Venezuela Tries Blaming Israel For Rationed Electricity: ‘Just As Plausible As For Gaza’

Both Hamas and the Maduro government have now instituted electricity rationing, amid civil unrest and with a government that blames foreign interests for domestic turmoil.

Caracas, April 2 – Officials in the embattled regime of Nicolàs Maduro announced new measures this week to address shortfalls in electricity generation, and resorted to a tactic that has paid important rhetorical dividends for the president’s allies in Gaza facing a similar dilemma: assert against evidence that the Jewish State bears the blame for the situation.

Venezuela accused Israel of “strangling” the South American country’s electricity supply, just as it has provided to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip only the electricity for which the latter pays. While Venezuela enjoys the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and Gaza has none, Maduro’s government has also charged that Israel refuses to supply the fuel necessary to run power plants, just as Israel has only supplied to Gaza the fuel for which it pays. Both Hamas and the Maduro government have now instituted electricity rationing, amid civil unrest and with a government that blames foreign interests for domestic turmoil.

A Venezuela Ministry of Energy spokesman explained the accusation in a message Tuesday. “No one exposed to Hamas’s accusations of the Israeli ‘siege’ causing Gaza’s hardships appears to care about what’s actually happening,” observed Pedro Filìa. “The important thing is to blame Israel no matter how much the situation is actually a direct result of Hamas’s own decisions: using funds to arm itself and dig tunnels, for example, instead of paying for the fuel and electricity its people need. Well, if the world disregards facts and reason in order to blame Israel for things, that should also work for Venezuela.”

Such a rhetorical direction represents a continuation of a long-running link between Venezuela and Hamas. The two have formed part of the same anti-Israel and anti-US front in international forums, and both have strengthened alliances with Iran in the face of mounting US pressure to reform or to renounce support for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. During the last major outbreak of hostilities between Hamas and Israel, in 2014, the Chávez government in Caracas commissioned an extensive study of Venezuela’s terrain and other natural formations that discovered not a shred of evidence that Hamas had engaged in war crimes, despite such accusations from Israel and its supporters.

Some Venezuela officials went even further, drawing a specific causal link between US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – and moving the embassy there from Tel Aviv – as well as US recognition of the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory, and Venezuela’s economic woes. “The astronomical inflation, the unemployment, the hoarding, the riots – that’s all on Israel,” charged Deputy Minister of Finance Comer Mihígado. “It doesn’t matter that all this started happening in Venezuela before any of those moves – since when has anyone cared whether anti-Israel accusations make sense?”

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