The U.S. Stance on Venezuela Proves Why Israel Must Defend Itself

By Matthew Narh Tetteh

The world of international politics is riddled with glaring double standards. Look at how the United States is aggressively confronting Venezuela over drug trafficking: surrounding the country with warships, conducting lethal strikes on suspected trafficking vessels, and designating key elements of the Maduro regime as terrorists. Washington justifies all of this as necessary to protect American lives from the scourge of narcotics.

Now imagine the roles reversed. What if Venezuela launched a cross-border invasion into the United States, murdered 100,000 American citizens, raped women in front of their families, and beheaded babies on camera? Does anyone seriously believe the U.S. would respond with “restraint,” “proportionality,” or endless rounds of UN-mediated ceasefires? America would unleash the full, overwhelming power of its military until the threat was eradicated—without apology.

Yet that is precisely the kind of restraint many now demand of Israel.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out the deadliest single-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust: massacring families in their homes, burning people alive, committing documented rape and mutilation, and dragging 251 hostages—including infants and elderly Holocaust survivors—back to Gaza. This was not a “border skirmish”; it was an act of genocidal barbarism aimed at the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.

And still, voices from both the “America First” wing of the Republican Party and the progressive left insist that Israel must “show restraint,” accept ceasefires that allow Hamas to rearm, and tolerate an enemy that openly vows to repeat October 7 again and again until Israel is wiped off the map.

If the United States is entitled to surround Venezuela with its most advanced weapons and strike preemptively over drugs, how can anyone argue that Israel is not entitled to do whatever it takes to ensure Hamas can never again butcher its citizens? No country on earth would accept such a threat on its border. No country on earth would be told to “live with it.”

Israel is not asking for special treatment. Israel is demanding the same basic right every other nation takes for granted: the right to defend its people against those who seek to exterminate them.

Stand with Israel now.