Palestinian & regional resistance orgs condemn US attack on Venezuela as imperial aggression

As the U.S. attacked and invaded Venezuela, kidnapping the legitimate president Nicolas Maduro, and openly seeking control over Venezuela’s politics, oil and resources, Palestinian and regional resistance organizations and popular movements spoke out in condemnation of U.S. imperialism and in support of the Venezuelan people and their government.

The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine stated:

In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful

We condemn the vicious American aggression against the Republic of Venezuela and the attacks targeting its capital, Caracas, and its loyal people. These aggressive actions, which have escalated from naval blockades to direct military strikes, reveal intentions of hegemony, occupation, and forcible domination, and constitute a flagrant violation of international law and national sovereignty. They are an extension of imperialist policies aimed at subjugating peoples and plundering their resources.

Today’s targeting of Venezuela is a punishment for its steadfast international positions, particularly its historic and unwavering support for the Palestinian cause and resistance forces in our region, and its standing with our people against war crimes and genocide. The Venezuelan people’s struggle for freedom and sovereignty is part of our nation’s own battle against hegemony and neocolonialism.

We affirm our full solidarity with the Venezuelan people and their legitimate government, led by President Nicolás Maduro, in confronting this aggressive campaign. We call on all liberation forces and free peoples of the world to reject this aggression and stand with Venezuela in defense of the principle of state sovereignty and the right of peoples to self-determination.

Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, issued the following statement:

We condemn in the strongest terms the American aggression against the Republic of Venezuela, and the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife. We affirm that it represents a serious violation of international law, by attacking the sovereignty of an independent state.

The aggression is an extension of the unjust American policies and interventions that hide behind them imperialist ambitions, which have plunged several countries into conflicts that pose a direct threat to international security and peace.

We call on the international community, the United Nations and its institutions, particularly the Security Council, to take decisions to confront the aggressive policies pursued by Washington, and to immediately stop the military attack on Venezuelan territory.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine stated:

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine condemns in the strongest terms the brutal American imperialist aggression against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which has taken the form of air strikes and missile attacks targeting the capital, Caracas, vital and civilian installations, military bases, and residential complexes; the Front considers this aggression a new chapter in the organized American terrorism against sovereign states.

The Front expresses its full and unlimited support for Venezuela, its leadership, government, and people, led by the courageous President Nicolás Maduro, and emphasizes that Venezuela, which has always sided with the oppressed, particularly the Palestinian cause, is now facing the consequences of its principled stance against hegemony and colonialism.

This American attack on Venezuela is fundamentally similar in its nature and objectives to the brutal Zionist aggression against our Palestinian people; the criminal is the same, and the colonialist mentality that seeks to break the will of resistance is the same.

The US administration’s pretexts of “combating smuggling” or “protecting democracy” are merely a cover for imperialist piracy aimed at plundering the Venezuelan people’s wealth and confiscating their independent political decision-making; this bullying by Washington in the Caribbean represents organized state terrorism unleashed from its chains, exceeding all international conventions, norms, and human values.

We affirm the inalienable right of the Venezuelan people to resist in all forms and defend their existence and national sovereignty, and we stress that internal unity is the best response to attempts at intimidation and infiltration.

We call on all free and progressive forces in Latin America and the world to form a unified international position to confront this aggression that threatens global stability and peace, affirming that imperialist arrogance will inevitably collapse in the face of the consciousness and courage of peoples who stand for their freedom.

We warn that the US’s continuation of this military madness will spark new conflict hotspots in the world; the aggression on Venezuela is an attack on every country that upholds its independent national decision-making.

The Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, said:

We condemn the military aggression perpetrated by the United States of America against the sovereign territory of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The affected areas thus far include the capital, Caracas, and the states of Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira.

This brutal US imperialist behavior constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and a clear embodiment of the logic of aggression and criminal annihilation.

This attack aims solely to seize Venezuela’s strategic shared resources, particularly oil and minerals, in an attempt to forcibly break the political sovereignty of the Bolivarian Republic and pave the way for military incursions into other Latin American territories.

The “fight against drug trafficking” is merely a pretext for imperialism, a threat not only to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela but to the entire region. This was explicitly stated in the recently published “US National Security Strategy” (NSS).

We recognize that American imperialism is the primary enemy of peoples struggling for national and social liberation. Therefore, we call upon all social, political, and freedom-loving forces worldwide—just as we took to the streets in support of the Palestinian people’s struggle—to mobilize and act in support of the Venezuelan people in the face of US aggression. We endorse the sovereign decision of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela, based on international law, to respond through armed struggle.

As in Palestine… in Venezuela, they shall not prevail!

Long live the resistance of the Venezuelan people… towards global mobilization and a global uprising!

Let us demonstrate our popular outrage at every embassy of US imperialism!

Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamic Resistance, issued the following statement:

Hezbollah strongly condemns the terrorist aggression and American thuggery against the Republic of Venezuela, which targeted the capital, Caracas, vital and civilian facilities, and residential complexes, and involved the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife—an unprecedented and blatant violation of the national sovereignty of an independent state, international law, and United Nations charters, based on flimsy and false pretexts.

This attack constitutes a renewed affirmation of the approach of domination, arrogance, and piracy practiced by the U.S. administration without any restraint, and a stark proof of its disregard for international stability and security. It entrenches the logic of the law of the jungle, detonates what remains of the structure of the international order, and hollows it out of any substance that could serve as a guarantee or safeguard for peoples and states.

The United States of America, which continues to live in a frenzy of control and hegemony—especially under its current president—persists in its aggressive policies aimed at subjugating free states and peoples, plundering their wealth and resources, and leading war projects designed to redraw state borders. While it falsely claims to spread peace in the world and support democracy and the freedom of peoples to determine their destiny, it repeatedly exposes its true criminal face—from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen, and Iran—through the manufacturing of terrorism and its support for its protégé, “Israel,” with which it shares the same criminal, aggressive, and colonial behavior. Meanwhile, the international community retreats into shameful silence instead of rising up and sounding the alarm to reject and curb this American aggression and thuggery. Today’s assault on Venezuela represents a further escalation of the direct threat to every independent, sovereign state that refuses domination and submission.

As Hezbollah affirms its full solidarity with Venezuela—its people, presidency, and government—in the face of this American aggression and arrogance, which will inevitably collapse before the will of the free Venezuelan people—who have rejected all forms of hegemony and colonialism on their land and have consistently stood with just causes and the oppressed worldwide, foremost among them the Palestinian cause—it calls upon all states, governments, peoples, and free forces around the world to condemn this aggression and to stand alongside Venezuela, its people, and its right to fully defend its sovereignty and independence.

The Political Bureau of Ansar Allah, in Yemen, issued the following statement:

“We strongly condemn the brutal US military aggression against Venezuela.

What the US is doing against Venezuela, including the preceding blockade, reflects the extreme level of American savagery and criminality.

The American aggression provides further evidence of a US policy based on destroying countries, killing peoples, and plundering resources.

What the US is doing to Venezuela confirms once again that America is the head of evil and the mother of terrorism.

We affirm our solidarity with Venezuela and its President Nicolás Maduro, who has refused to submit to American domination.

We stress Venezuela’s right to defend its sovereignty, its people, and its resources against ruthless American aggression.

We call on the international community to take urgent action to stop the US aggression and respect international principles and charters.”

Tariq el Tahrir Youth and Student Movement said:

Heroic people of Venezuela! Soldiers of the fatherland! Sons and daughters of Bolivar! Tariq El-Tahrir expresses our most steadfast solidarity in this moment of renewed and intensified American aggression.

After weeks of piracy and naval blockades on Venezuelan shipping, and years of economic warfare and imperialist aggression, today the US empire has committed terrorist attacks against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The bombings of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and the surrounding Venezuelan states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira are nothing less than terrorist bombings of a sovereign country by an empire who feels threatened by the courageous path of self-determination which has been undertaken by the Venezuelan people, under their government led by Nicolás Maduro.

The kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores is part of a larger history of attacks against anti-imperialist and anti-colonial leaders, from Palestine’s Saleh Al-Arouri, Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. It is a continuation of imperialist policy aimed at subjugating the power of the Third World’s people and plundering their resources. In Latin America, this has taken the form of veiled and overt aggressions, economic and military, against Colombia, Cuba and Nicaragua, and countless others. In the wider international sphere, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine and the forces of the Axis of the Resistance are targeted.

The Venezuelan people have, since the Bolivarian Revolution of 1999, held firm in protecting their sovereignty in the face of imperialist aggression led by the US empire. Since the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7th, 2023, they have demonstrated historic and unwavering support to the Palestinian cause, the resistance forces, and have been faithful in denouncing the US-Zionist war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against our people. Their struggle for freedom and sovereignty is our struggle for liberty and self-determination. The bombs which were dropped this Saturday, Jan 3 are built by the same corporations whose bombs fall onto Palestinian children, women and men in Gaza and villages in Lebanon. These are acts of international terrorism.

We call on all our supporters, friends and sympathizers to join in the demonstrations and raise the flag of Palestine at protests, picket lines and militant actions in your cities and localities. Where such actions are still not being mobilized, we encourage you to lead the organization of rallies, support groups, solidarity committees, and to summon allied forces for a grand mobilization of the global camp of resistance against the empire of death. The call from Palestine to lay siege to the military and imperialist infrastructure inside the imperialist nations remains one we have yet to fully answer and it is our obligation to build our own popular forces as true partners of the resistance in Caracas and Gaza. Let us apply our energies, which brought millions to the streets of every world capital in solidarity with Palestine, to stop the imperialist aggression and war against the free and sovereign Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and impose a cost on the profiteers of genocide and the representatives of the modern Holocaust. And let it be a warning to the imperialist mercenaries and terrorists who attempt to usurp the sovereignty of Venezuela – do not underestimate the power of a people’s guerrilla army fighting for their survival and homeland. Venezuela will be another grave for the imperialist invader.

This is a clear and unified stance: with Venezuela, its government and its people, and against the murderous crimes of U.S. imperialism. We reiterate our call to action:

This is a moment for resistance and for action. It is clear that the U.S. sees the slaughter of even the appearance of international law under imperialism in its imperialist-Zionist genocide in Gaza as an open door to expand its aggression everywhere in the world, without even an attempt to manufacture other than the thinnest pretext and while openly declaring their thirst for the resources of the people of the world.

It is an urgent responsibility for everyone and every organization in the United States and in the international core to stand now for Venezuela, to escalate, to protest, to take direct action — as we stand simultaneously against the ongoing genocide in Palestine, the attack on Lebanon, and the aggression against all the peoples of the region and the world who confront and resist imperialism. We must not allow business as usual or content ourselves with mild condemnations.

The Palestinian liberation movement is fundamentally an anti-imperialist movement; the Palestinian people confront not only Zionism in Palestine and its entity “Israel” but the imperialist powers — if this was not clear before Al-Aqsa Flood, it is more clear than ever now. The front to defend Venezuela is a front to defend Palestine, for the liberation of land and people, and to confront our collective imperialist enemy.