MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Venezuela: Israel's FM says his country supports González Urrutia

Venezuela will be an ally of all the world's democracies once Maduro is toppled, Machado told Sa'ar (R)

Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar Thursday told Venezuelan opposition leaders Edmundo González Urrutia and María Corina Machado that the Middle East country had its South American counterpart's freedom in mind: “Venezuela shall be free,” Sa'ar insisted during a telephone conversation. He also invited the man most Western nations recognize as the legitimate winner of the controversial July 28, 2024, elections to visit Israel shortly.

“I congratulated the president on his impressive victory in the elections and expressed my hope that the legitimate and just struggle for freedom and democracy of the citizens of Venezuela will soon be over and Gonzalez will be able to return to his country as president,” Sa'ar wrote on social media.

Sa'ar thus joined “the clamor of numerous sectors globally for the current president, [Nicolás] Maduro, an ally of the repressive regime of the ayatollahs in Iran, to respect the popular will reflected in the election results.” He also hoped that once González Urrutia is effectively sworn in, thus marking democracy's return to Venezuela, diplomatic relations between the two nations will be fully restored.

The retired diplomat, who has been living in exile since September and is on tour in Ecuador and Peru this week, thanked Sa'ar for his words. “Thank you very much, Minister! For your support and commitment to Venezuelans,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, Machado, who has not left Venezuela and is currently in hiding, valued “this productive conversation” with the Israeli official, who conveyed “the support of the government of Israel for the people of Venezuela and its recognition of our Popular Sovereignty.” The disenfranchised leader also stressed that Venezuela would be “free, prosperous, and secure, and the best ally of the world's democracies.”

Israel and most Western countries do not recognize Maduro's unsubstantiated win, based solely on a declaration from the National Electoral Council (CNE) and a Supreme Court ruling upholding it, when it is widely known that those two offices are led by people ideologically subservient to the Bolivarian regime. On the other hand, González Urrutia's Unitarian Democratic Platform (PUD) produced unquestionable evidence that the opposition candidate had received around 67% of the vote.