While many protests in major cities condemn the recent Palestinian attack on Israel. And in Paris, London, Manchester, Edinburgh, New York City, and elsewhere others praise the Palestinians, argue that the Israelis got what they deserved during the kidnappings, stabbings, shootings, etc. I was shocked to learn that the Sydney, Australia Opera House recently hosted a "Gas the Jews" rally, and some of the protestors, when interviewed, openly declare, that if they hear someone express certain views about the Middle East or the Koran, "they will kill them," A few days ago a teacher in northern France was murdered by a Muslim terrorist, and Saturday, a main train station was closed as was the Louvre. Needless to say, Jewish schools and synagogues are increasing vigilence, as Hamas called for a day of Jihad to begin.
The protests in American cities include Muslims, and also anti-war leftists, some left Democrats or Democratic Socialists. Below, I include ar article from a recent issue of the Militant, a Trotskyist newspaper in the US about an interview with Cuba's Fidel Castro by Jeffrey Goldberg, whom I assume is the same writer who today is often on America's National Public Radio to "balance" its pro-Democratic Party spins. Goldberg is a Never Trumper type Republican. The interview is not from last week, obviously, but the message is important.
Fidel Castro: ‘Without doubt, Israel has right to exist’
Since the pogrom by Hamas and its allies, Stalinists and middle-class radicals have been organizing actions under the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” — a call for the destruction of Israel and slaughter of the Jews. That’s the exact opposite of what Fidel Castro, the central leader of the Cuban Revolution, had to say about Israel and Jew-hatred.
Castro often strongly disagreed with the Israeli government. At the same time he openly expressed his support for the right of Israel to exist as a refuge for the Jews.
In 2010, after then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had proclaimed the Holocaust — the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis — was an “unprovable and mythical claim,” Castro invited Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg to come to Cuba and interview him.
Fidel told him the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the “unique” history of antisemitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.
“I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims,” Castro told Goldberg. “They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything.”
“Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms,” Castro said. “The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.”
“Let’s imagine that I were [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Castro said, “I would remember the 6 million Jewish men and women, of all ages who were exterminated in the concentration camps” when making decisions.
Goldberg asked Castro, “Do you think the State of Israel, as a Jewish State, has a right to exist?”
“Yes, without a doubt,” Castro replied.
“True revolutionaries never threaten to exterminate a whole country,” Castro had told Le Monde in September 1967, in response to Arab governments and others calling for Israel’s destruction.
