Fidel Castro Denounces Palestinian ‘Holocaust’

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“I think that a new, repugnant form of fascism is emerging with notable strength…The Nazi genocide of Jews outraged all the earth’s peoples. Why does this (Israeli) government believe that the world will be insensitive to the macabre genocide which today is being perpetuated against the Palestinian people?” (Fidel Castro, August, 5, 2014)

“Who cares, what that senile ZOMBIE Castro says!” strikes me as a reasonable retort from many readers.

“Unfortunately,” I’m forced to answer. “Many otherwise reasonable care very much what Fidel Castro says.” Take Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu:

“The remarks attributed to Castro demonstrate his deep understanding of the history of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.” (Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu, Sept. 24, 2010.)

Take former Israeli President Shimon Peres: “I thank you (Fidel Castro) from the bottom of my heart. I must confess that your remarks were, in my opinion, unexpected and rife with unique intellectual depth. Your words presented a surprising bridge between a harsh reality and a new horizon. You tried to sail to bigger seas, to show that a small geographical size doesn’t have to reflect human smallness.” (Israeli President Shimon Peres, Sept. 24, 2010.)

At the time Fidel Castro had granted The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg an exclusive interview and the smitten Israeli leaders were reacting to the following remarks by the Stalinist dictator:

“I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews….I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything….The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust….Yes, without a doubt (Israel has a right to exist as modern state.)”

Cuba-watchers rolled their eyes and groaned at that latest of Castro’s frequent scams, but the media (naturally) ate it up, savoring every syllable. Astoundingly so did normally shrewd Israeli leaders. Wishful thinking often fogs the brain. And who can blame friendless Israel for wishing she had a new friend –and and one carrying enormous cachet among her traditional enemies?

So why did Castro—who sent troops to fight try an “erase” Israel during the Yom Kippur war, and who co-sponsored the infamous 1975 UN resolution branding “Zionism as Racism”– suddenly go Likudnik?

“For now we use a lot of sleight of hand and smiles with everybody. There will be plenty of time later to crush all the cockroaches together.” This admonition from Fidel Castro to a revolutionary colleague in 1954 gives a clue to his diplomacy. Cuba-watchers also know that Castro plumbs the workings of the U.S. legislature better than most home-grown lobbyists and well knows the main power brokers. Indeed Cuban intelligence defectors report that promptly upon publication in 1979, David Halberstam’s book “The Powers That Be,” detailing the inner workings and identities of Washington D.C’s power brokers, became Castro’s favorite book.

In September 2010 it was time to use that sleight-of-hand on Israel-backers. Jeffrey Goldberg’s visit with Castro, you see, just happened to coincide with a pending vote by the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Relations (HCFR) on further opening U.S. travel to Cuba. Goldberg’s visit to Cuba, just happened to be arranged by The Council on Foreign Relations Julia Sweig, identified as a “Cuban agent of influence” by America’s top Cuban spycatcher Lieut. Col. Chris Simmons, recently retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Cuba’s tourist industry is majority-owned by Castro’s military and secret police. As used to be common knowledge during the Cold War, secret police and military (the only outfits with guns in such nations) maintain Communist regimes in power.

So the HCFR vote could open the floodgates of American tourist dollars to the Stalinist regime’s most zealous (and heavily armed) guardians–and at a time when the financial lifeline to Cuba from Hugo Chavez’ looked shaky. Most importantly, steadfast Israel-backer Howard Berman chaired this House Committee at the time, and steadfast Israel-backer and committee member Senator Gary Ackerman seemed to hold the vital deciding vote. Do you see where I’m going with this, amigos?

Alas, even with Rep. Ackerman taking Castro’s bait, at the last minute Chairman Rep. Berman took a rough count and recognized that the bill would not squeak by. So he postponed it. Short weeks later Castro’s roaming ambassador, Aleida Guevara (Che’s daughter), was in Lebanon posing next to Hezbollah missiles aimed at Israel.

The Cuban-born (and steadfast Israel-backer) Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was among those bemused with Netanyahu and Peres at the time. “Look, this guy has been an enemy of Israel,” wrote Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen to Netanyahu. “Just because he said something that a normal person would say — after 50 years of anti-Israel incitement, its one phrase from an old guy who doesn’t even know where he’s standing.”

“When countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and the like, who do not know the concept of human rights, point an accusing finger towards us, it is a sign that we are doing the right things.” Here Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman was reacting to Cuba sponsorship of the United Nations Human Rights Commission resolution to investigate Israeli “War Crimes,” upon last month’s launch of Operation Protective Edge.

Well that’s more like it, Israeli leaders. Hopefully you learned your lesson regarding Fidel Castro’s public pronouncements. This lesson came at catastrophic cost to U.S. policymakers and millions of Cuba over half a century ago. Among the Castro pronouncements these now older and much wiser people took at face value:

“You can be sure we have no animosity toward the United States and the American people….we are fighting for a democratic Cuba and an end to the dictatorship.” (New York Times Feb. 24, 1957.)

“We are not communists. And communists will never have influence in my country… Political power does interest me in the least. I will never assume such power.(Fidel Castro, April 1959.)

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  • negative rates

    I am generally on board with most of what is said here but Front Page is
    siding with the US govt. on this one. Castro, as much as one may hate
    him, threw out a corrupt US govt installed regime in Cuba.

    • UCSPanther

      And turned out to be even worse than that scumbucket Batista…

      • elkoz

        Why exactly was Batista a scum bucket? There are some questions I would like answered. What was the size of the middle class under his rule? What was the literacy rate? How many homes had phones? How did Cubans fare socially and economically under
        Batista as compared to the people of Europe during that same time frame?

        For those who have read Mr. Fontova’s work in the past those answers should be easily forthcoming.

        • luis segui

          elkoz ?????????? Blacks had no rights in Cuba with Batista. The rich were the only ones enjoying being a USA puppet!!!!!

          • UCSPanther

            Castro has a poor record for his treatment of minorities in Cuba, pal.

            That’s one thing that a LOT of his wild-eyed admirers love to conveniently forget…

          • SCREW SOCIALISM

            AND the 55 yo Castro dictatorship has a poor record on tolerance of gays.

          • SCREW SOCIALISM

            Blacks STILL have no rights in Cuba.

            Ya gotta be a descendant of the Imperialist Spaniards to rule Cuba.

          • American Patriot

            Blacks had many more rights under Batista than under the Castro family dictatorship. For starters, Batista was black, a mulatto in fact. But obviously, the left ignore that inconvenient fact.

          • American Patriot

            Now that is funny (sarcasm) and outrageous. Batista was black! He was a mulatto and the grandson of slaves (Cuba abolished slavery in 1886 when it still a Spanish colony). In fact, Batista had many more blacks in high positions of power than the government of Cuba today. Batista’s government was around the time when Cuba’s population was 72% white. Right now, 85% of Cuba’s prison population is black and only 8% of the ruling Communist Party is black. Under your beloved Castros, many of the longest suffered (and suffering) political prisoners in jail were (and are) black. The longest-suffered black political prisoner in modern history was Eusebio Peñalver, who served longer in Castro’s prisons than Nelson Mandela served in the prison system of South Africa’s former apartheid regime. Peñalver served 28 years behind bars, while Mandela served 27 years. Also, for the record, there was no puppet regime in Cuba before 1959! Once again, you are repeating Communist propaganda. Batista’s regime was punished by a US arms embargo (after he had paid for the supplies), was denied asylum in the United States and was not even allowed to set foot in the country whose government was allegedly his “puppeteer”. How is that a puppet-puppeteer relationship, fool? Also, the US State Department gave formal diplomatic recognition to Castro’s government at a much faster rate than Batista’s government (6 days for Castro compared with 3 weeks for Batista). The State Department and the CIA supported the rebellion against Batista. It is the Castro dictatorship that wanted a war against the United States, not the other way around. That is part of the historical record.

        • UCSPanther

          It’s safe to say Batista was your typical South American dictator. I am well aware that Cuba fared better under his reign.

          He was corrupt and power hungry, but didn’t follow a mad-eyed ideology like Communism…

      • luis segui

        R U A BIGOT UCSPanther!? Batista was never Embargoed by US for 50 years!

        • UCSPanther

          Learn to spell, Castro loyalist.

          • SCREW SOCIALISM

            I’ll call luis a Castro FASCIST.

          • tickletik

            Socialist is good enough.

        • SCREW SOCIALISM

          Cuba, like the other failed states in the Carri bean can only be ruled by a “strongman” dictator.

          Embargo Si!

          • IslamDownpressesHumanity

            Did you ever hear a rumor that a muslim mounted a failed coup in Trinidad? I’ve never heard the details, only the rumor, although it was from someone who had traveled to Trinidad on many occasions.

        • American Patriot

          Uh, yes he was. Batista’s regime was, in fact, punished by a US arms embargo in the late 1950s. In fact, the US government refused to deliver arms to the Batista government in Cuba after he had paid the cash. Not only that, but Batista was subsequently denied asylum in the United States and he couldn’t even enter the country. Batista first moved to the Dominican Republic and later to Portugal, where he resided there until his death in 1975. That is part of the historical record.

      • negative rates

        And how would you compare the Obummer scumbucket to the Batista scumbucket?

    • American Patriot

      The US State Department gave diplomatic recognition to Castro’s government at a much quicker rate than Batista’s government. It took only six days from the moment Fidel Castro entered Havana and took over the government after Batista fled power for the State Department to formally recognize the then-new government. When Batista launched his bloodless coup to depose the government of then-Cuban president Carlos Prio in 1952, it took the State Department three weeks to formally recognize Batista’s government. Furthermore, Batista was denied asylum in the United States and was not even allowed to set foot in the country that allegedly “installed” him. Batista fled to the Dominican Republic and then to Portugal, where he lived there until his death in 1975. Furthermore, the State Department and the CIA were on Castro’s side during the two years of so-called “civil war” in Cuba. Castro wanted to launch an all out war against the United States once he was in power. That is part of the historical record.

      • luis segui

        Castro would not be a USA puppet American patriot. You sound like a Bully Bigot

        • SCREW SOCIALISM

          Your commendante Fidel LOVES being a puppet of Russia.

          Now back to your job cutting sugar cane, comrade.

          • IslamDownpressesHumanity

            Yes the People’s Revolution needs more cane field workers, workers who willing to work long hours for little pay and none dare call it exploitation.

        • American Patriot

          Fidel Castro was a Soviet puppet. Now his brother, Raul, is a puppeteer, considering the fact that Communist Cuba has essentially colonized Venezuela and established a puppet state there led by the insane lunatic Nicolas Maduro, who is ethnically Colombian, not Venezuelan. And Castrogonia (Cuban American author, blogger and activist Carlos Eire’s term for Communist Cuba) wants more puppet states in Latin America and around the world.

    • IslamDownpressesHumanity

      I knew a Cuban woman whose entire family would rather have had Bautista than Castro.

  • mollysdad

    The Palestinian ‘genocide’ must be the only genocide in history which leaves more people alive afterwards than there were before.

    • IslamDownpressesHumanity

      LOL. Aside from the fact that there are demonstrably less Christians (but through no fault of Israel). Of course no one in the enemedia or UN minds that there is a continuously declining population of Christians in the entire muslim world.

  • luis segui

    Fontova the bigot. Spewing hatred and disinformation! USA/Cuba Embargo=Terrorism American Style

    • UCSPanther

      Are you one of Castro’s propagandists?

    • SCREW SOCIALISM

      luis,

      Yes, Embargo the 55 year old Castro family dictatorship of Cuba.

      Cuba Libre!

    • American Patriot

      There is no “embargo” on the Castro family dictatorship”. Washington’s sanctions are too full of holes to be an actual embargo. There is trade between the US and Cuba. The only restrictions to the trade are certain imports from Cuba and the fact that the Castro dictatorship has to pay up cash front. By the way, the entire world trades with Castrogonia and the country has been experiencing record tourism in recent years. And with record tourism, there is record repression going on in Cuba, because the dictatorship is fat, happy and cocky. Why do you ignore these facts, fool?

  • carpe diem 36

    first they said that the Holocaust never happened, or that it did not happen they way it is told, or that not even close to 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and they they use it to call Israel’s defense of its people a Holocaust. Can there be more hypocrisy that this??

  • SCREW SOCIALISM

    End the 55 year Holocaust of the Cuban people by the Castro family dictatorship!

    • oncle dolf

      There was never a Holocaust of the Jews- duh

      • SCREW SOCIALISM

        Like there wasn’t a WW2, Pearl Harbor attack, a Moon landing, 9/11, duh.

  • IslamDownpressesHumanity

    This guy must be as old as dirt by now. I wonder if anyone witnessed him personally state this (from his bed, in between diaper changes and drooling), or if it was reported by the official state news agency?

  • roccolore

    Castro is the one causing a Holocaust.

  • nancinger

    I wonder how much power Castro and his regime would have if they weren’t backed by Russian power. Who, really, would care?

  • georgejochnowitz

    Israel’s leaders knew about Castro’s 2010 interview. So did a few friends of Israel. Most of the world never learned about it. It never got into the mainstream press. Castro discovered that if he spoke favorably about Israel, he would be ignored. He learned never to do it again.

  • ServosT

    I thought he was dead.