Chávez has also compared the plight of indigenous peoples in Latin America to that of the Palestinians; he has repeatedly execrated Israel as the agent and executor of US imperialism - supposedly "the greatest menace to the future of humanity". Among his mentors was the Argentinian Peronist, Norberto Ceresole, a bitter enemy of Israel, a Holocaust denier and populist anti-Semite. Chávez drew on Ceresole's anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as well as on the Castroist agenda of revolutionary socialism to further his domestic and foreign policy agenda.

The recent undeserved legitimacy granted to Chávez by the World Jewish Congress is a major tactical mistake. The idea that this populist demagogue should be the patron saint of the "struggle against anti-Semitism" is not much better than appointing Ahmadinejad to head the fight against fundamentalist Islam.

Such appeasement strategies in dealing with militant "anti--Zionism" are not going to work. The radical Left will continue to propagate its libels against Israel while claiming to be "anti--racist" and anti-anti-Semitic. However much Israelis remain a tiny minority in the Middle East in terms of population and territory, they will never be seen as "victims", "natives", colonised people or the "wretched of the earth" in the sense that this is axiomatically applied to the Palestinians. But Israel could certainly frame its own narrative more intelligently by emphasising its many virtues - the courage of its citizens, their civic patriotism, self-reliance, intelligence and economic and technical prowess, as well as the faithfulness to a unique tradition that gave the teaching of ethical monotheism to both East and West. I remember when visiting China three years ago how a local university professor impressed on me how much he and his students admired Israel's modernity and adaptability while still preserving an ancient tradition intact.

When dealing with today's anti-Semitism, especially of the so-called "progressive" kind, the Jewish state needs to rethink and restate the principles on which Judaism, the Jewish legacy and Israel are ultimately based. If it does this honestly and confidently, showing the world and itself that Jews truly value and take seriously their Judaic heritage - religious and secular - then I believe attitudes will gradually change. Ironically, with ancient Eastern civilisations this may sometimes be easier to achieve than with Europeans because countries like China and India come to the so-called "Jewish Question" from a kind of tabula rasa, free of any Christian theological dogmas or racist stereotypes.