After recently cheering on Brazil’s Lula for comparing the war in Gaza to the Holocaust and accusing Israel of genocide, Cuba’s dictatorship staged public gatherings and marches in Havana and all over Cuba this Saturday, in what amounts to support for Hamas and condemnation of Israel. Havana has yet to condemn what Hamas did on October 7 of last year, as if the current war had been started by the Israelis just because they felt like it.
Note the practically de rigueur keffiyehs on display–and designated dictator Díaz-Canel wore a Che T-shirt for good measure (Che’s daughter Aleida has boasted of being a good shot and offered to lend a hand in Gaza). Díaz-Canel said “enough of brutality, enough of abuse, enough of impunity” and called the Gaza Strip “the biggest open-air prison in the world.” The latter statement is a case of projection, since Cuba is an open-air prison, and far larger than Gaza.
Other high-level attendees at the Havana demonstration included Cuba’s Prime Minister Manuel Marrero and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez; the event even involved a children’s chorus. Naturally, the United States was blamed as complicit with Israel and accused of undermining peace and stability in the Middle East and the entire world (it’s a form of the old David and Goliath act Castro, Inc. has been playing for ages with considerable success).
So what does this have to do with ordinary Cubans, struggling daily in a failed state which cannot reliably provide them with milk, bread, fuel, electricity, medicines or even water, let alone freedom or self-determination? What are they supposed to think about scarce resources being used for propaganda displays involving an alien conflict a world away, and their leaders being preoccupied with anything other than their country’s escalating implosion?
Ah, but the “revolution” was never about them but about its ruling elite, its power and its perpetuation. The people, “el pueblo,” was just a convenient trope, an abstraction, constantly thrown around but never the real point–just something to be controlled and used, like so much livestock, to benefit the owners of the farm. As in Animal Farm.
P.S. For whatever reason(s), Cuba’s dictatorship has taken a flagrantly anti-Israel position. It’s actually making a show of that, which is no doubt deliberate and meant to be noticed. May the G-d of Israel take notice and act accordingly.
In view of such bad faith, gross indecency and perverse opportunism, I will save Israel the trouble and declare every relevant member of Cuba’s totalitarian dictatorship persona non grata, not just to Israel but to all decent Cubans everywhere. This grotesque grandstanding is beyond disgraceful and beneath contempt.