Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—Venezuelan-Palestinian activist Susana Khalil has condemned the presence of an “Israeli” delegation in Venezuela following the June 24 earthquakes, while urging Chavistas to defend their principles without allowing disagreements over acting President Delcy Rodríguez to fracture the Bolivarian movement.
In an interview with Orinoco Tribune, Khalil, founder of the Canaan Palestinian People’s Relief Association and host of the “Palestina 11 Mil Anos de Historia” YouTube channel, told editors Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza and Saheli Chowdhury that the delegation’s presentation as a humanitarian mission was deeply offensive to Palestinians and Venezuelans alike. She called it an attempt to use the suffering of earthquake victims to rehabilitate the image of the entity committing genocide in Palestine.
“To use our pain is horrible; it is immoral,” she said. Khalil, whose Palestinian parents fled their homeland in 1948 and settled in Venezuela, described the sight of uniformed “Israeli” personnel in her country as a personal and political wound. She insisted that earthquake survivors deserve genuine assistance, questioning why soldiers representing the entity responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine should be presented as rescuers.
An imperialism the world must confront
Khalil argued that the principal imperial force of the present era is Zionism, rather than US or Western imperialism considered separately. “Zionism is the most powerful imperial force in the world,” she said. Later she reiterated the point: “The United States is not the empire of the world. It is Zionism.” She described a movement she believes exercises power through the United States and promotes atrocities that exceed what humanity should be able to tolerate.
She pointed to the killing of children in Palestine and the public celebration of such violence as evidence of a profound moral collapse. Her condemnation concerned a political ideology and the actions of the Zionist colonial state, she stressed, not Judaism or Jewish Venezuelans. “Our struggle is against Zionism and not against our own Jewish Venezuelan community,” she said, urging protesters to respect synagogues and protect the country’s religious diversity.
Khalil’s position follows Canaan’s statement, published by Orinoco Tribune on August 11. The association called the use of earthquake relief to facilitate a rapprochement with “Israel” a blow to humanism and the Bolivarian struggle. In the interview, Khalil reiterated her opposition to any alliance or normalization, saying it would contradict the solidarity with Palestine established by President Hugo Chávez. She distinguished that question from Venezuela’s sale of oil to the United States, which, she noted, Chávez himself had not ruled out.
Criticism from within the Bolivarian movement
Khalil did not soften her criticism of the delegation. Yet, she refused to turn her indignation into an accusation against Delcy Rodríguez without knowing the pressures and decisions involved. “There are things that I do not have access to. And therefore I do not speak,” she said. “I have my worries, I have my fears, I have my anger, I have my indignation, but I will not let the enemy capitalize all my indignation.”
Instead, she urged Chavista and Pro-Palestine organizations to speak directly with political leaders, explain the dangers of rapprochement and present alternatives. She called for them to make their demands within Bolivarian unity. Her appeal combined a categorical rejection of Zionist normalization with a call to resist efforts to divide Chavismo at a moment of exceptional pressure on Venezuela.
It Is Immoral, Sadistic, Humiliating, Outrageous, Cruel, and Vile to See Zionism in Venezuela
The interview closed with Rodríguez-Espinoza reading “Halt!”, a poem by Cuban writer Luis Rogelio Nogueras after a visit to Auschwitz, which singer Silvio Rodríguez has also recited in concerts. Addressing Jews murdered by the Nazis, its final question asks how the memory of that horror could be forgotten in the face of Palestinian suffering. Khalil called the Holocaust a tragedy belonging to all humanity. For her, honoring its victims demands opposition to atrocities today, wherever they occur.
Featured image suggestion: A thumbnail of Susana Khalil’s interview with Orinoco Tribune. Photo: Orinoco Tribune.
Orinoco Tribune Special by staff
OT/JRE
From Orinoco Tribune via This RSS Feed.