To promote a nonviolent transition to a Cuba that respects human rights, political and economic freedoms, and the rule of law.
Condemning anti-Semitic Terrorism. Exposing the Cuban dictatorship’s role in spreading anti-Semitic tropes
Sarah Milgrim and Yarón Lischinsky, two Israeli Embassy staffers, were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC by Elias Rodriguez, a member of the Chicago branch of Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) on the evening of May 21, 2025. It is important to provide context to the enormity of this crime, and the Cuban dictatorship’s role in helping to create the atmosphere that led to this atrocity.
592 days separate the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 innocents, including 40 Americans, and kidnapped 251 hostages, 23 of which remain hostage today in Gaza, and the assassination of these two young people by a communist militant in the capitol of the United States.
The Hamas terror attacks sparked a war in the Middle East that continues to the present day, and has cost countless lives, but the Islamists and their communist allies seek to blame and slander the victims of the terror attacks while continuing their efforts to destroy the Jewish homeland, and terrorize Jewish people around the world.
The PSL is a Marxist-Leninist group with ties to Havana, and the title of the assassin’s manifesto posted on X ” Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home” echoed Che Guevara’s call for terrorism against civilians. Guevara’s widest circulated case for political violence and terrorism is found in the letter he wrote and had delivered at the 1966 Tricontinental Conference.
… “Carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be; make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move.”
The conference held in Havana from January 3, 1966 through January 16, 1966, gathered terrorists and guerillas from around the world to coordinate efforts to subvert and destroy democracies using violent means, replacing them with communist regimes.
The letter was later published by the Cuban dictatorship in 1967 in a book format and titled ” Message to the Tricontinental ”, and is still circulated today.
Che Guevara in Gaza, June 18, 1959.
This deadly and self-destructive message was directly transmitted to Palestinians by the Argentine terrorist guerilla himself seven years earlier.
Ernesto “Che” Guevara visited Gaza in 1959, and encouraged Palestinian refugees to “continue the struggle to liberate their land” “through resistance to occupation.” He asked, “where are the training camps? Where are the factories to manufacture arms? Where are people’s mobilization centers?” … “Guevara was accompanied by General Caprera, an expert in Guerilla warfare. Caprera met with community leaders to advise on methods of resistance.”
The Cuban dictatorship’s negative impact in the Middle East would continue to the present day, including meetings with high level representatives of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran in the months prior to the October 7, 2023 terror attacks on Israel.
Ambassador Otto J. Reich’s article published in the Jewish Policy Centeron November 16, 2023 titled “Jihad: Cuba’s Role” briefly explored the current relationship between Havana and Middle Eastern terrorist groups and states.
For more than one year, Iran secretly provided the weapons and training that Hamas needed for planning the October 7th attack against Israel. In the meantime, senior representatives of Iran and Hamas fostered an international diplomatic offensive with their allies. Communist Cuba, another US-designated State Sponsor of Terrorism, was a key Iran-Hamas ally in this effort. Some planning meetings took place this year with senior Cuban officials, both in the Middle East and in Cuba. In one, Iran’s Foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, visited Cuba and met with President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Feb. 5th. They discussed “issues of mutual interest and international topics,” according to a statement from the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Then, on Feb. 25th, a Hamas delegation publicly visited Jorge León Cruz, the Cuban Ambassador in Lebanon. In that meeting, Ambassador León Cruz recognized “the legitimate right of the Palestinians to defend their land,” adding that the Palestinians “are fighting for a just cause.” Raising the Iranian profile, a few months later, on June 15th, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisipublicly met with his Cuban counterpart, Miguel Diaz-Canel, in Havana. Those three high-level meetings showed the close relations that exists between Hamas, its chief patron, Iran, and Cuba’s communist regime. Cuba’s dictatorship has a long history of both antisemitism and support of extremist terrorist organizations in the Middle East, where it has operated terrorist training camps in secret locations, as well as on the Caribbean island. Moreover, Cuba has allowed the terrorist organization Hezbollah, also backed by Iran, to establish “an operational base in Cuba, designed to support terrorist attack throughout Latin America,” according to emails leaked from then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. According to US reports, Cuba has provided key intelligence to Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah, to conduct terrorist attacks.
This hostility towards Israel by the Castro regime began in the early 1960s with Havana providing training and support to Middle East terrorist groups, and the dictatorship in Havana echoing the Soviet active-measures campaign Operation SIG designed to sow worldwide disapproval for the United States and Israel.
SIG is the Russian acronym for Sionistskiye Gosudarstva, or “Jewish (or Zionist) Government.” This involved Soviet propaganda and military support on behalf of terrorist groups declaring Israel their enemy. Irving Louis Horowitz described how the Soviets provided Fidel Castro with the ideological justification to advocate for the destruction of the state of Israel in his 2007 article “Cuba, Castro and Anti-Semitism” which is available online and required reading.
Havana’s anti-Semitism would directly impact Cuban Jews living in Cuba prior to the October 7, 2023 attacks. For example, Cuban Jewish children faced kippah bans and beatings in 2019, with threats visited also on the parents of the children for speaking up.
The Center for a Free Cuba’s executive director on October 25, 2023 published an article in The Hill outlining how Cuba’s dictatorship has a serious problem with the Jewish people, but the evidence has continued to accumulate since then.
Cuban students marched with posters with the face of Hamas spokesperson Abu Obaida through the streets of Havana on November 23, 2023 in a forced march organized by the dictatorship.International media reported that 100,000 people “participated” in this pro-Hamas rally in Cuba. “Free Palestine” as shown in posters mass produced by the Cuban dictatorship means the state of Israel replaced by the state of Palestine.
Upon reviewing press accounts, there was no mention of how a totalitarian regime obtained a large turnout using coercive means against the population. Cuban workers and students were forced to attend or suffer consequences. An audio of a university lecturer explaining to her pupils why they must attend the march went viral on social media. It is a master class in intimidation and deception.
“I hope you are well. As you see there are changes. Regarding tomorrow’s activity, go to Línea y F (bus stop) at one in the afternoon. Everyone must attend. The students know that this is their grade, that is, it is important because it will have an impact on their grade for the national security class but also on the comprehensive evaluation.” … “Those who are still out of context and do not realize that they are at the Enrique Jose Varona University of Pedagogical Sciences, which responds to the Ministry of Higher Education of Cuba, should go and inform themselves, search, clarify, review accordingly. Try to do the things that correspond to you as students. If you do not agree, then simply leave, informing them that they are not going to do it because of this, or this and that. And then you will have your consequences. This is not a threat. This is not extortion. This is not a negative thing to make you feel bad. Or that this is done in a bad way because I’m tired too. I just came out of a diploma defense exhibition, a professional defense exercises and I would also have preferred to be resting at home. But I have to do it because it is what is appropriate and what is indicated. OK? They evaluate me as a professor, they pay me as a professor, and they evaluate you as students. OK? So let’s all think and position ourselves with tranquility, peace, and harmony so that things go well.”
Attending state-mandated demonstrations and marches is a required action that is factored into the evaluation of an employee at their work place or as a student at their educational institution. The dictatorship’s engagement in the present conflict between Israel and Hamas, however, extends beyond pro-Hamas marches.
A March 2025 report by the Center for a Free Cuba’s executive director in Politics and Rights Review highlighted Pedro Jorge Velázquez who goes by the alias of El Necio on X, an official Cuban government journalist, who beginning in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 has engaged in repackaging content from the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and disseminating blood libels against the Jewish people, such as posts about the Lev Tahor sect and the Rothschild family, which perpetuate stereotypes of Jewish control and child sacrifice. These posts, from January and December 2024, included imagery like a Jewish figure with a globe and gold coins, and a demonic shadow in tunnels, suggesting ritualistic harm, aligning with historical antisemitic tropes.
Mariela Castro, Raul’s Castro’s daughter, denies the existence of the Jewish people.
Earlier this month, Mariela Castro, Raul’s Castro daughter, made anti-Semitic statements during an appearance on the state-run television program Mesa Redonda Informativa on May 10, 2025. She denied the existence of the Jewish people, saying, “There isn’t a Jewish people; there is a Jewish religion.” She also asserted that Jews “exaggerated their victimization” to occupy Palestinian lands, using “biblical myths” for justification, supported by imperialist powers like the United Kingdom and the United States.
Echoing her uncle, Fidel Castro, she repeated the slander of linking Zionism with Nazism, describing it as “the worst” political supremacist movement, emerging before Nazism and closely related, now reemerging with force.
The Cuban dictatorship bears some responsibility for creating the climate of hate that is inviting violence against Jewish people, and they should be called out on it, held to account, and told to stop.
It is also important to explore first principles, and the moral errors promoted by the regime in Havana that has and continues to cause so much harm.
Rabbi Pini Dunner, a British Orthodox rabbi based in California, offered a thoughtful refutation of Che Guevara’s political philosophy in an excerpt of his December 28, 2023 blog entry, THE DANGEROUS ALLURE OF RADICAL CHIC.
“But even those who are clueless about history, and embrace radical causes out of naivete, should understand that claiming you hate despots when you support something far worse than despotism requires mental gymnastics that is nothing short of Olympic gold-medal standards.
In the Torah portion of Vayechi, there is a poignant moment of moral clarity illustrating this exact point. As Jacob lies on his deathbed, he rebukes his sons Shimon and Levi for their violent retaliation after their sister Dinah was wronged by Shechem. In a murder spree against the town of Shechem, the brothers dispatched the entire male population, took the women and children into captivity, and plundered the flocks and possessions. Jacob’s critique was not of their cause, which he rightly felt was just, but rather of their brutal methods. His parting words underscore a timeless lesson: the ends cannot justify the means. As Jacob put it: “Cursed be their anger, so fierce; and their wrath, so cruel!” (Gen. 49:7). His curse is against the ferocity of their violence, not the veracity of their cause.
Jacob, the great patriarch, can parse the situation: he supports the cause, but not if it employs violence as a first measure. Self-defense – even if it means using mortal force – is always justified, but premeditated murder is an inexcusable transgression, regardless of its motivation, especially if a resolution can be reached without it. This ancient wisdom seems to elude many on the progressive left. The glamorization of violent revolutionaries like Che Guevara and Hamas overlooks the crucial distinction between fighting for justice and committing acts of terrorism.
Che, much like Shimon and Levi, might have started out with what he and others perceived as noble intentions, but the path he chose was marred by indiscriminate brutality. Hamas similarly wraps itself in a cloak of righteous fervor, but in the final analysis is nothing more than a vicious terrorist group that seeks the death of Jews, and anyone associated with Jews – even if they are fellow Arabs. The allure of radicalism often blinds its adherents to the moral cost of their actions, and they forget that, above all, what they seek must always be achieved via preserving the sanctity of life. Jacob understood the perils of falling into the trap of endorsing violence by supporting those with whom one has sympathy, but who resort to violent methods as a matter of course.
Jacob’s rebuke of Shimon and Levi carries within it a message for today – that supporters of the Palestinian cause must never romanticize violence and its perpetrators. It is one thing to sympathize with the plight of the oppressed, but it is quite another to be an apologist for terrorism.”
The ends do not justify the means. Empathy for those perceived as oppressed should not be turned into support for terrorism. Rabbi Pini Dunner’s full presentation is available below, and I recommend that it be shared.
What of the libels against Israel?
Numbers do not lie, but the communist regime in Havana, and their Islamist allies do.
In 1933 there were 9.5 million Jewish people living in Europe. Following the Nazi holocaust, the Jewish population in Europe in 1950 was reduced to 3.5 million. The world Jewish population in 1939 was 16,728,000, and in 1945 it had shrunk to 11,000,000.
Palestinians and the Castro dictatorship for decades have accused, and continue to accuse, Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide”.
In 1948 there were 1.4 million Palestinians living in what is today, Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. In 2023 there were 7 million Palestinians living there, and 7.05 million living in the diaspora.
The Palestinian population under 75 years of Israeli “occupation” has grown five fold, and the total world population has grown. This is the antithesis of what happened to Jewish people during the Nazi regime both in Europe, and worldwide.
Palestine is a Roman name imposed on an indigenous Jewish homeland
The Jewish people are indigenous to the land they live on today, and lands inhabited by Palestinians, which include Gaza and the West Bank. Three thousand years ago the state of Israel was dominated by a Jewish community, until they were taken over by the Roman Empire in 63 BC and turned into a protectorate to rule over them, until the Romans crushed them, for violently resisting imperial rule beginning in 66 AD, the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD and Jewish resisters to occupation were scattered across the Roman Empire in modern day Iraq, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and parts of Eastern Europe, but throughout the subsequent 1,955 years a Jewish presence remained in those lands.
More Jewish people returned to Israel following the end of the Roman Empire with the rise of the Islamic Empire, when non-Muslims, including many Jews, were driven out of Saudi Arabia, Jews were allowed to return to their homeland in 637AD after being banished for 500 years, Israel had been renamed Palestine by the Romans, but the name was not formally recognized by the rulers of the Islamic empire.
The term Palestine has a long history, but the word is a European invention. According to historians the name first appeared in the 12th century BC and derives from the Greek word Philistia, the name Greek writers gave to the land of the Philistines, and revived by the Romans 1,400 years later in the 2nd century AD as "Syria Palaestina." However the name Palestine, following the collapse of the Roman Empire, had no official status until the British took over the land from the Ottoman Empire after WW1 through the League of Nations and it was called the Mandate for Palestine, but it also recognized the right to a Jewish homeland.
This is to say that out of the past 3,000 years there has been a Jewish presence in Israel for 3,000 years. The name Israel is an indigenous name for an indigenous people who today are living on their ancestral lands, and the territories occupied by Palestinians today, used to be part of ancient Israel.
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