American Communist Party Leader Claims Venezuelan Militants Trained Alongside Palestinian Terrorists Will Kidnap Americans
Christopher Helali warns Venezuelan militants who trained with Palestinian terrorists will target Americans days before group co-founded by convicted PFLP bomber hosts Venezuela-Palestine event
Following the January 3 U.S. military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a coordinated series of threats and organizing efforts emerged from overlapping self-proclaimed “anti-imperialist” networks in the United States. Christopher Helali, International Chairman of the American Communist Party, threatened that Americans would face kidnappings and casualties from militants in Venezuela trained by the U.S.-designated terror groups, such as The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Days later, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)—an organization co-founded by a convicted PFLP bomber Rasmea Odeh—announced it would host a January 17 webinar titled "From Venezuela to Palestine" featuring Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza, an expelled Venezuelan diplomat whose media outlet also issued threats against Americans.
Additional speakers include Suzanne Adely, President of the National Lawyers Guild and USPCN member, and Meredith Aby, co-founder of the Anti-War Action Network (AWAN), which has documented connections to the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). An FRSO delegation was recognized by President Maduro in Venezuela in December 2025.
The developments reveal overlapping networks connecting communist organizations, Palestinian activism groups, and Venezuelan government supporters during a critical two-week period.
The Helali Interview: PFLP-Trained Terrorists and American Casualties
On January 4, 2026, one day after Operation Absolute Resolve, Helali appeared on Jackson Hinkle’s “Legitimate Targets” podcast, where he warned that “thousands of trained militants” would resist U.S. forces in Venezuela. According to a MEMRI transcript, Helali specifically stated that “Venezuelans and Americans would be targeted in kidnappings” and that American “body bags” would start coming home.
Helali detailed the composition of these forces, stating they include “the ELN, former FARC rebels, and thousands of other militants who have trained with the PFLP, Abu Nidal, the Libyans, and the Soviet Union.”
Helali, who currently resides in Moscow, has traveled extensively to meet with designated terrorist organizations, including visits to Beirut, Qatar, and Yemen in 2025 for meetings with Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.
USPCN: Founded by Convicted PFLP Terrorist
The organization Helali referenced—the PFLP—has a direct connection to the group now organizing Venezuela solidarity events in the United States. USPCN was co-founded by Rasmea Odeh, a PFLP member convicted in 1970 for masterminding a February 21, 1969 bombing of a Jerusalem supermarket that killed two Israeli college students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. Odeh also participated in an attempted bombing of the British Consulate.
After serving 10 years in Israeli prison, Odeh immigrated to the United States and became a prominent community organizer in Chicago, serving as Associate Director of the Arab American Action Network. She concealed her terrorism conviction and PFLP membership on immigration and naturalization forms. In 2014, she was convicted of immigration fraud in U.S. federal court and deported to Jordan in 2017.
USPCN, the organization Odeh helped establish in 2006, has continued her legacy of supporting violent “resistance.” Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack, USPCN released a statement calling the attack a “legitimate response” to Israeli policies. The organization also claims credit for founding National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) in 2010, considered among the leading anti-Israel college activist groups in the United States.
The Speaker’s Threats: Orinoco Tribune’s Warning
Rodríguez-Espinoza, the scheduled January 17 speaker from Venezuela, is also the founder and editor of Orinoco Tribune, a Venezuelan government-aligned media outlet that issued its own threat against Americans. On January 10, six days after Helali’s interview and one week before the scheduled USPCN event, Orinoco Tribune posted on X: “This time, we will be ready” and “¡No pasarán los gringos de mier_da!” (The f***ing gringos will not pass).
Orinoco Tribune’s About Us page explicitly identifies the outlet as part of an anti-American axis, stating it will “reject” mainstream media approaches to “Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Russia, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), People’s Republic of China, and many other countries which have not bowed to the US global dictatorship.” The outlet describes itself as promoting an explicitly “anti-imperialist perspective.”
Timeline of Aligned Messaging
The sequence of events reveals a notable pattern of aligned messaging across overlapping networks. On January 3, U.S. forces captured Maduro. Within 24 hours, Helali threatened kidnappings and casualties from PFLP-trained militants. On January 6, the U.S. Embassy issued a security alert urging Americans to leave Venezuela, citing risks including "wrongful detention, torture, terrorism, kidnapping."
On January 10, Orinoco Tribune posted its "we will be ready" threat. Seven days later, the PFLP-linked USPCN is scheduled to host an event featuring the Orinoco Tribune founder, explicitly connecting the Venezuela crisis to pro-Palestinian activism.
the intersectionality of modernity leaves me pondering the Orinoco as a fan of its plants and fish and fauna and recall the American bar association going full palestinianist injustice embracing anti-civilizationalist degeneracy to contemplate a human who grew up in that blissful natural environment embracing the deranged far away falsity of the phony phallustinians becoming the epitome of a Latin loser to promote the imperialist islamism via leftist propagandizing🤔