The Desperate Politics of Blaming Zionists

From Venezuela to New York City, leaders scapegoat Zionism whenever failure strikes and success becomes a crime.

photo: Tristan Sosteric/Unsplash

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On Saturday, after Venezuela’s capital was attacked by the U.S. military and its president and first lady were captured, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez claimed that the operation “undoubtedly has Zionist undertones.”

It’s no surprise that, in moments of crisis, embattled regimes reach for a mythic antagonist — one powerful enough to explain failure, humiliation, or loss of control. For Venezuela’s leadership, “Zionism” has become that antagonist: a cipher for competence, coordination, Western power and, most dangerously, success.

Rodríguez’s remarks did not arise in a vacuum. Last November, Venezuela’s now-captured president, Nicolás Maduro, has repeatedly invoked “Zionists” as shadowy forces seeking to deliver Venezuela “to the devils.” The language is not only inflammatory; it is historically illiterate.

Venezuela was once among Israel’s early diplomatic supporters. In 1947, it voted in favor of the United Nations Partition Plan recommending the creation of a Jewish state alongside an Arab state in British Mandate Palestine. Shortly after Israel’s independence, Venezuela established formal diplomatic relations and, unusually for the era, maintained an embassy in Jerusalem. Through the 1980s and 1990s, ties remained cordial. A notable moment came in 1995, when Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres visited Caracas to deepen bilateral cooperation.

That history did not collapse because of Israel; it collapsed because of Venezuela.

The turning point was Hugo Chávez’s rise to power in 1999. Chávez inherited a country marked by corruption, inequality, and a political system widely perceived as closed, unresponsive, and elitist. He did not seize power by force; he was elected by a population desperate for change. Like other charismatic populists before him, Chávez centralized authority, militarized political language, undermined independent institutions, and cast himself as the embodiment of the popular will. His foreign policy followed suit, tilting sharply against the United States and toward anti-Western alliances, including Iran and Cuba. Israel, seen as aligned with the U.S. and emblematic of Western success, became a convenient target.

In January 2009, Venezuela severed diplomatic relations with Israel and expelled Israeli diplomats. The consequences were not merely diplomatic. The climate of anti-Israel rhetoric bled into something darker. That same month, the Tiféret Israel synagogue in Caracas was attacked by vandals, an episode that underscored how quickly “anti-Zionism,” when wielded by the state, can endanger Jewish communities at home.

None of this is novel. When regimes fail, they rarely confess incompetence. They scapegoat. Authoritarian governments have long relied on antisemitic and anti-Zionist narratives as tools of political survival. Stalin had his “rootless cosmopolitans.” Arab nationalist regimes blamed Zionists after catastrophic military defeats. Today, kleptocracies and revolutionary regimes reach reflexively for “Zionist influence” whenever institutions crumble and legitimacy erodes.

The function is always the same: Externalize blame, unify supporters against a foreign enemy, and redirect public anger away from corruption, repression, and mismanagement. Zionism is especially useful in this regard because it can be portrayed simultaneously as imperial and conspiratorial — powerful yet stateless, omnipresent yet invisible.

Zionism does not cause these crises; it is merely the explanation invented to avoid accountability.

This dynamic is not confined to failed states or authoritarian regimes abroad. It increasingly appears within democratic societies as well, particularly through populist figures who turn anti-Zionism into a defining feature of their political identity.

Newly inaugurated New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a case in point. On Thursday, his very first day as mayor, he held an inauguration ceremony that stretched for hours. He could have celebrated. He could have begun the work of making New York City safer and better for all its residents and visitors. Instead, he spent his first hours quietly dismantling the city’s pro-Israel and antisemitism-related protections — without ever mentioning them by name.

Gone were the city’s ban on Israel boycotts, divestments, and sanctions. Gone was a requirement that the police chief evaluate rules about protests outside houses of worship issued last month by the previous mayor after an anti-Israel rally at a Manhattan synagogue. And gone was New York City’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which accurately labels anti-Zionism as a serious, pernicious form of antisemitism.

Nothing here was accidental. It was governance shaped around negation, making anti-Zionism not a policy position but a political identity. Mamdani does not merely oppose Israel; he makes opposition to Israel a signal to his base, a proof of ideological purity, and a mechanism for erasing institutional norms associated with Jewish safety and legitimacy. Like Maduro, Mamdani did not invent this strategy, but he adapted it.

Anti-Zionism becomes useful because it operates on two levels at once: It claims moral righteousness while functioning as a blunt instrument of power, and it allows the populist to posture as anti-establishment while targeting one of the few minorities still considered safe to antagonize. The through-line is not ideology; it is utility.

In Caracas, anti-Zionism distracts from economic collapse and authoritarian decay. In New York City, it signals virtue, defiance, and alignment with a fashionable grievance politics. In both cases, Zionism is not debated; it is instrumentalized. And once again, the pattern repeats: Zionism is treated not as a national movement, not as a historical reality, but as a symbol of success that must be opposed precisely because it contradicts the populist narrative of permanent victimhood.

What unites these cases — Venezuela and New York City — is not geography or regime type. It is resentment toward competence, continuity, and a Jewish political project that refuses to fail. Anti-Zionism, here, is not dissent; it is identity.

To be clear, it is important to distinguish between two very different forms of anti-Zionism.

The first is ideological anti-Zionism typically found in activist spaces, academic theory, and protest movements. It couches itself in the language of human rights, international law, and post-colonial critique, however selectively applied.

The second is instrumental anti-Zionism, practiced by authoritarian regimes like that of Venezuela. This form has nothing to do with Palestinian “liberation” or “resistance” or moral philosophy. It is blunt, opportunistic, and strategic. It exists to justify repression, excuse failure, and legitimize alliances with other anti-Western actors.

Nicolás Maduro’s government does not invoke Zionism because it has a coherent critique of Israeli policy; it invokes Zionism because it needs an enemy that sounds powerful enough to explain why the revolution failed.

Even if Israel assisted the United States in this operation in any capacity (intelligence sharing, technical support, strategic consultation), it would be entirely legitimate. This is not scandalous; it is how alliances function. The United States and Israel are longstanding allies. They cooperate openly and formally across defense, intelligence, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and regional stability. This cooperation is not hidden, illicit, or nefarious; it is codified, reciprocal, and rooted in shared strategic interests. When allies assist one another, it is called partnership, not subversion.

Venezuela, by contrast, chose to sever diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009. That decision was unilateral and ideological. Venezuela expelled Israeli diplomats, embraced Israel’s adversaries, and aligned itself militarily with actors openly hostile to the United States and its allies. A country cannot voluntarily cut ties with Israel, host military training camps for Hezbollah, maintain military partnerships with Hamas and Iran, and then feign outrage when Israel is treated as an ally rather than a neutral party.

To frame lawful cooperation between allies as “Zionist undertones” is to deliberately confuse diplomacy with conspiracy. It assumes that Israel has no right to act in its own security interests, no legitimacy as a sovereign state, and no standing as a partner to the United States — assumptions never applied to any other American ally. This double standard is the tell and the resentment: resentment that Israel is trusted, capable, and integrated into the Western security architecture — while Venezuela, by its own choices, is isolated and distrusted.

And that, too, is part of what so deeply offends regimes built on grievance rather than governance.

This reality makes Delcy Rodríguez’s claim even more revealing: When Venezuelan officials promote “Zionist undertones,” they are attempting to obscure the fact that Venezuela itself has willingly become a staging ground for America’s adversaries. The accusation is not defensive; it is diversionary.

And this is where the irony sharpens. Zionism, stripped of caricature and conspiracy, is a fundamentally liberal idea. It reemerged in the late 19th century as a response to centuries of Jewish persecution: pogroms, legal discrimination, expulsions, and the collapse of minority protections as nationalist movements swept Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Its core claim was simple: Jews, like other peoples, are entitled to self-determination in our ancestral homeland.

In contemporary terms, Zionism fits squarely within the logic of decolonization: the undoing of imperial structures that denied indigenous or long-rooted peoples political agency.

And it worked. Against staggering odds, Israel (tiny, resource-poor, and perpetually under threat) built a state that became a global leader in defense, intelligence, medicine, agriculture, technology, and higher education. Its universities punch far above their weight. Its innovations shape global health, food security, and cybersecurity. Its military and intelligence services are studied worldwide.

Zionism did not merely survive; it succeeded. And this success explains a crucial linguistic shift. You see, when “Jew” is used as a slur, it is often a classic act of punching down: reducing an ancient people to crude stereotypes meant to dehumanize. The dirty Jew, the greedy Jew, the disloyal Jew, the parasitic Jew, the manipulative Jew.

But, when “Zionist” is used as a slur, especially by those in power, it tends to punch up — implying influence, coordination, effectiveness, and reach. In a perverse way, it is a backhanded compliment. The insult only works because the accused are presumed capable. That is why failing regimes invoke Zionism when things go wrong. “Zionist” becomes shorthand for an enemy that is organized where they are chaotic, competent where they are corrupt, future-oriented where they are stagnant. Israel is not targeted because it is weak; it is targeted because it is successful.

So, when Delcy Rodríguez declares that a U.S. operation in Venezuela “undoubtedly has Zionist undertones,” she is revealing more than she intends. She is not making a coherent claim about Israel; she is confessing an obsession with effectiveness. What she is really saying is this: whatever happened was precise, coordinated, and successful — and therefore, in her worldview, it must bear the mark of Zionism.

The ire directed at Zionism is not rooted in what Zionism is, but in what it has achieved. For leaders who rule by grievance, chaos, and denial, nothing is more threatening than a story of national revival that actually worked.

Political movements built primarily on grievance rather than competence share a common flaw: They are excellent at identifying enemies and terrible at governing. They promise moral clarity but deliver administrative paralysis. They elevate symbolic victories over material outcomes. And because their legitimacy rests on opposition rather than results, failure is not treated as feedback; it is treated as sabotage.

From Caracas to New York City, grievance-driven socialism reliably produces scarcity, capital flight, deteriorating public services, and institutional decay. These outcomes are not accidents. They are the consequence of prioritizing ideological signaling over incentives, redistribution over production, and moral narratives over economic reality.

When these systems begin to collapse, their leaders face a dilemma: Either admit the model is flawed, or identify an external force responsible for the failure. The latter is always easier. This is where Zionism reenters the story.

Once a populist defines himself primarily by negation — against capitalism, against “colonialism,” against Israel — there is nowhere to go when the bills come due and the services fail. Housing shortages, rising crime, budget shortfalls, and capital withdrawal cannot be explained as growing pains forever. Eventually, someone must be accused of interference.

Zionists are uniquely useful at that stage. They are external enough to blame, visible enough to name, and successful enough to sound plausible as saboteurs. The accusation requires no evidence, only resentment. It converts policy failure into moral struggle and governance collapse into ideological warfare.

This is why the trajectory is so familiar. First, anti-Zionism is adopted as identity. Then it becomes policy posture. Then, when governance fails, it becomes explanation. Zohran Mamdani may not intend this outcome. Few populists do. But systems matter more than intentions.

A politics organized around grievance rather than results eventually exhausts its villains and must invent new ones. Zionism, as ever, remains available. Not because it is responsible for the failure, but because it is successful enough to be blamed. And so the cycle continues: When governance collapses, Zionists are accused; when Zionists are accused, failure is excused; and when failure is excused, nothing improves.

This is what makes Zionism such a desirable scapegoat: Its greatest offense is not “occupation,” conspiracy, power, shadowy influence, or imagined omnipotence. Zionism’s greatest offense is that it worked, that it is successful — precisely what authoritarians, populists, grievance merchants, and antisemitic losers hate the most.

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