In the chaotic aftermath of a stunning American military operation that transformed Venezuela's political landscape in mere hours, the country's new interim leader has reached for a familiar political weapon: blaming Israel.
As President Nicolás Maduro sat detained in New York facing narco-terrorism charges, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez seized the microphone and began articulating a controversial narrative that has alarmed Venezuela's beleaguered Jewish community and drawn international scrutiny, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Speaking from a hastily convened National Defence Council meeting on Saturday, just hours after US special forces had swept Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their heavily fortified residence in Caracas, Rodríguez made an extraordinary claim.
The American operation, she asserted, bore 'Zionist undertones'—a loaded accusation that seemed designed to deflect blame for decades of economic mismanagement and alleged corruption onto foreign scapegoats.
'The governments of the world are shocked that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is the victim and target of an attack of this nature, which undoubtedly has Zionist undertones,' Rodríguez declared, her voice carrying a mixture of defiance and desperation. 'It's truly shameful.'
The accusation marked an escalation in a troubling pattern of rhetoric that had begun months earlier, when Maduro himself had levelled similar charges against what he termed 'far-right Zionists.'
In November, as American military pressure mounted, Maduro had spoken at a public event about enemies attempting to deliver Venezuela 'to the devils.' The message was unmistakable: Israel was orchestrating his downfall.
The Rhetoric Of Regime Collapse
What makes Rodríguez's statement particularly striking is its timing and context. Operation Absolute Resolve—the codenamed mission that unfolded over approximately two and a half hours—involved over 150 American military aircraft, dozens of military installations, and special operations forces landing directly at Maduro's residence.
The operation was entirely American in conception and execution, with no confirmed Israeli involvement whatsoever.
Yet in the immediate aftermath, as Rodríguez grappled with the unexpected inheritance of a failed state, she chose to blame foreign conspirators rather than address the substantive charges her government faced.
Both Maduro and his wife have been indicted in Manhattan federal court on charges related to narco-terrorism, cocaine trafficking, weapons possession, and conspiracy to distribute destructive devices. These were not accusations crafted in Tel Aviv.
The scapegoating has profound implications for Venezuela's small but significant Jewish community, both within the country and scattered across the diaspora. Community leaders have expressed alarm at this resurgence of antisemitic conspiracy theories, recognising them as part of a broader pattern of deflection that has characterised Chavista governance for years.
Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar had issued a statement welcoming the American operation, describing it as one in which the United States 'acted as the leader of the free world.'
The timing seemed designed to maximise Rodríguez's ability to paint Israel as a co-conspirator, yet the geopolitical reality was far simpler: Israel welcomed the removal of a leader who had been consistently hostile to Israeli interests.
A Dramatic Reversal
What rendered Rodríguez's initial defiance particularly theatrical was how rapidly her tone shifted. By Sunday morning, just twenty-four hours after her fiery address condemning American 'extremists', she posted a message to Instagram that suggested an entirely different approach.
'We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development,' she wrote, striking a conciliatory tone that suggested willingness to engage with the very power she had accused of orchestrating an international conspiracy.
The reversal was not accidental. Rodríguez appeared to be engaging in what observers termed 'saving face'—maintaining nationalist credentials through initially aggressive rhetoric whilst simultaneously signalling Washington that she could be a pliant partner in reconstructing Venezuelan institutions.
Trump responded to her initial defiance with characteristic bluntness. During an interview with The Atlantic on Sunday morning, he warned that if Rodríguez 'doesn't act correctly, she will face a significant consequence, likely more severe than Maduro's'. The threat was sufficiently explicit to accelerate her diplomatic overture.
The Maduro Connection
To understand how antisemitic conspiracy theories had become woven into Venezuelan state rhetoric, one need only examine Maduro's own words from November. Speaking to party loyalists about threats to Venezuela's sovereignty, Maduro invoked apocalyptic language that blended religious conviction with geopolitical paranoia.
'There are those who want to hand this country over to the devils—you know who, right? The far-right Zionists want to hand this country over to the devils,' Maduro had proclaimed during a Bolivarian Integral Base Committee event. He continued: 'I place Jesus of Nazareth as commander-in-chief of the battle for peace and the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people.'
This rhetoric, combining Christian nationalist imagery with antisemitic tropes, had become increasingly common in Maduro's public statements as American military pressure intensified.
It served multiple purposes simultaneously: it mobilised the regime's religious-nationalist base, it provided an external enemy narrative to distract from internal failures, and it aligned Venezuela with other adversaries of Israel such as Iran and Russia.
Yet the operation itself had rendered such narratives moot. Within 150 minutes on Saturday morning, American military superiority had produced a decisive outcome that no amount of ideological rhetoric could prevent.
Maduro found himself unable to reach the steel-reinforced safe room he had apparently hoped to access. His wife was seized alongside him. Both were flown to New York within hours.
The question now is whether Rodríguez's calculated pivot from nationalist defiance to diplomatic engagement will succeed in maintaining some semblance of Venezuelan state capacity, or whether the Zionist conspiracy rhetoric will resurface once Trump's attention inevitably shifts elsewhere.
For Venezuela's Jewish community, the uncertainty is deeply troubling—a reminder that during political transitions, minority scapegoats often become convenient targets.
