The 2019 Israeli Coup Attempt in Venezuela
When Juan Guaidó – President of Venezuela’s National Assembly – announced on 10th January 2019 that he was challenging the narrow election victory of his leftist political rival and successor to Hugo Chavez – who died quickly in mysterious and unclear circumstances after undertaking a form of economic warfare against the United States in Latin America using cheap oil produced by Venezuela – Nicolás Maduro. Even seasoned observers of the United States’ foreign policy in Latin America were surprised by the swiftness and scale of the Trump administration’s response to the crisis as well as the massive international support that suddenly materialized for a here-to-for minor political player in Venezuela.
Even more surprising was when Guaidó declared himself interim President of Venezuela on 23rd January and demanded fresh national elections. Maduro’s response to this was predictable given that he had just won the previous national election with the Venezuelan secret police SEBIN (meaning in English the ‘Bolivarian National Intelligence Service’) that was formed under the direct authority of the Venezuelan presidency in 2012 identifying Guaidó’s unilateral move as a coup.
Maduro was himself more direct when in an interview with Lebanon’s ‘Al-Mayadeen’ television station – which is affiliated with Hezbollah – he fingered Guaidó’s move being made with the support and probably on behalf of the United States and more specifically ‘Zionists’ (aka the state of Israel). (1)
Superficially we might be tempted to dismiss Maduro’s claim about ‘Zionists’ as being a simple piece of political rhetoric tailored to confirming ‘Al-Mayadeen’s’ own ideological biases as well as those of their loyal viewers. However if we but dig a little deeper then we can quickly see that Maduro isn’t being rhetorical but literal in his comment.
Now there is little doubt that the United States was behind Guaidó’s move with the ‘spontaneous’ support and recognition offered to Guaidó by more than 50 countries all closely-linked to the United States. (2)
Add to that the fact that outright support and calls for ‘regime change’ were immediately made by US Vice President Mike Pence (3) and US Secretary of State (and former Director of the CIA) Mike Pompeo (4) after Guaidó’s announcement and calls for Maduro to resign.
While a retired Venezuelan general named Cliver Alcala – who ran off to Columbia sometime in the previous few years and started shrieking about Maduro from his self-imposed exile (and who was also sanctioned by the US in 2011 for supplying arms and ammunition to the FARC) – assembled an armed group in support of Guaidó’s insurrection that received the explicit support of the US government (5) – specifically from US National Security Advisor John Bolton – (6) and the media linked to the US administration and its allies began spinning reports of the head of SEBIN Manuel Figuera had ‘broken with Maduro’ (7) and reports of the Venezuelan military ‘turning on Maduro’s government’ (8) made using staged photographs and fraudulent claims of mass disloyalty in attempt to as-they-say ‘meme this into a reality’. (9)
This predictably failed with it widely being seen as a fake military coup (10) and SEBIN beginning – as the Turkish MIT (literally ‘National Intelligence Organization’) did following the failed 2016 military coup – to round up the leaders and main supporters of Guaidó’s insurrection. (11)
That the US government was directly behind Guaidó’s insurrection is attested to even by proponents of the coup such as David Smilde - a senior fellow at the ‘Washington Office on Latin America’ think-tank – confessed when he conceded that:
‘It's not crazy for him [Maduro] to think it's a Trojan horse, because very clearly this has been on the opposition's agenda.’ (12)
Add to that the fact that Bolton, Pence and Pompeo all called for military action against Maduro’s government (13) and it isn’t hard to see that the truth of Maduro’s claim about US involvement in Guaidó’s insurrection.
The spider in this web of lies however was the 71 year old Elliott Abrams - the Trump administration’s envoy on the Venezuela crisis – who is a well-known ‘policy expert’ on Latin America who has a long history advocating ‘regime change’. (14)
Having established the United States’ responsibility for Guaidó’s insurrection then it begs the question of why did Maduro blame ‘Zionists’ for it specifically?
The answer is simply that Elliott Abrams is jewish, (15) while Bolton, Pence and Pompeo are all prominent supporters of Zionism and heavily en hoc to jewish financial interests as well as those of the Israel Lobby in the United States. They are all also neo-conservatives and Abrams and Bolton in particular were responsible for the lies, public relations campaign and faked ‘intelligence’ that was the justification for the invasion of Iraq and the thousands combat deaths and wounded suffered by the US military in its more than a decade of war in the country. (16)
Now this might not seem a reason to you until you realize that Maduro’s government has strong ties to one of Israel’s main military opponents Hezbollah with Shimon Samuels – Director for International Affairs at the ‘Simon Wiesenthal Center’ angrily exclaiming that:
‘It is a farce that Maduro uses Hezbollah-related media to deny that the Iranian-backed terrorist movement is using Venezuela as a hub for activity across Latin America.’ (17)
He went on to allege that:
‘The Wiesenthal Center, using the research of assassinated Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman, reported that there were 90 Hezbollah sleepers in that country and probably more in Venezuela after former Venezuelan Vice President Tarek El Assaimi granted more than 150 Venezuelan passports to members of Hezbollah “who knew no Spanish.”’ (18)
This is backed up in a piece at the pro-Israel think-tank ‘Middle East Forum’ which alleges – like Samuels – that Maduro’s Venezuela closely cooperates with Hezbollah and as such it is in United States’ ‘interest’ as an ‘ally’ – read puppet – of Israel to enact ‘regime change’ in the country via the fake coup lead by Guaidó. (19)
In other words, it is a case of Israel wanting to attack Hezbollah’s support system using its agents and supporters in the United States with minimal cost and impact on the jewish state but with significant impact for Hezbollah.
References
(1) https://www.timesofisrael.com/venezuelas-maduro-says-rival-serves-the-interests-of-the-us-and-the-zionists/
(2) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47348293
(3) Ibid.; https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/26/vene-f26.html
(4) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47348293
(5) https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/03/07/vene-m07.html
(6) https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/u-s-s-bolton-urges-venezuelan-military-support-after-guaido-seeks-backing-1.7185144
(7) https://www.foxnews.com/world/venezuela-secret-police-head-breaks-with-maduro
(8) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47348293; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48103858
(9) https://fair.org/home/failed-coup-a-fake-corporate-news-story-designed-to-trick-venezuelan-soldiers-and-us-public/; https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Venezuela-Foils-Staged-Attack-at-Border-with-Colombia-20190223-0009.html
(10) https://www.ft.com/content/757eafca-6b9f-11e9-80c7-60ee53e6681d
(11) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48210625
(12) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47328505
(13) https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/26/vene-f26.html; https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/u-s-s-bolton-urges-venezuelan-military-support-after-guaido-seeks-backing-1.7185144; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47348293
(14) https://www.timesofisrael.com/who-is-elliott-abrams-and-why-is-ilhan-omar-attacking-him/
(15) Ibid.
(16) Cf. Grant Smith, 2006, ‘Deadly Dogma: How Neoconservatives Broke the Law to Deceive America’, 1st Edition, Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy: Calvert Station
(17) https://www.timesofisrael.com/venezuelas-maduro-says-rival-serves-the-interests-of-the-us-and-the-zionists/
(18) Ibid.
(19) https://www.meforum.org/57903/venezuela-crisis-iran