Cuba's Fidel Castro criticises Iran over anti-Semitism

[Ken Burch]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11226158

Fidel Castro has criticised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what he called his anti-Semitic attitudes.

The former Cuban leader also warned that an escalating conflict between Iran and the West could lead to nuclear war.

_________________________________________

Just thought THIS would surprise a few folks here.

[jobycom]

1. Not really. He started out a revolutionary, not a dictator.

Lately he's been sounding more like the revolutionary again.

[Ken Burch]

2. I agree he started out as a revolutionary.

My point is, that a lot of people falsely pegged HIM as an antisemite because he dared to express sympathy with the people of Palestine and support their call for self-determination. He wasn't, and neither is much of anyone else who takes that position. Those that claim to support Palestinians but are actually just antisemities are invariably denounced, IMMEDIATELY, within the Palestine solidarity community and disassociated from it.

[jobycom]

3. Oh, I see what you meant. Good point.

I just thought it was a generalized "Everyone thinks Castro was a jerk" kind of comment.

[Dick Dastardly]

12. It wasnt because of expressing sympathy for Palestinians but it was because of his

being rabidly anti Israel and vast support to Palestinian terror groups giving them money,weapons, training, safe harbor and plenty of other aid. Also his close relations to despotic anti Israel regimes that were at war with Israel like Syria and Lybya. He provided men, training, material and even thousands of troops some of whom particpated in fighting Israel to those regimes.

I personally dont think he was an anti semite per se or driven by anti semitism. I think being the despotic butcher he was he was naturally drawn to other despotic butchers of all stripes which included Palestinian terror groups and those despotic Arab regimes seeking Israels destruction.

Those that claim to support Palestinians but are actually just antisemities are invariably denounced, IMMEDIATELY, within the Palestine solidarity community and disassociated from it.

That is absolutly false. Anti semitism is rife within the pro Palestinian community, and is grudgingly acknowledged by many groups to be a problem in their ranks. There are many groups that are even supportive of it like the MSA. While there are certainly those who do speak out against it, most of the time it is ignored, denied or grudgingly acknowledged and downplayed when it becomes an issue that cant be swept under the rug. If you really need it, I can give you infinite examples including admissions by those in the pro Palestinian community that admit there is a problem.

[Ken Burch]

14. Then again, you're the sort who will automatically call ANY Palestinian resistance "terrorism"

You don't accept that Palestinians have any right to stand up for themselves at all, and would automatically demand that they be crushed even if their methods were purely Gandhian. This has NEVER really been about "terrorism" with you, because to you "terrorism" is just a code phrase for "no fair, they aren't settling for statelessness at home or permanent exile".

[Violet_Crumble]

20. And what you said is also absolutely false...

That is absolutly false. Anti semitism is rife within the pro Palestinian community, and is grudgingly acknowledged by many groups to be a problem in their ranks. There are many groups that are even supportive of it like the MSA. While there are certainly those who do speak out against it, most of the time it is ignored, denied or grudgingly acknowledged and downplayed when it becomes an issue that cant be swept under the rug.

It's neither rife nor non-existant, so both of you are wrong. Yr attempt to paint many people who support the right of self-determination for Palestinians as either being antisemites or ignoring it is just as incorrect as someone trying to paint many pro-Israeli people of being bigoted against Arabs/Muslims or ignoring the hatred in their ranks.

[Ken Burch]

25. I didn't say it was "non-existent", for the record, or at least didn't MEAN to say that.

The problem is, people like Proteus use its incidence(which I still maintain most of the Palestine solidarity commitee, at least in the U.S. and the rest of the English-speaking world makes a diligent effort to combat and drive away)as an argument for why the injustices visited upon Palestinians have to be ignored.

What antisemitism there is among pro-Palestinians does need to be combatted. But the incidence of it does not invalidate the grievances that drive the Palestine solidarity community, any more than management would have been justified in refusing to negotiate with unions because the labor movement has always had problems with racism, sexism and homophobia, or that the patriarchy should have been allowed to ignore feminists because THAT movement has its own internal contradictions.

[Shaktimaan]

15. I don't agree with this.

I have seen plenty of anti-semitism within the pro-Palestinian community. Perhaps those who are just stereotypical anti-semites who use the Palestinian cause as an obvious veneer to voice their anti-jewish beliefs are denounced, by the people you happen to know. But the reality is that these things are seldom black and white. Someone can be genuinely supportive of the palestinian cause while still harboring anti-semitic views.

My point is, that a lot of people falsely pegged HIM as an antisemite because he dared to express sympathy with the people of Palestine and support their call for self-determination. He wasn't, and neither is much of anyone else who takes that position.

That's just a crazy statement. One thing has nothing to do with the other. Among those who support self-determination for Palestinians there is a large contingent of rabidly anti-semitic people. There'll always be people who express anti-semitic viewpoints without even realizing it. I've met tons of those people and they certainly don't consider themselves anti-semites. (But for the record neither does david duke.) But I'm not even talking about those folks. I mean really rabid hatred and fear of Jews.

You really don't think that exists? Pretty much the entire arab world voices hatred of Jews because of the Palestine thing yet oppress their own Palestinian population with wild abandon.

[Ken Burch]

26. Rabid hatred and fear of Jews needs to be combatted, as does any other form of prejudice

But the existence of bigotry in one community does not justify another community visiting injustice and oppression on it.
And there's no reason to believe that the Israeli government would accept Palestinian self-determination if only all Palestinians were utterly free of any form of prejudice. The Occupation was never about making Palestinians more progressive and tolerant; it was about keeping them powerless and denying their right to control their own destiny and live in freedom.

[oberliner]

4. Castro: Swastika has become Israel's banner

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro slammed Israel on Friday and compared its policies to those of Nazi Germany. He said Israel seems to have taken the swastika as its banner, and that it would "not hesitate" to send the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza to "crematoriums".

The former communist leader published an article in local press in which he said, "The State of Israel's hatred towards the Palestinians is such that it would not hesitate to send 1.5 million men, women and children to the crematoriums in which millions of Jews of all ages were killed."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3903809,00.html

[Ken Burch]

5. And in that, he's been joined by a fair amount of Jewish commentators

and even some Israeli ones.

I don't go that far myself, but it's legitimate to call Israel on growing repression when its used past repression of the groups it claims to represent as a justification for its current actions.

Having said that, you do welcome what he's said about Iran here, right?

[oberliner]

6. A fair amount of Jewish commentators have compared Israel to Nazi Germany?

Can you identify some Jewish commentators who have done this?

And to answer your question, I don't welcome his comments at all.

Do you welcome comments from David Duke speaking out on behalf of the Palestinian people?

[Ken Burch]

8. Read Tom Segev. He quoted Israelis making the comparison

throughout the history of the state(and it's an accusation I don't agree with).

You can't seriously compare Fidel Castro to David Duke.

What matters here is that Fidel condemned Iranian antisemitism.

[Dick Dastardly]

11. Segev is one commentator not a fair amount. as you claimed

Anything Segev says is of dubious value at best anyway.


I agree you cant seriously compare Fidel Castro to David Duke, Duke is not close to being in Castro's scumbag league. While I am sure we all agree Duke is a scumbag, he is not a mass murdering butcher like Castro certainly is. It may be that if Duke was given the opportunity as Castro has had that he would be even worse, but as it stands we thankfully have not had to find out.



BTW on an interesting side note Castro has Jewish ancestry in his family. The Castro name has sephardic Jewish origins and many of whom are decedents of those forced to convert to Catholicism during the inquisition. Many forced converts also became crypto Jews or Marranos. Many of these Marranos or Jews who would not convert were expelled or fled to the Ottoman empire and the New World.

Cuba has many decedents of Jews and prior to the revolution Cuba also had a large Jewish community. 90% of Cuba's Jews fled Cuba after the revolution but it was not due to any overt anti-semitism but because many were business owners and with Castro nationalizing private business and property it was obviously not a good place to be if you were an owner.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Cuba

http://www.jewishcuba.org/marranos.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Castro_family_(Sephardi_Jewish)

http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/is_castro_a_de_castros_jew/

[Ken Burch]

13. Castro is not a mass murderer

The killings during the Revolution were pretty much during the first couple of years, when he was fighting against the Miami exiles who wanted the old order back(and none of those exiles had any progressive ideals or positive wishes for the future of Cuba).

Fidel Castro's way is not MY way, or the way of much of anybody on the left...but it's absurd to call him a butcher. If the American Revolution had occurred in 1959, it would have had a comparable body count.

Castro, with his flaws and with his objectionable choices, is not someone much of anybody on the left today would emulate...but it's a mortal insult to him to compare him to David Duke. Castro wanted a better world. Duke just wanted a whiter one. Duke had NO positive goals, unlike Fidel Castro.

You have no reason to hate Fidel Castro with this kind of venom.

[shira]

19. LOL!!!!

There should be a law about cheerleaders of murdering butchers like Castro throwing stones from glass houses at Israel, etc...

[polly7]

36. You mean when he and thousands of others reclaimed Cuba's sugar,

enabled the illiterate to learn, cut down the rampant disease and malnutrition, gave farmers back their land, all the social programs that ended up saving all those lives? Every revolution causes death, as did his, as did every other in the world where people come to the point they either rise up or continue suffering and dying. Because Batista was originally in bed with the CIA, it was a horrible thing to overthrow him? I don't see it that way at all. Change comes from within, some are just pissed Cuba under Castro managed to survive. Imo.

[shira]

40. Castro killed more in Cuba than Israel has killed in over 60 years of war...

...and Castro is still denying Cubans their basic human rights.

Batista was a Rightwing dictator, but then again all the Palestinian leadership has been Rightwing, starting from the Grand Mufti who collaborated with Hitler.

In addition, living conditions for Palestinians in the OT got exponentially better once Israel took over in place of Egypt and Jordan.

Castro is to the left of Batista, Israel has been from the start to the left of Palestinian leadership.

===========

I'm trying to understand why you defend Castro but demonize Israel.

:shrug:

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

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[Shaktimaan]

29. reflexve anri-left position? you think?

Terms like left, center and right are very general labels that can't do much in capturing the nuances of anyone's actual political views. Israel is an excellent example, because so many American Jews are both supportive of Israel and also very left wing. I certainly am. And while I do not like the occupation I recognize that it is legal and for the time being necessary.

(when the Third World decided it couldn't support a SECOND round of Palestinian dispossession).

Yeah right. How many rounds of Palestinian dispossession have there been in the Arab world so far? Way more than two, and no one seems to care even a tiny bit.

They think that the Left was OBLIGATED to support Israel's insistence on occupying the West Bank and depriving the Arab majority in it of all the good land and control of the water supply.

Really? When has the left, (in Israel or the US) ever supported the settlement movement? When was that considered anything other than a far right wing thing? That said, the settlements were never about taking all the "good land." (What do you even mean by that? Good land.) The settlements were built on hills for the most part. The Palestinians live in the valleys where the soil is richer. And since the Palestinians were there for at least a few decades before the settlers, I don't see how the settlers could take their land. The Palestinians were there first, thus getting their choice of where to build their villages.

The water situation is pretty complex in itself. And while I admit that I don't know much about it, I do know that it's not a black and white affair.

And it was blatant emotional blackmail to equate(as the Israeli government did through that whole era)any international questioning of either of those policies with "antisemitism".

Bear in mind that a tremendous amount of the "anti-zionism" out there is really just anti-semitism with a thin veneer over it.

Why can't people who self-identify as "pro-Israel" just accept the fact that they were asking TOO MUCH of the world in demanding that it support the Occupation?

Imagine it's 1967 and you just won the six day war. Now you've got all of this land full of Arabs that you need to figure out what to do with. What do you see as a viable option (for at least the time being) aside from occupation?

[Ken Burch]

31. A few responses

1)There've been no comparable levels of emotional blackmail from Arab countries demanding that the Left support them in not integrating Palestinians. BTW, while I'd agree that Palestinians should have been let out of those camps, all those that were would STILL have been just as adamant about returning to their homes in Palestine. Being integrated in Arab countries would not have reconciled Palestinians to forced exile.

2)Hundreds of thousands of additional Palestinians were forced out of their homes in 1967. Those Palestinians had had nothing to do(and the Israeli government KNEW they'd have nothing to do)with the actions of the Arab countries in placing troops at Israel's borders. THEY didn't want to be in the crossfire of another war.

3)I didn't say the international Left had ever supported the settler movement. I said it was NEVER reasonable for the Israeli government(still allegedly "social democratic" in those days) TO support it. Ariel Sharon, who came up with the idea of massive settlements in the West Bankm, was right-wing, but he sold the idea to Golda Meir and she was fine with it. So the Israeli "center-left" at least acquiesced in the creation of the settlements(although that DID take off much more once Begin came in and was followed by his fellow Revisionist berserkers Shamir, Netanyahu, and of course Sharon himself when he first became prime minister, before "Arik" started pretending to be a moderate).

4)The Palestinians themselves could tell you how the settlers, who were always heavily armed(the Israeli government required them to be)and the IDF(many of whom were and are settlers themselves)took much of the best land in Palestine, and, through the control of the water supply(not an ambiguous point, since its immoral to deprive any population of water or restrict any population's supply of water as a means of subdoing that population)made the pathetic slivers of land Palestinians have been allowed to hold onto today utterly useless.

5)As to what I'd have done after the Six Day War:
I'd have kept a cordon of troops on the Green Line as a security measure, and otherwise left the Palestinians alone. I'd also have never brought in the settlers. Everyone KNEW that settling territory under Occupation would be inflammatory and cause more harm than good. The settlements haven't made Israel any more secure at all.

You can't make any case that it was ever legitimate for the Israeli government to demand that progressives in the rest of the world should have backed the settlements or the occupation. Israelis to this day bear the left a grudge about that...but really, why should they? The left, internationally, COULDN'T have supported the settlements or anything else Israel did to Palestinians and still REMAINED the left. To be on the left means to stand with the oppressed. And after 1967, it was the Palestinians who were unambiguously the oppressed side in THAT dispute. This doesn't mean their leaders were or are infallible(no leaders anywhere are)or that rank-and-file Palestinians themselves were or are saints(who the hell is, other than a bunch of dead Catholics? and half of them were basically insane). It does mean that it was never fair to act like the Palestinians were the bullies or the successors to the Nazis, and that it was never fair to equate any sympathy with their plight, as all Israeli governments of any stripe did until 1994, with "antisemitism".

And yes, there are people who've identified as "anti-Zionists" who are just old-style antisemites. But there have always been a lot of people who identified as SUPPORTERS of Zionism who were also antisemites(in this category would fall Arthur Balfour, David Lloyd-George, Harry Truman and probably, on an unconscious level, half the second Bush Administration). Fighting antisemitism, a cause that still needs supporters, has little, if anything, to do with "supporting Israel". And it's a cause that is much more likely to prevail through being joined with all other struggles for justice, emancipation, and liberation rather than through the insistence on the support of one nationalist project in isolation to all other concerns.

[Ken Burch]

28. Violet, check your pm's. Had some news to pass on...

n/t.

[Violet_Crumble]

21. Anything Segev says is of dubious value??

According to who? You?

[Ken Burch]

23. Dick Dastardly can't handle it when Israelis commit truth.

Segev's whole intellectual career has been based on challenging the "myths of '48".

And nothing Segev's written has harmed Israel.

[ConsAreLiars]

9. David Duke = Castro in your mind? ????

Wow, you've revealed a lot more than I think you realize. Far-lefty Castro denounces antisemitism and Far-righty Duke promotes it, but to you that makes them morally equivalent using your scales. You keep telling a bit more about yourself than you intend.

[shira]

17. Castro is personally responsible for the murder of 10's of thousands....Duke is not.

In fact, Israel's leadership of the past 80 years combined doesn't come close to Castro's butchery. Funny how Castro's fan club here believe they are morally fit to criticize Israel's policies...

:eyes:

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

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[shira]

32. Pure, unadulterated insanity. n/t

[Name removed]

34. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ConsAreLiars]

39. Seems me that asking you to provide any facts and me citing some documentation

that I think refutes what I suspect is the Big Lie you believed is not allowed here. Too bad. Facts matter, but they can be uncomfortable.

Apparently posts like "Pure, unadulterated insanity. n/t" fall well within DU's rules, but documented information gets deleted. And defending David Duke is OK if the "argument" is simply a fictional and un-sourced allegation like "Castro is personally responsible for the murder of 10's of thousands....Duke is not."

Bush and Obama and Blair and the various Israeli leaders have made Castro, even if that garbage was true, look like an angel in comparison. That you prefer supremacist Duke to Castro is no surprise, but characterizing your allegiances based on that alliance is, I guess, better left unsaid.

There are truths that cannot be said here, and I try to comply with "the those who rule's rules." And one is that you can call anyone anything with impunity and pointing out the obvious re: you is likely to get posters who regard all the people living in that region as equally human censored and then banned.

One is the rule that you can call anyone, anything with impunity, screaming "you're a Nazi" or the equivalent over a thousand times without even getting deleted, much less banned, you are still posting here, yelling insults and little else, while pointing out the obvious re: you is likely to get posters who regard all the people living in that region as equally human censored and then banned. Care to explain how you came to be so privileged and encouraged in your behavior? It's a question that many would like answered.

(edit in missing '"')

[shira]

42. What do you think about recent AI/HRW claims of Castro denying Cubans their basic human rights? n/t

[Name removed]

43. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[shira]

44. No, I mean what do you think of Castro in light of his denying Cubans basic human rights? n/t

[ConsAreLiars]

45. Apparently stating that AI and HRW are credible in all they report about every country they cover

was too controversial and got deleted. Or maybe citing some numbers was the problem. Who knows?

It seems power corrupts some, but not others. I applaud Castro and Cuba for decriminalizing homosexuality 5 years before the US Supreme Court overturned a Texas case and 19 years before the Supreme Court ruled all such state laws were unconstitutional. To its credit, an Israeli Court ruled its anti-gay laws were unenforcible before either, although it was 1988 before they were stricken from the books.

I think Cuba does a good job in providing nutritional basics and health care to its people. The outcome is on a par with the US statistics, in everything from infant mortality to life expectancy, although their resources a fraction of those expended by the US.

I also think that sending doctors to other lands is more consistent with respect for human rights than, well, what other nations mentioned here do, although accurately describing what such nations do might be verboten.

I think the people of Cuba have far more human rights than the people of the West Bank or Gaza are allowed by the military power that dominates both regions.

(edit to make header fit the character limits)

[shira]

46. Why are you having so much trouble condemning Castro for the human rights situation in Cuba?

Is protecting Castro more important than the human rights of millions of Cuba's citizens?

[oberliner]

33. Where did I write that I prefer Duke to Castro?

A few posts ago you wrote that I believed that Duke = Castro. I have written nothing on the subject since you made that comment. Yet now you are claiming that I prefer Duke to Castro.

I loathe David Duke (as I'm sure everyone here does) - which is why I assume no one would welcome his comments with respect to the plight of the Palestinian people.

He is a sort of archetypal example of someone who speaks out regularly against Israel and in support of the Palestinian cause, but whose remarks are not welcome by others who share those particular views (but not his other ones).

But back to my initial question to you:

How did you make the leap from claiming I was equating Fidel Castro with David Duke to claiming that I prefer David Duke to Fidel Castro?

It's especially odd that you did that with no intervening post from me on the topic.

[Name removed]

35. Deleted sub-thread

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[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

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[Shaktimaan]

41. In much the same way...

that you could point to incidents like Deir Yassin as occurring during a civil war where the Jews were fighting for the right to live in their homeland. Deir Yassin happened during the course of breaking the siege of Jerusalem, when no supplies could enter the city for weeks and its inhabitants were facing dire consequences.

[timo]

7. in another

article by same invited to cuba American journalist it seems he also admitted that advising the soviets to bomb the U.S. "wasnt worth it at all" and that the "cuban economic model doesnt even work for cuba anymore"

[ConsAreLiars]

10. A few quotes from Fidel via that article:

Mr Castro's "body may be frail, but his mind is acute, his energy level is high", wrote Goldberg on his blog on The Atlantic website.

Over the course of a five-hour discussion, Mr Castro "repeatedly returned to his excoriation of anti-Semitism", and criticised Mr Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust.

"The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust," the former president said.

Mr Castro said that Iran could further the cause of peace by "acknowledging the 'unique' history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence", Mr Goldberg wrote.

[shira]

18. Even a broken clock....... n/t

[LeftishBrit]

16. Glad to hear that...

though I doubt that Ahmadinejad will listen to Castro any more than to anyone else.

[Ken Burch]

24. ...true, if for no other reason than that Fidel can grow a decent beard

and Ahmadinejad never could.

[azurnoir]

38. Castro’s Yom Kippur manifesto

EACH AUTUMN, at the satellite European Social Forum, atheist Trotskyites wave Hizbullah banners screaming Allahu Akbar, while planning flotillas and “antiwar” slogans rehearsed for Cast Lead and other such operations. In a rain-swept stadium in Mar del Plata, Argentina, I sat among thousands of soaked spectators at the Alternative Summit of the Americas, tetchy after almost two hours of Hugo Chavez’s peroration.

The consummate theatrocrat, sensing the mood, withdrew his mobile phone. Placing it to his ear, his voice was shaking to crescendo into the microphone: “Is it? Can it be? It is! Fidel! The adoring multitude rose in unison, roaring “Fidel! Fidel!,” succumbing to another hour of Chavez oratory in the rain.

Visiting Havana during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, I protested anti- Israeli cartoons in the official daily, Granma, portraying IDF soldiers as pigs plastered with Stars of David. A week later, Fidel asked to visit Havana’s government-supported Patronato Jewish Center, whereupon I was amazed to learn that the cartoons were suspended. Now, the 84-year-old revolutionary phoenix, risen from the ashes, has given us a new spin on al het.

The Wiesenthal Center, in a laudatory response, urged Castro to make good on his words by influencing “his self-proclaimed disciple, Hugo Chavez, to criminalize anti- Semitism in Venezuela.”

We proposed that Castro “validate his warnings by co-opting Chavez into pressing his ally, Ahmadinejad, to end his Holocaust denial, his threats against Israel and his nuclear weaponization.”

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=187890

one "almost" gets the feeling for some here it would have been preferable if Castro has agreed with Ahmadinejad