Interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez publicly praised Israel after an Israeli aid delegation arrived in the country to assist local authorities following last week’s devastating earthquakes.
“I would like to report that yesterday we received a highly professional and skilled group from Israel, which arrived following contact made through the Jewish community in Venezuela," Rodiíguez said at a press conference Thursday night.
“I would like to thank Rabbi Cohen," she added, referring to Venezuela’s Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Cohen, “for all the coordination that allowed us to establish contact with the Israeli government and bring here, at this moment, a team of experts that has begun implementing the protocol for opening the infrastructure rehabilitation process and assessing the condition of the infrastructure."
Noting that the Israeli team has experts capable of determining whether people are still alive in a given location or whether bodies need to be recovered before any other reconstruction work can begin, Rodriguez continued, “I thank them for that. They have already held meetings with the authorities in Venezuela. This is a team with a very high level of training and professionalism, and I hope we can continue moving forward at this stage in the field of rehabilitation."
Israel’s Foreign Ministry thanked Rodriguez on Friday, writing in a post to social media, “Thank you to Venezuela’s Interim President, Delcy Rodríguez, for recognizing the efforts of the Israeli search and rescue team that came to assist following the earthquakes."
Rodriguez’s acknowledgement of Israel comes several months after Bloomberg reported that Venezuela sent Israel its first shipment of crude oil since mid-2020. Bloomberg noted in the February report that the shipment is one of the signs of Venezuela’s ongoing policy shift following the era of former President Nicolas Maduro who had been captured by the US.
Israel and Venezuela have had no diplomatic relations since then-President Hugo Chavez cut ties with the Jewish state in early 2009 in protest over Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza. Chavez also deepened ties with Iran and this policy continued under Maduro.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)