By: Fern Sidman

The reverberations of Nicolás Maduro’s dramatic arrest by U.S. forces are being felt far beyond courtrooms in New York or the halls of power in Caracas. In Jewish homes scattered across Venezuela — in shuttered synagogues cautiously reopening their doors, in community centers that have survived years of intimidation and economic collapse — the news has sparked something long absent from daily life: guarded hope.

As reported on Wednesday by The Algemeiner, leaders of Venezuela’s beleaguered Jewish community are describing the moment as a possible inflection point after more than a quarter-century of authoritarianism, corruption, and systemic decay. Miguel Truzman, president of the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela, told Spain-based Radio Sefarad in comments cited in The Algemeiner report that the U.S.-led operation was received “with faith, hope, and optimism” — words that carry special weight in a country where political promises have so often ended in betrayal.

The U.S. military’s operation late Saturday night, which captured Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores and dismantled key state infrastructure, marked Washington’s most audacious intervention in Latin America since the invasion of Panama in 1989. Within hours, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president, denouncing the arrests as an illegal attempt at regime change and demanding the immediate release of the ousted leader.

Yet the streets told a different story. As The Algemeiner has reported, no mass uprising erupted in defense of Maduro. There were no nationwide rallies, no human chains encircling government buildings. Instead, Venezuelans watched from behind shuttered windows, whispering rather than chanting, absorbing the shock of a political earthquake that had been unthinkable only days earlier.

For Truzman, the absence of visible resistance was itself a message. “The American military’s operations across different parts of the country caught us by surprise,” he told Radio Sefarad, as quoted in The Algemeiner report. “It’s truly an extraordinary moment. Thanks to the careful execution of the operation, the physical safety of most Venezuelans was not at risk.”

Venezuela’s Jewish population once numbered close to 25,000, among the largest in Latin America. Today, it has dwindled to between 3,000 and 5,000, concentrated almost entirely in Caracas — a statistic that The Algemeiner has chronicled as a tragic marker of the nation’s descent.

Economic collapse drove many families to Miami, Madrid, Panama City, and Tel Aviv. Antisemitic rhetoric from the regime accelerated the exodus. Synagogues were vandalized, Jewish schools intimidated, and community leaders surveilled.

Yet those who remained did not surrender their identity.

“The country is gradually returning to normal — synagogues, for example, have reopened their doors for daily services,” Truzman told Radio Sefarad in remarks highlighted in The Algemeiner report. “Venezuela is entering a new chapter of governance. For our community, the most important focus is preserving our daily Jewish life, fostering connections with other religious communities, and safeguarding the well-being of our members.”

This is not merely a return to prayer. It is an act of civic defiance after years in which religious minorities were forced to operate in the shadows.

Throughout his presidency, Maduro routinely singled out Jews and Israel as convenient villains. As The Algemeiner report documented, he falsely accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not being an “authentic Jew,” claimed that Israel sought to dominate the Middle East and Central Asia, and repeatedly praised Hamas and Hezbollah as “freedom fighters.”

In November, he warned of “far-right Zionists” who allegedly wanted to “hand this country over to the devils.” In 2024, amid massive protests following elections widely considered fraudulent, he blamed “international Zionism” for the unrest.

Truzman did not equivocate when asked about the community’s stance. “The Jewish community of Venezuela is a Zionist community that strongly supports the State of Israel as a sovereign nation, with a legitimate right to exist, defend itself, and maintain its territorial integrity,” he said.

Such statements were once dangerous to utter publicly in Caracas. Now they are being spoken into microphones.

For Venezuelans abroad, the fall of Maduro — even if temporary — feels like vindication after years of political exile. Simy Blomer Benchimol, a Venezuelan Jew living in Spain, told Radio Sefarad, in an interview quoted in The Algemeiner report, that she viewed the U.S. action as “a price worth paying if it means we can live in peace.”

“No one is scared — in fact, people are feeling hopeful,” she said. “After 26 years, even if progress is slow, I’m happy to see change beginning. No one went out to defend the regime.”

Her words underscore a crucial truth that The Algemeiner has repeatedly emphasized: Maduro’s authority was propped up by coercion, not consent.

On Monday, Maduro and Flores appeared in U.S. federal court in Manhattan, where they pleaded not guilty to sweeping criminal charges. Prosecutors accuse the former president of overseeing a cocaine-trafficking network that partnered with violent armed groups across Latin America — allegations that include narco-terrorism conspiracy, large-scale drug importation, and possession of military-grade weapons.

The charges portray not merely a corrupt politician but a regime enmeshed in transnational criminal enterprise — a state in which organized crime was policy, not pathology.

Perhaps the most alarming dimension of Maduro’s rule, long detailed by The Algemeiner, is Venezuela’s transformation into a strategic outpost for hostile foreign powers. As diplomatic relations with Israel were severed in 2009 under Hugo Chávez, ties with Iran deepened. Under Maduro, those ties metastasized.

Venezuela became a financial and operational hub for Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy army in the Middle East. According to multiple reports cited by The Algemeiner, Hezbollah operatives used Venezuelan territory for money laundering, passport trafficking, and logistical coordination across the hemisphere.

This was not simply an ideological alliance. It was the hollowing out of Venezuelan sovereignty — a country handed over, as Maduro himself put it, to the “freedom fighters” he admired abroad.

Interim President Delcy Rodríguez now presides over a nation in political limbo. Her denunciation of the U.S. action frames the arrests as a foreign conspiracy to seize Venezuela’s natural wealth. Yet her own legitimacy remains deeply contested, and international observers continue to assert that the opposition was cheated of victory in the 2024 election.

For Venezuelan Jews, this ambiguity is familiar terrain. They have lived for decades under leaders who promised stability while eroding every institutional pillar of civil society.

Truzman’s words therefore carry a careful cadence: hope tempered by vigilance.

“We face the future with faith, hope, and optimism — for both families and the nation,” he said. Not triumph. Not certainty. Hope.

As The Algemeiner has observed in its continuing coverage, the capture of Maduro is not just a geopolitical episode. It is a psychological rupture. It tells Venezuelans that the architecture of fear can crack — that the edifice of impunity can be breached.

For the Jewish community, the moment resonates on an even deeper frequency. It suggests that the rhetoric which cast them as enemies of the state may finally be losing its institutional backing.

Synagogue doors reopening are not mere acts of religious observance. They are civic statements: that Jewish life in Venezuela will no longer be reduced to whispers behind locked gates.

No one interviewed by The Algemeiner has declared victory. The wounds of Venezuela are too deep, its institutions too eroded, its economy too ravaged for premature celebration.

Yet for the first time in a generation, Venezuelan Jews are speaking of the future not in terms of escape routes but in the language of rebuilding.

“After 26 years,” Benchimol said, “I’m happy to see change beginning.”

In that sentence — fragile, tentative, and luminous — lies the emotional core of a nation holding its breath, waiting to discover whether this extraordinary moment will become a fleeting interlude or the prologue to renewal.