Venezuela's causing trouble in South America...

This is a very disturbing report...

Earlier this week, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez -- who has signed a ''strategic alliance'' with Iran, main state sponsor of Hamas -- expelled the Israeli ambassador, citing Israel's alleged ''genocide'' in Gaza. While there were heated street rallies in Miami and other U.S. cities, in South American cities they have been bigger and more violent.

Argentina's government-backed leftist street protests organizer Luis D'Elia, who this week confirmed to Noticias magazine that he had received $1 million from Cuba to pay for anti-American protests during President George W. Bush's 2005 visit to Argentina, on Tuesday led a rally in front of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. Protesters threw paint and other objects at the mission.

What is going on? I asked myself. Is it because Argentina and Uruguay have large Jewish and Arab communities? Is it because of a somewhat perverse subliminal feeling of comfort that people in other regions have it worse than South Americans?

Many people told me that it all boils down to politics, and petro-dollars. Chávez and his allies, including Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, are importing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a region where Jews and Muslims used to live in significant harmony.

The region's involvement in Middle Eastern politics has intensified since 2006, when Chávez first hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad has since returned to Venezuela, and has also visited Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia, in addition to receiving other Latin American presidents in Tehran.

Ahmadinejad signed several economic and political agreements, including plans to finance new pro-government television and radio stations in Bolivia and other Latin American countries.

Emilio Cardenas, a former Argentine ambassador to the United Nations, says Iran and Venezuela are benefiting from stirring up anti-Israeli sentiment in the region.

When the Venezuelan government-financed regional Telesur television station feeds free footage of Palestinian children hit by Israeli bombs to Argentine and other Latin American television stations, the not-so-subliminal message is that Washington is backing an atrocity, Cardenas said.

''For Chávez, knocking on Israel is knocking on the United States,'' Cardenas said. ``Stirring up anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment is functional to both Venezuelan and Iran's political propaganda purposes.''