RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.”

How’s that again about Che Guevara, Mr Palmor?

Mr Palmor was kind enough to communicate with your loyal servant here and explain that his comment regarding Che Guevara was ironic–a jab at Fidel Castro.  Great.  The world needs many more such foreign ministry officials.  But for anyone who got the impression that Castro’s “anti-Zionism” popped up last week, or that Che Guevara would have quibbled with his puppetmaster’s sentiments, here’s some history

Condemn me, it doesn’t matter,” declared Fidel Castro during the trial in 1953 for his failed Moncada putsch, “history will absolve me.”

“You may pronounce me guilty,” declared Adolf Hitler during the trial in 1924 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 the well-thumbed copy of Mein Kampf Castro often carried at the time.  In fact his title of “Lider Maximo” perfectly mimics the German term Fuhrer, except Castro had to one-up even Hitler, stressing the “maximum.”

A few years after his trial (and pardon by Batista!) Castro’s July 26th terrorist Movement adopted the red, black and white of the Nazi flag as its colors.  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 were 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  in the Congo.) “We will bring the war to the imperialists enemies’ very home, to his places of work and recreation. Thus we’ll destroy him! “Continued the message from the icon of flower children. “We must keep our hatred against them alive and fan it to paroxysms!  These hyenas (Americans) 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 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 whooping ‘hollerin ovation that greeted this message by the icon of peaceniks, was Abu Ammar (later known as Yasir Arafat) and Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (later “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 were soon filled with guerrillas and terrorists from Al Fatah, to the Sandinistas, to El Salvador’s FMLF, to the Tupamaros to 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 in September 13, 1978 that 500 Palestinian fighters were training in Cuba.

The Yom Kippur War really got Castro’s martial juices flowing.  So  he sent 500 of his crack Tank commanders to man 500 Soviet  T-55 tanks and buttress the crack Syrian stormtroopers  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 (a tiny fraction of the Syrian/Cuban forces size) counterattacked, blasted Castro’s  tanks  into a smoldering scrap pile and rolled over them like a speed bump on the way to envelop Damascus.

“It’s OK, Fidel,” Assad might have moped.  “It’s the thought that counts, buddy.”

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 sums it up 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 in 1975 branding “Zionism as Racism” was co-sponsored by Cuba. At the September 2001 United Nations “World Conference against Racism” conference 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 that run in Castro’s media say it best.

In 1974 the PLO opened their first Latin American embassy.  Can you guess where?  Right, Havana. And “President Fidel Castro, added a cheeky little twist to the event.The site for this embassy was a Jewish  Community center that flourished during the reign of the unspeakable “dictator”( as known throughout  the MSM) Batista, who  never saw fit to a lay on finger on anyone’s property.  But “President” (as known throughout the MSM) Castro snatched it from its Jewish owners at Soviet gunpoint. The title transfer whisked through in typical Castroite/Stalinist manner (resist and we shoot you.)

During the mid 60’s Castro’s police and military herded tens of thousands of Cuban youths (long-hairs, rock &rollers, gays, religious) into forced labor camps at Soviet bayonet point.  No pesky trials determined this, but 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-mongers   commenced to jail political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s and murder them at a higher rate 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. “Work Will Make Men of You,” It read.

The greeting at Auschwitz’ entrance read, “Work Will Make You Free.”

Coincidence?  Perhaps.

For some reason, 90 per cent of Cuba’s Jews saw fit to flee Castro’s Cuba, at the cost of most of their earthly belongings.That’s a much, much higher percentage than fled Czarist Russia. But Castro’s Pogrom’s 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. Move along, folks. No “hate-crime” here!

“The eight most important hours of my life.” That’s Shoah founder Steven Spielberg recalling his meeting with Fidel Castro.