Pro-Iranian Venezuelan regime considers criminalizing Zionism as 'fascist'

The Venezuelan government is currently considering criminalizing Zionism – the Jewish people’s national liberation movement – as “fascism,” Ynet reported.

The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, has embraced strong ties with the Iranian ayatollah regime for years, using the same vitriolic hostility toward Israel and the United States.

The anti-Zionist initiative is part of the Venezuelan government’s overall effort to pass an “anti-fascist” law officially designed to target “fascism, neo-fascism and similar demonstrations.” Yet, in practice, the new legislation seems more aimed to intimidate and undermine political opposition in the fractured society.

The ‘Platform of Solidarity with the Palestinian Cause’ (PSPC) urged the Venezuelan National Assembly to incorporate Zionism in the regime’s new anti-fascist legislation.

Johan Sandera, a Venezuelan expat residing in Israel, blasted Maduro as a despot, who, like his predecessor Chavez, embraces the most extreme tactics to keep himself in power.

“Chavez was a dictator and Maduro is a dictator. They’ve been doing whatever they feel like to keep themselves in power for as long as it takes, and if that means supporting any other pro-terror organization and any other dictatorship, they will go with it and approve it. I have no doubt they will approve this law,” Sandera told the Israeli news outlet, Ynet.

The Venezuelan leader has embraced the most extreme anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rhetoric, normally associated with the Iranian regime and the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Maduro has refused to condemn the unprecedented Hamas massacre of over 1,200 Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. In November, the Venezuelan leader stated that “the racists and supremacists of Zionists today want to wipe out the Palestinian people...they want to finish with all the Arab people, they want to finish with all the Muslim people…We must stop the Zionist genocide against the beloved Palestinian people.”

Maduro further equated Israel’s war against the Hamas terror organization in Gaza with Nazi Germany’s extermination of Jews.

“Women and children were the first to be thrown into the gas chambers, and today we see that Israel is doing the same thing to the Palestinian people. Women and children are being killed in a horrific manner,” Maduro claimed.

The Iranian regime has, for years, expanded its political and commercial influence in South America by cultivating its ties with the most extreme regimes. Because Israel is a close U.S. ally, Tehran has been successful in promoting its anti-Zionist narrative to anti-American regimes in Latin America, including Venezuela.

In December, Stephen Johnson, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, assessed that Latin American nations seek stronger ties with Iran to “strengthen their own efforts to counter US influence and validate their models of personal, centralized control.”

“It would be much harder for Tehran’s plans to succeed if the Maduro regime collapsed. Hence, the Iranian focus on assisting Venezuela’s oil industry, which supplies 90% of the country’s income to fund social programs and maintain a large army,” Johnson said.