Cuba’s dictatorship has a serious problem with Jews

On Oct. 7 Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,300 Israelis, wounding over 3,360, and launching over 6,300 rockets. Hamas raiders entered Israel, murdering, raping, and kidnapping civilians.

In a formal statement released that same day, the Cuban Foreign Ministry blamed Israel and its “accomplice,” the U.S., for the violence. In so doing, it continues to spread a false narrative that originates in Soviet-era anti-Israel propaganda.

Cuban officials have been meeting over the last year with high-ranking officials from Iran and Hamas. Iran’s Foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian visited Cuba and met with Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel on Feb. 5 “for talks on issues of mutual interest and international topics,” according to a statement from the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On Feb. 25, Middle East Monitor reported that a Hamas delegation publicly visited the Cuban Ambassador in Lebanon. In that meeting, Ambassador Jorge Leon Cruz recognized “the legitimate right of the Palestinians to defend their land….The Palestinians are fighting for a just cause.”

On June 15, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi publicly met with his Cuban counterpart, Miguel Diaz-Canel, in Havana.

In short, both the terrorist group Hamas and its chief patron, Iran, have close relations with Cuba’s communist regime. The Cuban dictatorship aids terrorists in the Middle East, allows Hezbollah to maintain a base in Cuba, and provides intelligence to Hamas. 

The Cuban dictatorship also has a history of domestic antisemitism. Cuban officials in 2019 barred Jewish children from wearing kippahs in school. Fidel Castro in 1994 prohibited the importation of kosher meat into Cuba, despite allowing Halal food, which complies with Islamic dietary laws. Castro supported the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism and opposed its repeal in 1991.  

From 1959 through 1973, Havana maintained diplomatic relations with Israel while supporting terrorism against Israelis. Castro hailed the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965 and established ties with the Palestinian Fatah in Algiers and Damascus. Castro introduced PLO members at the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana in January 1966. This conference backed revolutionary and terrorist organizations across Europe, the Americas, and Asia with the objective of changing the world order in an authoritarian direction.

The Soviet Union assisted the Arab states in the run-up to the Six Days War in 1967. In the aftermath of their defeat, the Soviets initiated an active-measures campaign that proved effective in creating a false narrative harmful to Israel and the U.S. Eli Cohen and Elizabeth Boyd explained one part of this campaign in a must-read 2019 paper, titled “The KGB and anti-Israel propaganda operations.”

Operation SIG was a KGB active measure designed to sow worldwide disapproval for the U.S. 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. This included increasing anti-Israel sentiment by disseminating anti-Zionist propaganda and using anti-Semitic tropes from Western culture.

This narrative is the one that the dictatorship in Havana continues to repeat right up to the present day.

Fidel Castro, for example, compared Israel to Nazi Germany on October 15, 1979. “From the bottom of our heart, we repudiated the merciless persecution and genocide that the Nazis once visited on the Jews,” he said. “But there is nothing in recent history that parallels it more than the dispossession, persecution and genocide that imperialism and Zionism are currently practicing against the Palestinian people.”

In 2014, Castro called Israeli efforts to defend themselves from Hamas terrorism “a repugnant new form of fascism,” and a “macabre genocide against the Palestinian people.” 

The Cuban dictatorship’s hostility to Israel was not limited to rhetoric and its assistance to terrorists. Cuba also involved itself in direct military action.

Castro severed diplomatic ties with Israel on September 10, 1973, just days before the Yom Kippur War began. During that war, 3,000 Cuban soldiers participated in the attack on Israel, alongside forces from Egypt and Syria, and expeditionary forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, and North Korea.

The publication Noticias de Israel provided an in-depth description of the role played by Cuba in this war. Havana conducted a secret operation to send military support to Syria. A tank brigade, helicopter pilots, communications agents, and intelligence and counterintelligence officers took part. The brigade was under General Leopoldo Cintra Frías’s command. 

Soldiers left Cuba bound for Syria, dressed in civilian clothes, with forged passports identifying them as university students. Soviet military equipment, including T-62 tanks and SAM rocket artillery, were provided to them. In all, 3,000 Cubans took part in the war. Cuban tank crews fought alongside Syrian troops in their war of aggression.

According to Foreign Report, 180 Cubans were killed and 250 were injured in that conflict. The surprise factor resulted in significant losses for Israel, both in lives and military equipment. Civilian areas were also hit, with 2,800 Israelis killed and 8,800 wounded. 

In short, the Castro regime has spent decades seeking the destruction of Israel, in both its rhetoric and its actions. Cuban officials have also discriminated against Cuban Jews, and spread anti-semitic tropes.

Havana has had and continues to have a problem with Jewish people.

John Suarez is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, and a human rights activist.