Venezuela And America's Drug Problem

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

Caracus, Venezuela, the capital. :  The population of the Caracas metropolitan area is approximately 3 million to 5 million people, depending on the source and how "Caracas" is defined. The city proper's population is lower, with estimates around 1.9 million to 2.9 million people. For 2025, the metro area population is estimated to be around 3.015 million.   

The US is already fighting a war against Venezuela — in the form of drug traffickers and narco-terrorists, whose poisons kill more Americans in a year than died in Vietnam, Sen. Dave McCormick warned on Sunday. McCormick (R-Pa.) underscored the thousands of American deaths from drug traffickers while defending President Trump’s declaration Saturday that Venezuela airspace is closed — as ramped up pressure om the regime.  “We have a war that’s coming through fentanyl, through opioids, through cocaine. It killed 100,000 Americans last year. That’s twice the number of people that died in eight years of Vietnam — 4,000 Pennsylvanians,” he told “Fox News Sunday.”

The US began deploying Navy warships and personnel to the Caribbean in mid-August. Donald Trump announced on 2 September 2025 that the US Navy had carried out the first airstrike in the Caribbean on a boat from Venezuela, killing all 11 people on the vessel; he released a video of the incident, which Venezuelan sources said had occurred on 1 September. The next day, Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defense, said military operations against drug cartels in Venezuela would continue and Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, suggested that similar strikes could follow. As of 16 November 2025, at least 83 people have been killed in 21 strikes on 22 vessels. (The US military has killed 83 people in strikes that have destroyed 22 boats as part of a campaign that Washington says is aimed at curtailing the flow of drugs into the United States. There had been three survivors of those strikes, two of whom were briefly detained by the US Navy before being returned to their home countries. The other is presumed dead after a search by the Mexican Navy.)

  Yes, Venezuelans are being deported from the U.S. due to the expiration of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and the U.S. government has resumed direct repatriation flights for those lacking a legal basis to remain. Following the Supreme Court's ruling in October 2025, many Venezuelans lost their protections, putting them at risk of deportation unless they can secure a different legal status. Loss of TPS: The ending of the most recent TPS designation for Venezuelans is putting hundreds of thousands at risk of losing their legal status and facing deportation. Direct repatriations: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has resumed direct flights to Venezuela to deport individuals who are in the country without legal status.

We have been shooting at boats that may have drugs in them.  The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has declared recent reporting that he may have illegally ordered all people to be killed in a military strike in the Caribbean as “fake news” on Friday evening, adding that the series of strikes of people on boats had been “lawful under both US and international law”.

Hegseth lambasted reports about his role in the strike as “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland”.

The remarks came after a Washington Post report this week alleged that Hegseth ordered defense officials to “kill everybody” traveling on a boat that was being surveilled by analysts on 2 September, the first strike of many carried out in recent months by the Trump administration. The White House said – without proof – that the people in the boats in the Caribbean, killed in Pentagon operations, were drug smugglers.

Who are the people of Venezuela that are our enemy?  Venezuela's population is predominantly of mixed European, Indigenous, and African descent, with the mestizo population making up the largest group. Religious demographics are dominated by Roman Catholicism (71%), followed by Protestantism (17%), with a notable percentage of the population identifying as irreligious. Irreligious: About 8% of the population is irreligious.  Other Religions: Other faiths, such as Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism, account for the remaining 3%.Today, there are an estimated under 6,000 Jews living in Venezuela, a significant decrease from a peak of 25,000 in the 1990s. Many have emigrated due to the country's ongoing socioeconomic and humanitarian crisis. The remaining community is predominantly concentrated in Caracas.  Santería accounts for 1% ( an Afro-Caribbean religion that blends Yoruba beliefs with Roman Catholicism).

House and Senate committees launch inquiries into 2nd strike on alleged drug boat.  We usually don't aim and kill people in the water struggling for their life.  The USA does not do things like that.  

Why were any Jews  living in Venezuela?  The Sephardim Jews were the first, arriving about 1850.  They came from the West Indian areas.  Sephardic Jews moved to Venezuela around 1850 primarily to escape antisemitism and find economic opportunities, drawn by the new country's relative stability and religious freedom after its independence from Spain. They were also part of a larger migration from the Dutch Caribbean, particularly Curaçao, and some came from Morocco seeking to establish a life away from difficult conditions in their homelands. Religious freedom: The new Venezuelan constitution of 1819 called for religious freedom, which was a major draw for Jews seeking to practice their faith openly without fear of persecution, especially since the Inquisition had been abolished in the former Spanish colonies.  Migration from Curaçao: A significant wave of migration came from Curaçao, a neighboring Dutch colony with a well-established Sephardic community. Some Jews had strong ties to Venezuela from the wars of independence, where they had provided support to Simón Bolívar and his army.  Seeking refuge: The move was also a response to challenges in their home countries, such as antisemitic riots in Coro, Venezuela, which pushed some Jews to seek refuge in Curaçao and then later consider other options like returning to Venezuela once conditions improved. Some Jews from Morocco also arrived around this time seeking better opportunities.

Yes! There had been anti-Semitic outbreaks at Coro in 1855 and again in 1902. Coro is the capital of the Falcón state in northwestern Venezuela, founded in 1527. It is a historic city, the first capital of Venezuela, and a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its unique mix of Spanish, Dutch, and local architectural styles and its status as one of South America's oldest and best-preserved colonial towns. The city is also known as "La Ciudad de los Vientos" (The City of Winds) and has a rich cultural tradition.   

By the 20th century, eastern European and German Jews entered the country until barred after WWII.  That means they had been on the Axis side of the war, evidently.  

Jews played a leading role in developing the country's trade and in modernizing the capital of Caracas. 

Some 90% of Jewish youth attend Jewish schools. The reason why could be of a more concerned Jewish education was needed, or from anti- semitism, and maybe both.    

Resource:

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/dhs-continues-direct-repatriations-venezuelan-nationals

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/house-senate-launch-inquiries-reported-second-strike-alleged-drug-boat-rcna246496

https://www.hadassah.org/story/the-jewish-community-of-venezuela

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Venezuela#:~:text=Since%20Hugo%20Ch%C3%A1vez%20took%20power,host%20a%20modest%20Jewish%20population.

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Cyprus: Where Jews Were Held-Prisoners- By British During WWII

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

Cyprus is an island in the Mediterranean Sea, of 3,572 sq miles.    It is the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean and is located south of Turkey; west of Syria; northwest of the Gaza Strip, Israel, and Lebanon; north of Egypt; and southeast of Greece. The country's capital and largest city is Nicosia. 

As a strategic location in the Eastern Mediterranean, it was subsequently occupied by several major powers, including the empires of the Assyrians, Egyptians and Persians, from whom the island was seized in 333 BC by Alexander the Great.

 In 115-117, the Jews of Cyprus, under Artemion, took part in the universal Jewish revolt against Rome and slew many of the general population that must have been Roman.  The revolt was bloodily suppressed, and Jews were then excluded from the island. Some, however, returned and inscriptions, evidence gives the existence of communities in the late Classical Period.  Benjamin of Tudela in 1165 found heretics there who observed the Sabbath on Sundays.  As a later date in the Middle Ages, there were communities as Nicosia, Paphos, and especially Famagusta.  Joseph Nasi was partly responsible for the conquest of Cyprus by the Turks in 1571. He was not made King, as he figured he would.  Jews were later deported from Safed (Israel) to help repopulate Cyprus, but there is little record of Jews there under Turkish rule.  At the end of the 19th century, under the British, several attempts were made to establish Jewish agricultural settlements in  Cyprus, but with limited success.                 

 The Ottoman Empire had sided with Germany.  August 3, 1914 - Germany declares war on France. August 4, 1914 - Germany invades Belgium, leading Britain to declare war on Germany.  Cyprus remained nominally a part of the Turkish Empire (Ottoman Empire) , however, and it was only formally annexed by Britain on November 5, 1914, following the declaration of war between Turkey and Great Britain. 

Cyprus was placed under the UK's administration based on the Cyprus Convention in 1878 and was formally annexed by the UK in 1914 at the beginning of WWI. The future of the island became a matter of disagreement between the two prominent ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots, who made up 77% of the population in 1960, and Turkish Cypriots, who made up 18% of the population.                                            

Cyprus was a center for the deportation of "illegal immigrants" from trying to get to Palestine in 1945 to 1949, 11,000 being interned there.  This was the period when Jews of Europe were trying to get to Palestine in any boat they could find, and the English would stop them and they would be dumped in Cyprus, thus the 11,000.                                                     

Then they were imprisoned.   25 Jews were still there by 1990.  The cemetery is at Margo near Nicosia, and another older one is at Larnaca, and hasn't been used for some time. 

                                            

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Seventy years later, Murray Greenfield of New York can still remember  the anger he felt when he was locked up with hundreds of Jewish Holocaust 

survivors in a British detention camp on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

“Your first reaction is you’re mad as hell,” 90-year-old Greenfield told The Associated Press from his home in Israel, recalling the feelings of many stuck behind double 

rows of barbed wire fences and under armed guard. “Why should we, the survivors, 

be behind barbed wire?”

Tens of thousands of Jews saw no future in postwar Europe and sought to start over again in Palestine, but the British were not about to let them in. Some 250 American sailors had volunteered to help Jews sail to Palestine aboard 10 surplus World War II vessels purchased with secret donations from Jewish Americans, he said.

                                                                          

After picking up passengers from the coasts of Italy and France, Greenfield’s ship — 

the Hatikva — was spotted as it sailed across the Mediterranean and British naval 

vessels towed it to Haifa port. Most of the crew and passengers were taken to nearby Cyprus — itself a British colony at the time — and placed in internment camps.

More than 50,000 Jews are believed to have been interned in Cyprus from 1945-1948 and an estimated 2,200 children were born in those camps.

In 2014 a "Garden of Peace" to commemorate the plight of thousands 

Jewish refugees imprisoned in British run camps on Cyprus after World 

War Two was opened in Xylotympou on the east coast of Cyprus.

                                                   

Biblically, Cyprus was called Kittim.  Kittim was a settlement in present-day Larnaca on the west coast of Cyprus, known in ancient times as Kition, or

 Citium. On this basis, the whole island became known as "Kittim" in Hebrew, 

including the Hebrew Bible (Is.23:1, etc). tt was often applied to all the Aegean islands and even to "the W[est] in general, but esp[ecially] the seafaring W[est]". Flavius Josephus records in his 

Antiquities of the Jews that The expression "isles of Kittim", found in the Book of Jeremiah 2:10 and Ezekiel 27:6, indicates that, some centuries 

prior to Josephus, this designation had already become a general 

descriptor for the Mediterranean islands. Sometimes this designation was further extended to apply to Romans, Macedonians or Seleucid Greeks. 

The Septuagint translates the occurrence of "Kittim" in the Book of Daniel 11:30 as ῥωμαῖοι. 1 Maccabees 1:1 states that "Alexander the Great the Macedonian" had come from the "land of Kittim". In the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Kittim 

are referred to as being "of Asshur". Eleazar Sukenik argued that this reference to Asshur should be understood to refer to the Seleucid Empire which controlled the territory of the former Assyrian Empire at that time,

 but his son Yigael Yadin interpreted this phrase as a veiled reference to the Romans.  In Modern Hebrew usage, as Kaphrisin.  Jews lived here 

before the Christian era.  During New Testament times, there were 

important communities at Salamis and Paphos.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.loc.gov/item/a22000924/  on Cyprus

https://www.theweek.co.uk/59782/how-did-the-first-world-war-start

https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-world-war-ii-new-york-city-international-news-events-d4bc0bff836143b59637b76b5afb33cd

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4467036

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Cyprus