Zionist

Last week, a prominent Saudi Sheikh, Mohammed Al-Issa, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation, which signalled the end of the Nazi Holocaust. Although dozens of Muslim scholars have visited the site, where about one million Jews were killed during World War Two, according to the Auschwitz Memorial Centre’s press office, Al-Issa is the most senior Muslim religious leader to do so.

Visiting Auschwitz is not a problem for a Muslim; Islam orders Muslims to reject unjustified killing of any human being, no matter what their faith is. Al-Issa is a senior ally of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who apparently cares little for the sanctity of human life, though, and the visit to Auschwitz has very definite political connotations beyond any Islamic context.

By sending Al-Issa to the camp, Bin Salman wanted to show his support for Israel, which exploits the Holocaust for geopolitical colonial purposes. “The Israeli government decided that it alone was permitted to mark the 75th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Auschwitz [in modern day Poland] in 1945,” wrote journalist Richard Silverstein recently when he commented on the gathering of world leaders in Jerusalem for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Holocaust event.

READ: Next up, a Saudi embassy in Jerusalem 

Bin Salman uses Al Issa for such purposes, as if to demonstrate his own Zionist credentials. For example, the head of the Makkah-based Muslim World League is leading rapprochement efforts with Evangelical Christians who are, in the US at least, firm Zionists in their backing for the state of Israel. Al-Issa has called for a Muslim-Christian-Jewish interfaith delegation to travel to Jerusalem in what would, in effect, be a Zionist troika.

Zionism is not a religion, and there are many non-Jewish Zionists who desire or support the establishment of a Jewish state in occupied Palestine. The definition of Zionism does not mention the religion of its supporters, and Israeli writer Sheri Oz, is just one author who insists that non-Jews can be Zionists.

Mohammad Bin Salman and Netanyahu – Cartoon [Tasnimnews.com/Wikipedia]

We should not be shocked, therefore, to see a Zionist Muslim leader in these trying times. It is reasonable to say that Bin Salman’s grandfather and father were Zionists, as close friends of Zionist leaders. Logic suggests that Bin Salman comes from a Zionist dynasty.

This has been evident from his close relationship with Zionists and positive approaches to the Israeli occupation and establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, calling it “[the Jews’] ancestral homeland”. This means that he has no issue with the ethnic cleansing of almost 800,000 Palestinians in 1948, during which thousands were killed and their homes demolished in order to establish the Zionist state of Israel.

“The ‘Jewish state’ claim is how Zionism has tried to mask its intrinsic Apartheid, under the veil of a supposed ‘self-determination of the Jewish people’,” wrote Israeli blogger Jonathan Ofir in Mondoweiss in 2018, “and for the Palestinians it has meant their dispossession.”

As the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Bin Salman has imprisoned dozens of Palestinians, including representatives of Hamas. In doing so he is serving Israel’s interests. Moreover, he has blamed the Palestinians for not making peace with the occupation state. Bin Salman “excoriated the Palestinians for missing key opportunities,” wrote Danial Benjamin in Moment magazine. He pointed out that the prince’s father, King Salman, has played the role of counterweight by saying that Saudi Arabia “permanently stands by Palestine and its people’s right to an independent state with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital.”

UN expert: Saudi crown prince behind hack on Amazon CEO 

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid of Israel’s Channel 13 News reported Bin Salman as saying: “In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.” This is reminiscent of the words of the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, one of the Zionist founders of Israel, that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Bin Salman’s Zionism is also very clear in his bold support for US President Donald Trump’s deal of the century, which achieves Zionist goals in Palestine at the expense of Palestinian rights. He participated in the Bahrain conference, the forum where the economic side of the US deal was announced, where he gave “cover to several other Arab countries to attend the event and infuriated the Palestinians.”

US President Donald Trump looks over at Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud as they line up for the family photo during the opening day of Argentina G20 Leaders’ Summit 2018 at Costa Salguero on 30 November 2018 in Buenos Aires, Argentina [Daniel Jayo/Getty Images]

While discussing the issue of the current Saudi support for Israeli policies and practices in Palestine with a credible Palestinian official last week, he told me that the Palestinians had contacted the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to ask him not to relocate his country’s embassy to Jerusalem. “The Saudis have been putting pressure on us in order to relocate our embassy to Jerusalem,” replied the Brazilian leader. What more evidence of Mohammad Bin Salman’s Zionism do we need?

The founder of Friends of Zion Museum is American Evangelical Christian Mike Evans. He said, after visiting a number of the Gulf States, that, “The leaders [there] are more pro-Israel than a lot of Jews.” This was a specific reference to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, and his counterpart in the UAE, Mohammed Bin Zayed.

“All versions of Zionism lead to the same reactionary end of unbridled expansionism and continued settler colonial genocide of [the] Palestinian people,” Israeli-American writer and photographer Yoav Litvin wrote for Al Jazeera. We may well see an Israeli Embassy opened in Riyadh in the near future, and a Saudi Embassy in Tel Aviv or, more likely, Jerusalem. Is Mohammad Bin Salman a Zionist? There’s no doubt about it.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Venezuela’s devastating June 24 double earthquake has had major implications for the country’s foreign policy and geopolitical alignment. Days after the disaster, a diplomatic-military mission arrived from Israel. 

Former President Hugo Chávez severed ties with Tel Aviv in 2009. Both he and his successor Nicolás Maduro were stalwart supporters of the Palestinian cause, repeatedly excoriating Israel for its colonial occupation, war crimes, and genocide.

In contrast, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez held two public meetings with the Israeli team, which included multiple IDF officers, praised its members as “highly trained and professional,” and thanked them for their work.

Tel Aviv is poised to play an important role alongside Washington in post-earthquake reconstruction planning, while the formal reestablishment of diplomatic relations appears imminent.  In light of this tectonic geopolitical shift, we investigate the main officials and NGOs spearheading the Zionist infiltration of Venezuela.

Israeli state functionaries

Brigadier General Elad Edri was one of the highest-profile figures in the Israeli mission to Venezuela. In a July 7 meeting with Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, Edri was pictured presenting a slideshow titled “Project for Future Reconstruction.”

Edri, who serves as Chief of Staff of the IDF Home Front Command, reportedly led field inspections of damaged structures, provided guidance on debris removal, and eventually secured an extension of the Israeli deployment. He had previously participated in IDF missions following the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the 2017 Mexico earthquake, and the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Florida.

In his military career, Edri took part in the failed Israeli invasion of Lebanon (2006), as well as multiple “mowing-the-grass” operations in the Gaza Strip, including “Cast Lead” (2008-09) and “Protective Edge” (2014), in which Tel Aviv employed its infamous “Dahiyeh Doctrine” of carpet bombing densely populated urban centers. Chávez famously denounced “Cast Lead” as “genocide” and cut diplomatic ties in 2009. 

In 2015, Edri moved to the IDF Home Front Command which, despite presenting itself as a civil defense unit, has played an active role in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in addition to shielding the settler colony as it continues its genocidal wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Edri assumed the leadership of the Home Front Command’s Rescue and Training Brigade. This unit entered Gaza in 2024 and was reported to have participated in combat operations against civilian targets. More recently, the brigadier general led preparation efforts ahead of the US-Israeli war against Iran in February.

Roni Kaplan was born in Uruguay in 1982 and relocated to Israel in 2003. After completing his mandatory military service, he has mostly served as an IDF spokesperson, particularly for Spanish-language outlets. 

Kaplan is also the founder of Huellas del Cielo and Conexión Israel, two organizations focused on fostering ties between Israel and Latin America through educational trips and pilgrimages to occupied Jerusalem.

He was one of the most visible spokespersons in the Venezuela delegation. Always in uniform, Kaplan and his team reportedly provided a “dashboard” for Venezuelan authorities to classify damaged buildings in La Guaira. In an interview with private news network Venevisión, Kaplan claimed the Israeli mission had arrived to “give hope and lend a helping hand to the Venezuelan people.”

Behind the humanitarian façade, Kaplan has spent years amplifying Tel Aviv’s Goebbelian propaganda, from blaming civilian deaths on Hamas “human shields” to pretending that Israeli bombings are “preemptive and precise.” Despite overwhelming evidence, Kaplan has denied that Israel is committing genocide and imposing mass starvation on the Palestinian people.

In May 2026, a coalition of Uruguayan social movements filed a legal complaint against the IDF official, accusing him of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The petitioners argued the country’s authorities have a responsibility to investigate Kaplan.

A career diplomat who spent part of his youth in Venezuela, Yoed Magen was the first official to announce the Israeli mission to the South American country, citing contacts with high-level figures in the Venezuelan government. The diplomatic-military team that arrived on July 1 was received by Félix Plasencia, who was later named Foreign Minister.

Magen was recently appointed as Israeli ambassador to Mexico, having previously served in Panama, Colombia, Uruguay, and Paraguay. He was also a policy advisor for the IDF.

In interviews and op-eds, including for leading private Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional, Magen has been an unapologetic proponent of US-Israeli genocide. 

Magen has endorsed collective punishment, saying that Palestinians should “suffer” for supporting Hamas. He has claimed that Israel only launches “precise” attacks against Hamas, despite widespread evidence of systematically targeting civilians. Magen additionally amplified the blood libel campaign falsely accusing the anti-colonial resistance movement of mass rape and burning settler families on October 7.

Most recently, he has endorsed both US-Israeli wars against Iran, calling them “preemptive” operations against “existential threats.”

Para-state agents

Brigadier General (res.) and weapons contractor Yossi Pinto was present in a July 21 meeting with Acting President Rodríguez to mark the end of Israel’s post-earthquake mission in the country. He reportedly presented a “system” to help Venezuelan authorities assess thousands of structures damaged by the earthquakes.

A career IDF officer, Pinto participated in multiple Israeli wars and occupation missions, including the thwarted 2006 invasion of Lebanon as well as Operations “Cast Lead” (2008-09) and “Protective Edge” (2014) in Gaza. He has a documented record of war crimes and human rights violations.

The Pinto-commanded Duchifat Battalion and Kfir Brigade were caught beating and abusing Palestinian prisoners, which they filmed on their own phones in 2008. The two units have been accused of widespread unlawful killings and torture. Later, at the head of the Binyamin Brigade in the West Bank, Pinto took part in efforts to evict Palestinians from their lands, killing and maiming dozens of children (2014).

From 2018 to 2020, he commanded the IDF’s Search and Rescue Brigade. After passing to reservist status, Pinto also assumed a “land maneuver manager” role in Rafael, one of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturers and a major supplier of battlefield systems in the current genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.

An Orthodox rabbi, Yosef Garmon arrived in Venezuela leading the delegation from the ZAKA NGO (more below). As a fluent Spanish speaker, he has been a prominent Zionist spokesperson and religious organizer throughout Latin America. As an IDF reservist, he served in multiple Israeli wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, and re-enlisted after Israel launched its latest operation in October 2023.

As president of the so-called “Humanitarian Coalition,” Garmon has widely promoted Israeli hasbara for Latin American publics. In Venezuela, he joined right-wing student organizations to deliver aid to affected communities. Garmon’s organization pledged to maintain a long-term presence in the Caribbean nation beyond the immediate relief actions.

In his media appearances, the Orthodox rabbi has likewise provided cover for Tel Aviv and Washington’s ongoing colonial holocausts, blaming mass civilian casualties from IDF bombings on Hezbollah and Hamas. He has also rejected Israeli responsibility for mass hunger in Gaza and regurgitated the debunked mass rape hoax to justify the atrocities.

Garmon has denied that Israel is committing genocide and framed its wars as a fight in service of “humanity” against “barbarism.”

Zionist NGOs

ZAKA is an Israeli volunteer organization founded in 1995, primarily known for its emergency response and search-and-rescue operations. Though it presents itself as an independent NGO, it operates as a civil extension of Israel’s emergency services, working directly with the police, military, and government.

ZAKA is a male-only, ultra-Orthodox religious group with no medical training, but it has deployed internationally following natural disasters such as the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and severe flooding in Texas in 2025. After the 2026 earthquake in Venezuela, a team led by rabbi Yosef Garmon (see above) reportedly delivered medical aid to affected families in La Guaira.

Furthermore, ZAKA has long functioned as a “humanitarian” conduit for Israeli disinformation. One of its members, Yossi Landau, was one of the main sources behind the fake stories about beheaded babies and sexual violence during the October 7, 2023, Al-Aqsa Flood operation. ZAKA has also been shameless about leveraging such hoaxes into lucrative fundraising opportunities.

Despite claiming to focus on “saving and honoring lives,” ZAKA has applauded Israeli military operations, including attacks against hospitals.

As Israel’s highest-profile humanitarian NGO, IsraAID is pivotal to soft power initiatives aimed at laundering Tel Aviv’s international image. It has deployed in several disasters worldwide, including in Japan, Kenya, and Puerto Rico.

Following the double earthquake in Venezuela, IsraAID brought in a team from neighboring Colombia that reportedly delivered humanitarian assistance to affected communities in La Guaira.

In close coordination with Israeli occupation forces, IsraAID entered the Gaza Strip in early 2024 amid efforts to displace UNRWA and local authorities and subject millions of Palestinians to an “architecture of starvation.”

IsraAID CEO Yotam Polizer has repeated “mass rape” blood libel accusations against the Palestinian resistance.

Non-profit SmartAID and private contractor Magen teamed up to send a search-and-rescue team to Venezuela following the June 24 double earthquake.

Founded by Shachar Zahavi, a former co-founder of IsraAID, SmartAID presents itself as an organization integrating technology into humanitarian aid, including solar panels, water purification systems, and other relief solutions. Highlighting its philanthropic purposes, SmartAID has deployed on-the-ground teams after the 2023 earthquake in Turkey and the 2021 earthquake in Haiti.

At the same time, SmartAID has entered Gaza alongside the Israeli occupation forces, setting up shelters and food distribution as part of Israel’s efforts to displace Palestinian authorities and UNRWA in the course of its extermination campaign.

Magen, founded by IDF Colonel Eran Magen, is deeply embedded with the Israeli military and is the premier provider of disaster management training to Israeli government, armed forces, and civilian organizations. Colonel Magen led the IDF’s Home Front Command’s Search and Rescue Unit during the 2006 Lebanon War.

Also on the ground in Venezuela was World Central Kitchen (WCK), serving meals to displaced families, rescue workers, and volunteers in the days after the earthquake. WCK was founded after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Based in the US and with close ties to US authorities, it has been instrumental to US foreign policy goals in places like Gaza and Ukraine.

The organization drew scrutiny after coordinating with Israeli occupation forces to bring aid into Gaza in early 2024 while Israel blocked relief efforts from other organizations, particularly UNRWA. WCK’s arrival was sponsored by the UAE and announced by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who alongside Netanyahu is under ICC indictment for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.”

At the same time that it targeted flotillas bringing much-needed aid to Gaza, Israel actively coordinated WCK’s efforts. The relationship was strained in April 2024 when Israeli forces bombed a WCK convoy, killing seven workers.

The organization’s founder, Spanish-American celebrity chef José Andrés, has consistently parroted Israel’s “self-defense” narrative and blasted the Spanish government for referring to Israeli actions as “genocide.” The attack against the WCK convoy led Andrés to question Israeli operations.