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Photo posted by Gideon Saar on X
One of the consequences of the US attack on Venezuela on January 3 and the subsequent political realignment between Delcy Rodríguez’s de facto government and US imperialism has been a renewed discussion about relations between Venezuela and the genocidal state of Israel. Recent developments, such as the meeting between opposition leader María Corina Machado and the Israeli Foreign Minister, as well as the reported sale of Venezuelan crude to an Israeli refinery have put the spotlight again on these relations.
On January 16, parliament member Nicolás Maduro Guerra, son of the deposed Nicolás Maduro Moros, who is also vice president of religious affairs for the PSUV and has ties to Venezuelan pro-Israel evangelical fundamentalists, publicly suggested reestablishing diplomatic relations with Israel. Relations have been severed since 2009, after the Zionist military aggression against Gaza labelled Operation Cast Lead. According to news reports in the second week of February, an oil tanker bound for Haifa would represent the first sale of Venezuelan crude to Israel since 2020.
Venezuelan Minister of Communication and Vice President of Communication and Culture, Miguel Pérez Pirela, stated via Telegram that reports of the sale of Venezuelan oil to Israel were “fake news”. However, the outlet Drop Site, whose editorial line is favorable to the Venezuelan government, indicated that the sale of Venezuelan crude to the Bazan Group, the company that owns the Haifa refinery, had been carried out through the US companies Vitol and Trafigura, which are implementing the agreement between Delcy Rodríguez and Trump, under which US authorities are marketing Venezuelan oil and the money generated from its sales is administered through a bank account in Qatar, a mechanism denounced by Venezuelan left-opposition organizations as a form of semi-colonial tutelage.
The traditional right-wing opposition, for its part, openly backs the genocidal state of Israel and welcomes these developments. On February 3, the leader of the Vente Venezuela party, María Corina Machado, met in Washington with Zionist Foreign Minister Gideon Saar. Machado stated after the meeting that “Israel and Venezuela have historically shared very close ties, which we will reclaim and strengthen in this new era of democracy and freedom”, referring to a hypothetical future administration led by her. Saar, for his part, said that the January 3 US attack was discussed during the meeting.
Machado, whose party has had formal ties to Netanyahu’s Likud party since 2020, has publicly expressed her intention to reestablish diplomatic relations with Israel and establish an embassy in Jerusalem, which implies support for Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian capital city. She also endorses Netanyahu’s genocidal military campaign in Gaza, and congratulated him on his military achievements in a phone call after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, which she dedicated to Donald Trump. On January 16, Machado presented Trump with the award medal during a visit to the White House.
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