Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said Zionists were trying to deliver his country to “devils” in a Saturday Bolivarian Integral Base Committees speech focused on pleading with the US against military escalation in the region.
“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,” said Maduro. “Who will prevail? The people of [King] David, the people of God, the people of [Simón] Bolívar, or the imperialist demons?”
Maduro cast the image of Venezuela as King David facing an American Goliath, saying that the king had both faith and God’s blessing.
“We are the people of David against the Goliaths that we have already defeated in history,” said Maduro. “If God wills it, we will face them.”
Manduro's Christian battle
The president repeatedly emphasized that Venezuela was a Christian country, saying he wondered why Americans would want to kill Christians, amid a US military buildup in the Caribbean and strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels.
“I place at the forefront of this battle our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom our homeland has been entrusted, the only king between heaven and Earth, Jesus of Nazareth, the young child and Palestinian martyr, Jesus of Nazareth,” Maduro repeated.
“I place Jesus of Nazareth as commander-in-chief of the battle for peace and the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people.”
Maduro made repeated appeals in broken English to the American people, urging them to say “no” to war and “yes” to peace, and danced on stage to John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
Anti-Israel groups have also tied Israelis to tensions in the Caribbean. The National Students for Justice in Palestine group announced on Friday a national day of action to “smash imperialism” and “crush Zionism.”
The Wednesday protest day against US military action targeting drug cartels and alleged drug boats asserted that “security” was a pretense for imperialist expansion.
“As students engaged in the struggle for Palestinian liberation, we recognize these strikes as part of the same machinery that arms the Zionist entity’s genocide of the Palestinian people,” said the SJP.
“Our struggle situates itself in a global struggle against imperialism, and we know when we strike the institutions in the belly of the beast, we weaken the chain that props up the Zionist entity’s occupation of Palestine. Likewise, we know that we must engage with anti-imperialist struggles wherever they manifest in order to weaken the chains that wrap themselves around our homelands,” it continued.