On Hugo Chávez’s birthday, we remember a leader who dared to speak truth to power especially when the world stayed silent.
In 2011, Chávez sent a bold and uncompromising letter to the United Nations calling for the recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state. It was more than a diplomatic gesture, it was a moral stand. He condemned Israeli apartheid, U.S. complicity, and the use of antisemitism as a shield for Zionist violence.
His words still resonate today, as genocide unfolds in Gaza and world leaders continue to betray the Palestinian people.
Here is Chávez’s letter, unapologetic, radical, and rooted in justice:
I address these words to the General Assembly of the United Nations, to this great forum where all the peoples of the Earth are represented, to reaffirm, on this day and in this setting, Venezuela’s full support for the recognition of the Palestinian State for Palestine’s right to become a free, sovereign, and independent country. This is a historic act of justice for a people who have carried within them, since time immemorial, all the pain and suffering of the world.
The great French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, in his unforgettable piece The Greatness of Arafat, speaks with the weight of truth: “The Palestinian cause is above all the sum of injustices this people has suffered and continues to suffer.” And it is also, I would add, a constant and unbreakable will to resist now inscribed in the heroic memory of human dignity. A will to resist born from the deepest love for the land.
Mahmoud Darwish, the infinite voice of a possible Palestine, speaks to us from the depths of this love:
“We don’t need memories / because Mount Carmel is within us / and the grass of Galilee is on our eyelids. / Don’t say: if we could run toward my country like the river! / Don’t say it! / Because we are in the flesh of our country / and it is in us.”
To those who falsely claim that what has happened to the Palestinian people is not genocide, Deleuze responds with unflinching clarity: “In every case, it’s as if the Palestinian people not only shouldn’t exist, but never existed. This is the zero degree of genocide: to decree that a people does not exist, to deny them the right to existence.”
In this regard, how right the great Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo was when he declared: “The biblical promise of the land of Judea and Samaria to the tribes of Israel is not a notarized deed authorizing the eviction of those born and living on that land.” For that reason, resolving the Middle East conflict necessarily requires doing justice to the Palestinian people. This is the only path to peace.
It pains and outrages us that those who endured one of history’s worst genocides have become the executioners of the Palestinian people. It is infuriating that the legacy of the Holocaust has become the Nakba. And it is simply outrageous that Zionism continues to weaponize accusations of antisemitism against those who denounce its abuses and crimes.
Israel has shamelessly and vilely instrumentalized the memory of the victims to act with total impunity against Palestine. And it must be said: antisemitism is a Western, European disease, not one shared by the Arab peoples. Let us not forget that it is the Semitic Palestinian people who are enduring ethnic cleansing at the hands of the colonialist Israeli state.
Let me be clear: it is one thing to reject antisemitism, and quite another to passively accept the Zionist barbarity of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people. From an ethical standpoint, whoever rejects the former must also condemn the latter.
Let me make a necessary digression: it is abusive to conflate Zionism with Judaism. Many Jewish intellectuals, including Albert Einstein and Erich Fromm, have reminded us of this over time. And today, more and more conscious citizens, even within Israel, openly oppose Zionism and its terrorist and criminal practices.
Let us be unequivocal: Zionism, as a worldview, is fundamentally racist. The terrifying cynicism of Golda Meir proves this: “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to. There is no such thing as Palestinians… It’s not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine… and we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”
Memory must be preserved: since the late 19th century, Zionism promoted the idea of returning the Jewish people to Palestine to create a national state. This agenda aligned with French and British colonialism at the time and would later serve U.S. imperialism. The West always encouraged and supported Zionist occupation of Palestine through military means.
Read and reread the 1917 Balfour Declaration: the British government arrogated to itself the right to promise the Jewish people a national home in Palestine, deliberately ignoring the presence and will of its indigenous inhabitants. It’s worth noting that Christians and Muslims had coexisted peacefully in the Holy Land for centuries until Zionism began to claim it as its sole and exclusive property.
From the early 20th century, taking advantage of British colonial occupation, Zionism began implementing its expansionist project. After World War II, the tragedy of the Palestinian people escalated: they were expelled from their territory and, at the same time, from history. In 1947, the infamous and illegal UN Resolution 181 recommended partitioning Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a zone under international control (Jerusalem and Bethlehem). Outrageously, 56% of the territory was granted to the Zionist project. This resolution violated international law and blatantly disregarded the will of the Arab majority—turning the right to self-determination into a dead letter.
Since 1948, the Zionist state has continued its criminal campaign against the Palestinian people, always backed by an unconditional ally: the United States. And this unconditional support is tangible: Israel dictates U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Edward Said, that great Palestinian and universal conscience, rightly said: “Any peace agreement built on an alliance with the U.S. will confirm Zionist power more than confront it.”
Despite what Israel and the U.S. want the world to believe, through global media monopolies, what has happened and continues to happen in Palestine, as Said argued, is not a religious conflict. It is a political conflict, with colonial and imperialist roots. It is not ancient; it is modern. It did not begin in the Middle East; it was born in Europe.
And what is still at the core of this conflict? Israel’s security is prioritized, Palestine’s is ignored. This is clear in recent history: just recall the genocidal assault launched by Israel through Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.
Palestinian security cannot be reduced to limited self-governance or local police control in isolated “enclaves” of the West Bank and Gaza. That excludes not only the creation of a Palestinian state with pre-1967 borders and East Jerusalem as its capital, but also the rights of its people and their return. The right of return and compensation for 50% of the Palestinian population currently in global exile, is enshrined in Resolution 194.
As Father Miguel D’Escoto denounced during the 2008–2009 massacre in Gaza: “It is incredible that a country (Israel) whose existence depends on a UN resolution can be so dismissive of other UN resolutions.”
Mr. Secretary-General and distinguished representatives of the peoples of the world:
We cannot ignore the crisis of the United Nations. In this very Assembly, in 2005, we stated that the UN model was exhausted. The delayed and openly sabotaged debate on the Palestinian issue confirms this.
Washington has already announced it will veto in the Security Council what will be the majority decision of the General Assembly: the recognition of Palestine as a full member of the UN. Alongside our sister nations in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), we have condemned this injustice in our declaration supporting Palestinian statehood. As we know, the empire seeks to impose a double standard on the world stage, violating international law in Libya while letting Israel act with impunity, making the U.S. the chief accomplice to the Palestinian genocide by Zionist barbarity.
Let us recall the words of Said that cut to the bone: “Because of Israel’s influence in the U.S., American policy on the Middle East is, therefore, Israel-centric.”
I want to end with Mahmoud Darwish’s unforgettable poem On This Earth:
“On this earth there is something worth living for: the lady of the earth, mother of beginnings and ends. Her name is Palestine. She continues to be called Palestine. Lady, because you are my lady, I deserve to live.”
She continues to be called Palestine. Palestine will live and will triumph. Long live a free, sovereign, and independent Palestine!
Hugo Chávez Frías
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
