The national colors of Palestine – red, black, white and green – took to the flagpost outside Venezuela's National Assembly on Thursday, replacing Venezuela's yellow, blue and red, with eight stars in a show of support for the people of Gaza during Israel's military offensive.
The first vice president of the legislature, Deputy Saúl Ortega, said the flag flying was intended to demonstrate "to the Venezuelan people and the world our militant solidarity with the brother Palestinian people who are being massacred by the criminal fire of the Zionist army." Ortega said Israeli President, Shimon Perez and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were responsible for the killing and had stained their hands with the blood of dead Palestinians. Israel was carrying out its offensive with the "complicity" of the United States government, he claimed.
President Hugo Chávez has condemned Israel's military action in the roundest terms, stating that Perez and Olmert would be on trial before an international criminal court if "there were any shame in the world." Earlier this week, Chávez ordered that Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Cohen leave the country.
Ortega also played the genocide card. "This is an economic and exterminatory war aimed at eliminating the Palestinian people and their historic legacy, so that they don't become stronger and disappear," he claimed. Isabel Frangies, representative of the Palestinian community in Venezuela, was granted the right to address the chamber during the debate at the Assembly. Palestine, she said, had been suffering from aggression and the usurpation of its territory for 70 years. "All human rights have been violated there, it's an excess that passes all limits of reason and nobody's raised a voice to say enough," she said.
It was not known whether an invitation had been extended to the Israeli embassy for somebody there to speak in response.
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