Miguel Truzman Tamsot, a lawyer and spokesperson for the community, told the JC that the initial hours of Saturday morning were frightening, as the impacts of US strikes boomed across the city.
The first advice to the community was to stay home. “January 3 and 4 were complex days of unrest,” Tamsot said.
“After the weekend, we joined the rest of the country in undertaking a gradual normalisation of the community's daily activities,” he added.
Tamsot said he hopes the situation will stabilise. “The appointment of Delcy Rodríguez [Maduro’s vice-president] as acting president is an objective reality that will lead to stability in the country.
“We join the rest of the country in hoping for a 2026 full of good news, faith and hope for a better Venezuela for all,” he went on.
Danilo Gelman, director of security, crisis management, and counterterrorism programs for the Latin American Jewish Congress, said: “The priority is to preserve calm, avoid unnecessary exposure, and remain attentive to developments on the ground.”
Speaking from Buenos Aires, Gelman added that his immediate concern was “stability and the potential impact on daily life and security”.
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Danilo Gelman hoped the removal of Maduro would mark a 'significant setback for Iran’s regional ambitions'[Missing Credit]
“Any major political event is analysed from the perspective of how it might affect social cohesion and the ability of minorities to live in freedom and security.”
He said the community was hoping for a “peaceful transition that restores institutional normality, guarantees basic rights, and reduces uncertainty and fear”.
“Stability, respect for the rule of law, and economic recovery are essential not only for the Jewish community, but for Venezuelan society as a whole.”
He also suggested that this could be a turning point for Venezuela’s connection to Iran. The country became a “permissive environment for Iranian-linked networks,” under the government of Maduro’s predecessor, anti-Israel socialist leader Hugo Chávez.
“The relationship offered Iran strategic depth in Latin America, while positioning Venezuela as a geopolitical outpost aligned against Western interests,” Gelman explained.
“Any major political realignment in Caracas would therefore represent a significant setback for Iran’s regional ambitions and for the broader network of non-state actors that benefited from the Maduro government’s foreign policy orientation.”
Dina Siegel Vann, director of the Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs at the American Jewish Committee, told Haaretz that Maduro’s removal could be “good for the Jews in the sense that any country that is aligned or has connections to our enemies is not good”.
With Maduro allied with Iran and Venezuela home to Hezbollah’s base in South America, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the Trump administration hopes to dismantle the Iranian proxy network operating in the country.
Siegel Vann echoed that view in her comments to Israeli media, saying: “It's not only Venezuelan Jews but Jews throughout the region who stand to benefit because we know there were Hezbollah cells in Venezuela and beyond that were supported by Venezuela and that Venezuela had become the gateway of Iran into the region."
Venezuela’s Jewish community once numbered around 25,000 but, after Chávez assumed the presidency in 1999, thousands of Jews left the country, most settling in Miami, with others moving to Israel and Central America.
According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 195 Venezuelan Jews have made aliyah in the past five years.
Like other Venezuelans, Jews who have left the country cited its economic collapse as the main motivator for emigrating. Others have cited concerns about rising antisemitism as a factor, with two turning points being police raids on Caracas’ Club Hebraica, a Jewish community centre, in 2004 and 2007.
One of Venezuela’s most prominent Jews is Moisés Naím, who served as minister of trade and industry in the early 1990s and later became editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy.
In a 2021 essay published by the Jewish Book Council, Naím wrote of Chávez’ campaign against the Jewish community: “Venezuelan Jews learned what Jews everywhere else had learned generations ago: where dictators and populists come to power, antisemitism flourishes.”
Nonetheless, a current member of the community who spoke to the JC was keen to emphasise that the level of antisemitism in the country is not a major concern for those who remain, and normality in the Jewish community was already returning early this week.
