Posted By Humberto Fontova On June 24, 2010 @ 12:00 am In FrontPage |
"The hatred felt by the state of Israel against the Palestinians is such
that they would not hesitate to send the one-and-a-half million men,
women and children of that country to the crematoria where millions of
Jews of all ages were exterminated by the Nazis," wrote Fidel Castro
recently in the Cuban press. "It would seem that the Fuhrer's swastika
is today, Israel's banner."
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor was quick to respond:
"With these outrageous comments, Fidel Castro shames his old-time
companions and the ideals he always pretended to serve. Che Guevara must
be spinning in his grave."
Mr. Palmor was kind enough to communicate with me and explain that his
comment regarding Che Guevara was meant to be ironic — a jab at Fidel
Castro. The world needs many more such foreign ministry officials. But
for anyone who got the impression that Che Guevara would have quibbled
with Castro's sentiments, here's some history:
"Condemn me, it doesn't matter," declared Fidel Castro during the 1953
trial for his failed Moncada putsch. "History will absolve me."
"You may pronounce me guilty," declared Adolf Hitler during the 1924
trial for his failed Rathaus putsch. "But the eternal court of history
will absolve me."
Coincidence? Perhaps. But many of Fidel Castro's high school and college
classmates recall that he often carried around a well-thumbed copy of
Mein Kampf. In fact, his title "Lider Maximo" perfectly corresponds to
the German term Fuhrer, except Castro accentuated it even more with the
"maximum" addition.
A few years after his trial and pardon by Cuban dictator, Fulgencio
Batista, Castro's terrorist movement adopted the red, black and white of
the Nazi flag as its own colors. [1] Another coincidence? Perhaps.
In 1966, Havana hosted the Tri-Continental Conference, a worldwide
convention for guerrillas and terrorists. Here Castro vowed to aid any
group anywhere who claimed to be fighting "colonialism, neocolonialism,
and imperialism."
"The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he
moves," read Che Guevara's message to the Tricontinental Conference.
Che, himself, was whimpering and licking his wounds in Tanzania at the
time after his comical stomping [2] in the Congo. "We will bring the war
to the imperialist enemies' very home, to his places of work and
recreation. Thus we'll destroy him," the message continued.
We must keep our hatred against them alive and fan it to paroxysms!
These hyenas are fit only for extermination. Hatred is the central
element of our struggle!..Hatred that is intransigent…Hatred so violent
that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him
a violent and cold-blooded killing machine. We reject any peaceful
approach. Violence is inevitable. To establish Socialism, rivers of
blood must flow!
In attendance and, presumably, joining in the uproarious ovation that
greeted Guevara's message was Abu Ammar, later known as Yasir Arafat,
and Ilich Ramirez Sanchez ("Carlos the Jackal").
Among other initiatives at the Tricontinental Conference, Cuba set up
massive terrorist training camps in western Cuba under the direction of
KGB Col. Vadim Kotchergine. These camps were soon filled with guerrillas
and terrorists including individuals from Al Fatah, the Sandinistas, El
Salvador's FMLF, the Tupamaros, and the Weather Underground. With his
contacts well in place, in 1968 Castro sent military instructors into
Palestinian bases in Jordan to train Palestinian Fedayeen. The Egyptian
newspaper Ahar Sa'ah reported on September 13, 1978 that 500 Palestinian
fighters were training in Cuba.
The Yom Kippur War really got Castro's marital juices flowing. So, he
sent 500 of his commanders to man 500 Soviet T-55 tanks and buttress the
Syrian soldiers poised to blitzkrieg into Israel through the Golan
Heights. Within a week of its surprise blitzkrieg into Israel, the
Syrian regime was scrambling to evacuate from its own capital. An
Israeli force, just a tiny fraction of the Syrian/Cuban forces,
counterattacked, and blasted Castro's tanks into a smoldering scrap pile
and rolled over them like a speed bump on the way to Damascus.
The following year, Castro personally decorated Yasir Arafat with Cuba's
highest honor, the Bay of Pigs Medal. "Comrade Fidel said that the
Palestinian Revolution can count on the full support and aid of the
Cuban Revolution," exulted Arafat. "We are not alone."
Scholar Walter Laquer summed up the situation in his work, The Age of
Terrorism. "Multinational terrorism reached a first climax in the early
1970s. It involved close co-operation between small terrorist groups in
many countries with the Libyans, Algerians, Syrians, North Koreans and
Cubans acting as the paymasters and suppliers of weapons and equipment."
And lest we forget, the famous UN resolution branding "zionism as
racism" was co-sponsored by Cuba. At the September 2001 United Nations
"World Conference against Racism" in Durban, South Africa, Castro
denounced Israel's "ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people."
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the cartoons [3] that run
in Castro's media say it best. [4]
In 1974, the Palestinian Liberation Organization opened their first
Latin American embassy in none other than Havana, Cuba. President Fidel
Castro added a morbid twist to the event: The site for this embassy was
a Jewish community center that flourished during the reign of Batista,
who never saw fit to lay a finger on anyone's property. However,
President Castro snatched it from its Jewish owners at Soviet gunpoint.
The title transfer was whisked through in typical Castroite/Stalinist
manner — resist and we shoot you.
During the mid 60s, Castro's police and military herded tens of
thousands of Cuban youths (long-haired rock & rollers, gays and
religious people) into forced labor camps at Soviet bayonet point. No
pesky trials determined this. Their collective crime was "delinquency."
Che Guevara, the "Brains of The Cuban Revolution" (as Time magazine
crowned him in a 1960 cover story) decreed this system of forced labor
in 1960 for any and all who proved insufficiently reverential to his
revolution's mandates. "We send to Guanahacabibes, people who have
committed crimes against revolutionary norms," explained Guevara. "It is
hard labor. The working conditions are harsh."
Alas, Che Guevara's definition of "revolutionary norms" proved pretty
sweeping. And the regime co-founded by this icon of freedom commenced to
jail political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin's regime and
murder them at a higher rate than pre-war Hitler's. Above the barbed
wire and just below the machine guns on the watchtowers, these prisoners
saw a huge sign as they entered. It read: "Work Will Make Men of You."
The greeting at Auschwitz's entrance read, "Work Will Make You Free."
Coincidence? Perhaps.
For some reason, 90 percent of Cuba's Jews saw fit to flee Castro's
Cuba, costing them most of their earthly belongings. That's a much, much
higher percentage than fled Czarist Russia. But Castro's pogroms didn't
include racial epithets, you see. Castro's Russian-armed "interventors"
pillaged Cuban Jews' savings and property—but quite professionally and
with nary a bullwhip or racial insult. So, apparently this looting
disqualifies as a pogrom.
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