Venezuelan leader’s ‘Zionists undertones’ have antisemitic overtones

Throughout history, Jews have been blamed for nefarious conspiracies to dethrone kings, control economies, and topple rulers. When governments are under pressure, their leaders seek scapegoats. The latest accusations have surfaced in Venezuela, albeit against “Zionists” this time, as it is no longer fashionable to blame “Jews”. 

After the United States brazenly captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on 3 January and whisked them away to New York to face drug-trafficking charges, he was quickly replaced by his vice-president, Delcy Rodriguez. She said in a televised statement, “Governments around the world are simply shocked that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is the victim and target of an attack of this nature, which undoubtedly has Zionist undertones. It is truly shameful.” 

Milton Shain, emeritus professor of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town and an expert on antisemitism said, “The ‘Zionist undertones’ referred to by Delcy Rodriguez speak to how the term ‘Zionist’ has been mangled and widely used in contemporary parlance as a term of opprobrium. 

“Long forgotten as an idea advocating Jewish self-determination in the ancestral home of the Jewish people, the term ‘Zionism’ is today linked to manipulation, evil, and unbounded power. These ideas connect seamlessly with age-old anti-Jewish tropes, deeply entrenched in the global and especially Western imagination. In this case, the tentacles reach into Venezuela. 

“The ‘hidden hand’ of the Zionist is at it again. Just as the Jews manipulated the European powers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Roosevelt in the 1930s, so the Zionists are manipulating and orchestrating change in the South American state.” 

According to Professor Karen Milner, the national chairperson of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and long a student of antisemitism, “The overthrow of governments through Jewish machinations is a classic canard of antisemitic theory rooted in baseless prejudice and often used to scapegoat Jews for political upheavals. In fact, Jewish control and malevolence has been falsely identified by antisemites as responsible for the overthrow of Tzarist Russia; the French Revolution; and in countless other examples. 

“Nobody is fooled by the replacement of the term ‘Jew’ with ‘international Zionist’. This does nothing to legitimise the claims, erase their falsehood, or conceal the antisemitism inherent in this statement.” 

Rabbi Michael Berenbaum, the former director of the US Holocaust Memorial Musuem’s research institute told the SA Jewish Report, “If they believe what they say, they are fools, fools unfit to govern. If they don’t believe what they say, they are liars stoking hatred and appealing to the base instinct of their imaginary base – not quite a vote of confidence in their ability to lead or to govern. We all know that it was not the Zionists’ fault; it was the bicycle riders who did it, and if they can’t figure that out, they are surely unfit to govern.” 

Berenbaum was referring to the old joke where people blame everything on the bicycle riders. When somebody asks, “Why the bicycle riders?” You reply “Well, why the Jews then?” It’s clearly absurd. 

Rodriguez is merely following in the footsteps of previous presidents. Since the accession of Hugo Chávez in Caracas in 1999, the Venezuelan regime has been rabidly anti-Israel, and systematically made life difficult for its rapidly shrinking local Jewish community. Initiated under Chávez and continued under Maduro, the state has long spewed vile antisemitic rhetoric, raided Jewish institutions, and cut diplomatic ties with Israel in 2009. These actions have fostered an atmosphere of fear and led to the mass departure of the Jewish population. From a high of about 25 000 in the 1990s, today there are an estimated 3 000 to 5 000 Jews left in the oil-rich South American state. 

Meanwhile, South African groups have displayed their colours. A “Hands Off Venezuela” protest was held outside the US embassy in Pretoria last week by trade unions and civil society groups. A banner by the South African Communist Party read, “Picket against USA: Imperialist aggression against Syria, supplying apartheid Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians.” Signs also said, “Hands off Iran” and there was a “Wanted” poster for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

On 7 January South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation held a “solidarity seminar” on Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, and Western Sahara in Rustenburg, presided over by Deputy Minister Alvin Botes. The anti-American impulse of the African National Congress remains undiluted, reflected in the poor relations between Washington and Pretoria. 

But Netanyahu sometimes makes things worse. He was one of the few world leaders to congratulate US President Donald Trump publicly for nabbing Maduro. Most of the rest of the world recognises how the US has abrogated international norms and laws in kidnapping a sitting head of state of another country. Did Netanyahu really need to butter up Trump again? And by Netanyahu routinely calling all criticism of himself or Israel antisemitic, he diminishes and undermines real antisemitism, which is all too alive and well.