a “Gestapo office” out of the Pentagon. Mr. Powell later apologized personally to Mr. Feith for what he acknowledged was a “despicable characterization.”

Or the time when, according to George Packer in his book “The Assassins’ Gate,” Mr. Powell leveled another ugly charge at Mr. Feith, this time in his final Oval Office meeting with George W. Bush. “The Defense Department had too much power in shaping foreign policy, [Powell] argued, and when Bush asked for an example, Powell offered not Rumsfeld, the secretary who had mastered him bureaucratically, not Wolfowitz, the point man on Iraq, but the department’s number three official, Douglas Feith, whom Powell called a card-carrying member of the Likud Party.”

The implication of this is that Powell has a pattern of anti-Semitic behavior. While Stephens never owns that this is, in fact what he’s implying, it’s hard not to see the suggestion (which is, of course, baseless).

Stephens might protest that he’s simply attempting to point out the alleged absurdity of Powell’s claim that several remarks by leading Republicans show that there’s a “a dark vein of intolerance” running through the GOP. Set aside, for the moment, that Powell’s examples are substantially more well-grounded than Stephens’. Were that the columnist’s point, then he would be repudiating his own case that Hagel is suffused by the “odor” of anti-Semitism, an argument built solely on the same sort of quotes he says Powell is wrong for using. So either a) Stephens should admit that the GOP emits the “odor” of racism, or b) he should retract and apologize for his own insinuations about Hagel (which others have done him the courtesy of taking apart).

There’s also an amusing implication in the column that the only lobby anyone ever suggests “intimidates” people is the so-called Israel Lobby. Stephens’ evidence for this strange claim is his own Google searches for “the farm lobby intimidates,” “the African-American lobby intimidates,” or “the Hispanic lobby intimidates.” Even accepting the idea that two seconds of Google work counts as evidence, one might suggest Stephens search for “the NRA intimidates” or the “the AARP intimidates.” He might be surprised at the results.

Stephens himself suggested that Hagel is anti-Semitic but pleaded on Sunday that he made no such charge. But Stephens isn’t the only accuser of Hagel’s to run into trouble recently. Elliott Abrams, a former Bush official and Paul Ryan adviser whose charge of anti-Semitism against Hagel was far more overt, has been roundly condemned, including by his own boss.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Wisconsin Tommy Thompson on Sunday said his opponent, Democratic congresswoman Tammy Baldwin is “anti-Jewish” and “anti-Israel.”

“Tammy Baldwin, her whole record is anti-Israel,” Thompson said at a press conference in Wauwatosa. “She voted for the first time for the sanctions three months ago because she knew she was running for the U.S. Senate. That is the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.

“She’s anti-Israel, she’s anti-Jewish and she’s trying to now somehow obfuscate her views and her intentions,” the former governor added.

Thompson’s comments come on the heels of an attack ad released last week by the right-wing Emergency Committee for Israel, claiming Baldwin accused Israel of “war crimes” and said “terrorists who attacked Israel” are “innocent victims.”

Thompson didn’t provide any evidence to Baldwin’s purported anti-Semitism (her campaign pointed out that she recently spoke before a the Jewish Community Center in Whitefish Bay, WI). However, Thompson himself has a history with anti-Jewish rhetoric. In 2007 he was forced to apologize after saying that making money “is part of the Jewish tradition.”

“I just want to clarify something because I didn’t [by] any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things,” he said, making his apology. “What I was referring to, ladies and gentlemen, is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion. You’ve been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that.”