In 1962, Cuba Was Our Hamas (Daled Amos) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, January 07, 2025

In 1962, Cuba Was Our Hamas (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Mexico has never fired rockets into the US.

But that hasn't stopped people from comparing such a theoretical attack with Hamas firing rockets into Israel. How else to illustrate Israel's right to self-defense from a terrorist entity that exists right on Israel's doorstep?

However, one US neighbor has proven to be a threat to the US in more than just theory.

In October 1962, the US discovered that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles off the US coast. This threat to US national security led to the Cold War confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. On October 22, President Kennedy called for a naval "quarantine" of Cuba to block any more weapons or military equipment from reaching the island. Both the US and the Soviet Union mobilized their forces, but all-out war was averted.

The Cuban Missile Crisis poses an interesting parallel to Israel's current situation.

Cuba, like Hamas, was a proxy, acting on behalf of the USSR. Cuban troops and advisors supported the Marxist MPLA government in Angola during its war. Castro supplied the manpower, while the Soviets provided the weapons. Cuba also acted on behalf of its sponsor in 1977-1978, when it backed the Soviet-aligned Ethiopian government.

But, in 1962, it served as a proxy of the USSR against the US. The missiles pointed at the US but fell just short of being used like the Iranian-supplied rockets targeting Israeli civilians.

As a proxy, Cuba not only helped protect other Marxist governments. It also assisted in the Soviet goal to spread Communism. Hamas, for its part, fit into Iran's goal of spreading radical Islam throughout the Middle East and beyond.

The Soviet Union eventually proved to be a paper tiger. The Soviet bloc eventually disintegrated, and its various components turned away from Communism. The case of Iran is not nearly as clear-cut, but like Russia, it no longer projects power as it once did, and its proxies no longer serve as reliable extensions of its Islamist program.

Then there is the terrorist element.

Che Guevara symbolized the Cuban cause just as much as Fidel Castro did. And like Hamas "heroes", Guevara too was a terrorist. Jonah Goldberg writes in his book, Liberal Fascism:

Guevera reveled in executing prisoners. While fermenting revolution in Guatemala, he wrote home to his mother, "It was all a lot of fun. What with the bombs, speeches and other distractions to break the monotony I was living in." His motto was, "If in doubt kill him," and he killed a great many. The Cuban American writer Humberto Fotova described Guevera as "a combination of Beria [former chief of Stalin's secret police] and Himmler." [p. 194]

Yet in 1964, Guevara, like Arafat addressed the United Nations General Assembly--and received enthusiastic applause from his audience. And of course, we are all familiar with the the Che T-shirts:

While we are unlikely to be bombarded with images of Yahya Al-Sinwar on T-shirts, college students today enthusiastically wear keffiyehs, calling for "Intifada" instead of "Revolution," even hours after an ISIS-flag-wielding terrorist fulfilled their chant, killing 15 in New Orleans.

These days, almost no one remembers the threat of missiles aimed at the US from Cuba, which is only 90 miles away from Key West, Florida. All that has survived is the myth of Che Guevara, which survives today in the blind enthusiasm of college students and other left-wing activists who impulsively call for an Intifada.