Nobel Peace Prize Winner Supports Israel’s Genocide & Trump’s War on Venezuela
By Ben Norton – Oct 13, 2025
Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado is a far-right Venezuelan coup-plotter funded by the US government. She supports Israel as it commits genocide and is central to Trump’s regime-change war against President Maduro.
The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to María Corina Machado, a far-right coup leader in Venezuela who has been funded by the US government for decades.
Machado has openly called for the US military to invade Venezuela, in order to overthrow the revolutionary Chavista government of President Nicolás Maduro.
She is at the heart of the war that Donald Trump has waged on Venezuela. Machado has endorsed the US military’s extrajudicial executions of Venezuelans in boats in international waters, echoing the Trump administration’s unsubstantiated, evidence-free claims that it is supposedly killing “drug traffickers”.
Machado also supports the illegal, unilateral US sanctions that have killed hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
Likewise, Machado has expressed staunch support for Israel as it carried out genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Nobel Peace Prize for war criminals
The fact that a pro-war, far-right coup-plotter like Machado was given a Nobel Peace Prize demonstrates how extremely hypocritical the award is.
This hypocrisy is far from new.
US imperial planner Henry Kissinger was given a so-called Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, despite the fact that he was one of the worst war criminals in modern history, with the blood of millions of victims on his hands, in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Chile, and beyond.
Former US President Barack Obama also won a so-called Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. His administration then went on to wage nonstop war. Obama bombed seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.
This is by no means the first time that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has been hypocritical. But giving the prize to María Corina Machado is especially outrageous, because it comes precisely at a moment when, one, she has been supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza; and two, she is working with Donald Trump to wage war and use violence to try to overthrow Venezuela’s government.
María Corina Machado supports Israel’s genocidal regime
Machado has openly praised Israel as it has carried out a genocide against the Palestinian people.
A United Nations commission led by renowned experts on international humanitarian law stated clearly that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
In January 2025, Machado held a call with Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar. She expressed her “gratitude to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel”, adding that she “immensely values the support of the government of Israel”.
The genocidal Israeli regime has refused to recognize the government of Venezuela’s constitutional, internationally recognized President Nicolás Maduro, and has instead recognized US-backed coup leader Edmundo González, who lives in Spain and is a proxy for Machado.
In April 2024, Israel attacked Iran in an act of aggression, and Tehran hit back in self-defense. Machado immediately took to Twitter to condemn Iran. She emphasized her “solidarity with the State of Israel amid the direct aggression by the Iranian regime”.
Machado denounced the supposed “risk represented by the alliance of Iran with the Venezuelan regime”, and she vowed that, if the US can successfully put her in power in Caracas, Machado would form a close alliance with the US and Israel against Iran and the Palestinian people.
In 2023, Machado again tweeted support for Israel, expressing hope that it has a “long and happy existence”, adding that the far-right Venezuelan opposition and the genocidal Israeli regime share common “values”.
One of the clearest illustrations of Machado’s extremist politics came in 2018, when she published an open letter to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asking the genocidal leader to help her overthrow Venezuelan President Maduro.
Machado requested that Israel, Argentina’s right-wing government, and other countries in the “international community” give the Venezuelan opposition “the necessary support to generate a regime change” against Maduro.
In the letter, Machado cited “the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect”, which was used by the United States to justify its 2011 war on Libya. That US-led NATO war destroyed the central government of what had once been a peaceful, stable, and prosperous oil-rich North African country and turned it into a lawless failed state with open-air slave markets.
The 2018 open letter in which María Corina Machado asked Israel and Argentina to intervene in Venezuela to bring about “regime change”
Today, Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity that his regime has committed in Gaza.
Venezuela does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel. They were repeatedly broken by revolutionary former President Hugo Chávez and his successor Maduro, both of whom have been strong supporters of the Palestinian people and have condemned Israel for committing genocide.
An image circulated by the Venezuelan government with President Nicolás Maduro showing support for Palestine
María Corina Machado is at the center of Donald Trump’s regime-change war on Venezuela
Giving the so-called Nobel Peace Prize for María Corina Machado is even more outrageous considering that she is at the heart of a war that the US government is currently waging against Venezuela.
Donald Trump has launched multiple military attacks, killing dozens of Venezuelans without charge or trial. In flagrant violation of international law, the US military has repeatedly bombed boats surrounding Venezuela in international waters, claiming without any evidence that they were full of people trafficking “drugs”.
Machado has supported Trump’s attacks on her country, including his extrajudicial executions of Venezuelans without charge or trial.
The Financial Times interviewed Machado, and she admitted that she is working with the US government to try to overthrow Venezuela’s President Maduro.
The FT reported that the “deployment of US warships to the southern Caribbean has encouraged thousands of Venezuelans to join an underground movement preparing to bring down President Nicolás Maduro”.
The Trump administration has sent eight warships and thousands of troops to the Caribbean, the FT reported, along with 10 F-35 jets in Puerto Rico. The newspaper noted that this is the largest US military buildup in the region since the 1994 US invasion of Haiti.
“Top figures in the Venezuelan opposition say they have been in touch with senior Trump administration officials to discuss how to choreograph Maduro’s downfall”, the FT wrote.
The newspaper quoted Machado, who threatened, “This set of internal and external forces have created the conditions for Maduro and his regime to increasingly understand that their time is up and that their best option is to leave power now”.
What does Machado hope to do if the US manages to put her in power?
The far-right opposition leader admitted in another interview with the Financial Times that she wants to privatize Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves.
“We have to privatise and open up the markets, beginning with the energy sector”, Machado told the FT in 2023.
After calling to sell off Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA, she stressed that the South American nation’s enormous oil and gas reserves, along with its lucrative minerals, “will all be open to private investment”.
The newspaper acknowledged in passing that Machado has a “radical reputation” in Venezuela. This is putting it mildly. Machado is the leader of the far-right extremist wing of Venezuela’s opposition. It is explicitly violent and anti-democratic, and notoriously corrupt.
Trump said he wants to “take over” Venezuela and exploit its oil
During Trump’s first term as US president, he launched another coup attempt in Venezuela.
In 2019, Washington appointed the unelected right-wing opposition figure Juan Guaidó as the so-called “interim president” of Venezuela, despite the fact that he had never participated in a presidential election.
The US and its European allies then proceeded to freeze and steal billions of dollars worth of Venezuelan government assets, which were used to fund the coup attempt — and enrich leading figures from the corrupt Venezuelan opposition.
Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó in the White House with US President Donald Trump in February 2020
Trump’s coup attempt clearly failed during his first term. At a Republican Party rally in 2023, he complained that the US empire had been very close to “taking over” Venezuela and pillaging his oil. He fumed:
Venezuela. How about we’re buying oil from Venezuela? When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over. We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right next door.
In fact, right after the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that it had given its so-called peace prize to Machado, Trump held a press conference in the White House.
There, Trump revealed that Machado had called him on the phone to thank him for helping her try to overthrow Maduro.
Trump boasted that he has been supporting Venezuela’s far-right opposition. These were his remarks:
The person who actually got the Nobel Prize called today [on October 10], called me, and said, “I’m accepting this in honor of you because you really deserved it”.
A very nice thing to do. I didn’t say, “Then give it to me”, though. I think she might have. She was very nice.
And I’ve been, you know, I’ve been helping her along the way. They need a lot of help in Venezuela.
Nobel ‘War’ Prize: Machado Awarded for Advocating US, Israeli Attack on Venezuela
María Corina Machado supports illegal US sanctions that have killed hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans
Machado has also advocated for years for the United States to impose more and more sanctions on Venezuela, which violate international law.
These unilateral coercive measures have killed hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
In 2017, when Trump levied heavy sanctions on Venezuela, Machado praised them, writing happily in an approving tweet, “These sanctions are surgical and effective; with a strong financial, commercial, and political impact”.
Then, in 2018, Machado insisted that “the regime will only leave with force”. She demanded “International force: more lawsuits and sanctions”.
International experts have pointed out that the illegal US sanctions on Venezuela are responsible for at least tens of thousands of deaths, and likely hundreds of thousands.
Renowned economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs calculated that US sanctions caused more than 40,000 deaths in Venezuela in just one year, from 2017 to 2018.
Their findings were published in a 2019 study at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, DC.
“The sanctions have reduced the availability of food and medicine, and increased disease and mortality”, they wrote.
Weisbrot and Sachs also warned that, “if the sanctions continued, they will almost certainly result in tens of thousands more avoidable deaths”.
The unilateral coercive measures have indeed continued since then, meaning it is likely that hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan civilians have been killed by these illegal US sanctions.
This was implied by another peer-reviewed scientific study, published in 2025 in the world’s leading medical journal, The Lancet.
Unilateral economic sanctions have caused an average of 564,000 excess deaths every single year for the past five decades, the latter study found.
The majority of the deaths from sanctions have been children under the age of five, concluded economists Mark Weisbrot, Francisco Rodríguez, and Silvio Rendón.
The United States is responsible for imposing the majority of unilateral sanctions, in violation of international law.
This means that Nobel “Peace” Prize laureate María Corina Machado has supported illegal coercive measures that have killed hundreds of thousands of her countrymen, including many children.
Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, and other US politicians lobbied Norwegian Nobel Committee for María Corina Machado
US government officials played a key role in lobbying the Norwegian Nobel Committee to give its so-called peace prize to the Venezuelan coup leader.
On August 26, 2024, several right-wing members of the US Congress sent the committee a letter (PDF).
“We write to you in support of the nomination of María Corina Machado for the Nobel Peace Prize”, they said.
The signatories were all Republicans. They included Florida Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio and House Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart, María Elvira Salazar, Michael “Mike” Waltz, Neal Dunn, and Carlos A. Gimenez, along with the New York Representative Byron Donalds.
The 2024 letter sent by Republican US Congress members lobbying the Norwegian Nobel Committee to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan coup leader María Corina Machado
Today, Rubio is the second-most powerful person in the US government after Trump. He is both secretary of state and national security advisor. (Rubio is the second person in US history to simultaneously hold both positions, after war criminal and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Henry Kissinger.)
Mike Waltz previously served as Trump’s national security advisor, and now is US ambassador to the UN.
These are the US government officials who have been working closely with Machado and Venezuela’s extreme, far-right opposition to try to violently overthrow President Maduro.
By giving Machado its “peace” prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee demonstrated that it is willing to act as a tool of US empire, cynically exploiting the discourse of “peace” in order to advocate for more war.
Ben Norton
Benjamin Norton is the founder and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista, where he does original reporting in both English and Spanish. Benjamin has reported from numerous countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and more. His journalistic work has been published in dozens of media outlets, and he has done interviews on Sky News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, El Financiero Bloomberg, Al Mayadeen teleSUR, RT, TRT World, CGTN, Press TV, HispanTV, Sin Censura, and various TV channels in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Benjamin writes a regular column for Al Mayadeen (in English and Spanish). He was formerly a reporter with the investigative journalism website The Grayzone, and previously produced the political podcast and video show Moderate Rebels. His personal website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
