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Was Maduro’s abduction a ‘Zionist’ plot? The accusation is unfounded — and incredibly telling
In the cacophony following the United States’ extraordinary abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, one comment cut through the noise for many Jews. Delcy Rodríguez — a central figure in the Chavista hierarchy, and now Venezuela’s acting president — suggested that the drama had “Zionist undertones.”
The claim felt almost reflexive. When events anywhere in the world go sideways, it’s a good bet that somehow Israelis — or is it the Jews? — will be said to be behind it.
Rodríguez’s wearying words were a bit of familiar theater. But her instinct still matters, because it reveals how Israel, in the global imagination, has come to occupy a strange dual role: object of admiration for its undeniable strategic competence and, simultaneously, all-purpose bogeyman for the populist left.
How did that come to be?
Let’s begin with the obvious point. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly aligned himself with far-right leaders around the world, he’s come to be seen by the left worldwide as a diabolical symbol of the populist right writ large. (Maduro is far-left — an authoritarian of a different variety.) To criticize Netanyahu, or Israel under him, is increasingly shorthand for criticism of the global right.
But there is a second, equally important truth: Israel in the past several years has demonstrated an astonishing level of military and intelligence competence — ironically, after the monumental failure on both fronts on Oct. 7, 2023. That too shapes how the country is perceived: sometimes in awe, sometimes in fear, always with the risk of sliding seamlessly into conspiracy.
Consider the record. Since Oct. 7, Israel has thrashed the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah; the exploding beepers episode at the height of that conflict was received, on the world stage, like a strategy straight out of James Bond films. Israel eliminated almost the entire top tier of Hamas’s military and political brain trust — including Ismail Haniyeh, in a dramatic assassination staged during a visit to Tehran. Plus, in the opening hours of last summer’s war with Iran, Israel was able to decimate significant portions of Iran’s military and scientific leadership and expose the brittleness of its air defenses, while also shooting down the vast majority of hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones launched in response.
These are extraordinary feats. They cultivate an aura of capability — and to some, of near-invincibility. Israel looks, to friend and foe alike, like a country that sees further, strikes deeper, and plays a longer game than its enemies expect.
U.S. President Donald Trump has added a crucial third element to the equation: He appears obsessed with keeping Netanyahu in power, going so far as to beg the Israeli president to give him a pardon in his corruption trial. The two leaders have held five meetings in the U.S. in the year since Trump’s return to office, most recently last week, and Netanyahu has addressed Congress to rounds of loud applause
To the global left, all of these factors make Israel seem almost like a co-author of Trumpism, one with exceptional military acumen. To the global right — or at least the part of it that has not fallen under the spell of an increasingly vocal antisemitic contingent led by those like Tucker Carlson — it makes Israel seem like an indispensable warrior in a civilizational struggle.
Both views are deeply flawed. And both are influential in inflating the sense that Israel is everywhere — guiding, enabling, manipulating. Even the country’s haters participate in its myth-making.
Combine this ascendant sense with long-lived antisemitic tropes that portray Jews as omnipotent puppet-masters, the hidden hand behind major world events, and it is not hard to see why the words “Zionist undertones” rolled so easily off Rodríguez’s tongue. Her words aren’t new in her milieu. The Latin American left has long embraced movements opposed to Western liberal capitalism. Many of those movements have centered “anti-Zionism”: see Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of Britain’s Labour Party and a lodestar for much of the global left, who has openly cultivated sympathy for Hezbollah and Hamas and expressed warmth toward Cuba and Venezuela’s Chavismo.
This entire coterie — the global far left, the South American authoritarian left, and various Israel-hating jihadist groups — are unlikely bedfellows who are also longtime fellow travelers. There are real strategic threads connecting Venezuela, Iran, and groups sworn to Israel’s destruction. Hezbollah’s presence in Latin America — including in Venezuela — has been an open secret for years. Its networks in the tri-border area between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil have been documented; its fundraising, smuggling, and occasionally operational footprints are not figments of imagination. The bombings of the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in the 1990s were not myths; they were atrocities almost universally attributed to Iran and Hezbollah acting far from home.
And Venezuela’s Chavista governments have cultivated warm ties with Tehran for years. They have provided diplomatic cover, economic cooperation, and political solidarity. So the Venezuelan accusation does not emerge from a vacuum. It emerges from an arena in which opposition toward Israel is a potent political force, and a global political culture in which Israel is cast not as a small state in a dangerous region, but rather as a symbol of the entire global order the left wishes to dismantle.
But Rodríguez’s words add to that preexisting state of affairs by casting Israel as a stand-in for Trump himself. After all, it’s far easier to demonize a distant state with its own set of pressing geopolitical concerns than an American president who is powerful, vindictive, and politically dangerous to cross.
The post Was Maduro’s abduction a ‘Zionist’ plot? The accusation is unfounded — and incredibly telling appeared first on The Forward.
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U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan calls Israeli government ‘evil’ like Hamas
Abdul El-Sayed, a U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan, said in an interview aired Sunday that the Israeli government is as “evil” as Hamas, sharpening his criticism of Israel in the closely-watched Democratic primary.
“Killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil,” El-Sayed told CNN congressional reporter Manu Raja on the network’s Inside Politics program. “It’s not how evil is this one versus that one — Hamas: Evil, Israeli government: Evil. We can say both.”
El-Sayed, 41, is a physician and the son of Egyptian immigrants. He is seeking to channel the energy of the 2024 Uncommitted movement, which protested the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas in Gaza. He is also hoping to build on the surprise success of the New York City mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani in taking on the Democratic establishment.
He is locked in a dead heat with state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Rep. Haley Stevens. The primary is set for Aug. 4.
Earlier this month, El-Sayed faced backlash for appearing alongside streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric — including saying that Hamas “is a thousand times better” than Israel. McMorrow, who is married to a Jewish man, and Stevens, who is closely aligned with AIPAC, have both criticized El-Sayed.
In the CNN interview, El-Sayed defended his decision to campaign with Piker, framing it as an effort to reach voters who feel alienated from traditional politics. “My understanding of America is, it’s a place where we have freedom of speech,” he said.
#MISen Abdul El-Sayed on CNN Inside Politics: @mkraju: You said Israeli government is evil. Do you think they’re just as evil as Hamas?
El-Sayed: “Yes, killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil. It’s not about how evil one is versus the other. Hamas —… pic.twitter.com/4GfJ5oCtqR
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) April 19, 2026
The Michigan Senate race is shaping up as one of the starkest tests of the Democratic coalition and how the party navigates policy towards Israel in Congress amid the wars in Gaza and Iran. The state is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States.
Last week, 40 Senate Democrats voted to block $295 million for the transfer of bulldozers, used by the Israeli military to demolish homes in the West Bank and Gaza; 36 of them also supported a measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to the Jewish state. It shattered a previous high of 27 Democrats who backed a similar pair of resolutions of disapproval to block some weapons transfers last year.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who is Jewish, was among those who voted for the measures. In remarks as they announced their votes, Democrats highlighted their opposition to the Israeli government’s policies in the occupied West Bank, the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the war with Iran.
The post U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan calls Israeli government ‘evil’ like Hamas appeared first on The Forward.
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NYC Mayor Mamdani Unveils Major Tax Hike on Unoccupied Luxury Real Estate
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the New York City Office of Emergency Management, as a major winter storm spreads across a large swath of the United States, in Brooklyn, New York City, US, Jan. 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan
i24 News – NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has officially introduced a controversial new tax targeting secondary residences valued at over $5 million.
The measure, designed to tap into the city’s vast concentration of unoccupied luxury wealth, is projected to generate roughly $500 million annually for the municipal budget.
“This tax is specifically aimed at the ultra-rich,” Mamdani stated, highlighting high-profile examples such as Ken Griffin’s $238 million Midtown penthouse and Alexander Varshavsky’s $20.5 million Columbus Circle residence.
While the city has yet to finalize specific evaluation criteria or the methods for distinguishing primary from secondary homes, the proposal has already become a flashpoint for economic debate.
The move has drawn sharp condemnation from billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who argued that the policy is fundamentally flawed.
Ackman contended that owners of luxury secondary residences contribute significant capital to the local economy without utilizing costly municipal services. He warned that the tax would likely trigger a corporate and high-net-worth exodus to low-tax jurisdictions like Miami, ultimately harming the city’s tax base.
President Donald Trump also entered the fray, denouncing the policy as “totally misguided” and claiming it is “destroying New York.” Trump, whose own extensive real estate holdings in the city could be impacted, argued that such taxation serves only to drive away the international investors who fuel New York’s development.
Implementation remains a significant question mark, as the tax could potentially affect nearly 13,000 property owners, including major figures like Jeff Bezos. Financial analysts point out that many of the city’s most expensive apartments are held through complex offshore structures and shell companies, making the identification and appraisal of these properties an immense administrative challenge for the city.
As the debate intensifies, the Mamdani administration faces a difficult path ahead in balancing its “tax the rich” mandate with the practical realities of New York’s competitive global real estate market.
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Iran Rebuffs Trump Announcement of New Peace Talks, State News Agency Reports
Iran rejected new peace talks with the United States, its state news agency reported on Sunday, hours after US President Donald Trump said he was sending envoys for talks in Pakistan and would launch new strikes on Iran unless it accepts his terms.
Trump posted on Truth Social that his envoys would arrive in Pakistan on Monday evening for negotiations, a timetable that would leave only a day for talks to make progress before a two-week ceasefire ends.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” he wrote. “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”
Iran’s official IRNA news agency cited no specific source in its report that Iran had rejected the talks.
“Iran stated that its absence from the second round of talks stems from what it called Washington’s excessive demands, unrealistic expectations, constant shifts in stance, repeated contradictions, and the ongoing naval blockade, which it considers a breach of the ceasefire,” IRNA wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Iran’s rejection of the talks.
Earlier, a White House official said the US delegation would be headed by Vice President JD Vance, who led the war’s first peace talks a week ago, and also include Trump’s envoy Steven Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump had initially told ABC News and MS Now that Vance would not go.