If Israel Were Cuba

By Steven Argue

The U.S. has carried out terrorism against Cuba, including CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles blowing-up a civilian airliner, Cubana flight 455, killing all 73 people on board. The U.S. shelters this terrorist from justice.

In addition, the U.S. has kidnapped Cubans who had infiltrated counter-revolutionary terrorist groups. These people, Gerardo Hernández, René González, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino, and Fernando González, have become known as the Cuban five. They were simply trying to stop the kind of terrorism carried out by Luis Posada Carriles, but they now sit in American prisons with long sentences.

By any sense of the definition, the U.S. has carried out state sponsored terrorism and harbors and protects terrorists. Is this not the same argument that the U.S. and Israel use to carry out an economic blockade of Gaza? So does Cuba not have the right to blockade the United States and enter vessels headed for the U.S. on the high seas, killing people as they go, to carry out an economic blockade of the United States? Taking the logic of a couple Palestinian hating people in this tribe to its conclusion, they have every legal right to do so.

Unfortunately, both the Gazans and the Cubans are victims of economic sanctions as well as terrorism. The Gazans suffer far more terrorism from the government of Israel than any Palestinian extremists have ever returned. And they face an economic blockade that doesn't allow in needed food, medicine, and building materials. A blockade where heroes who try to break it are shot by the Israeli military. And, while dishing out that kind of terror, that same government attempts to portray an entire people as terrorists.

Of course the comparison of Israel and Cuba is absurd. While the U.S. and Israel prevent needed medical supplies from getting into Gaza and Cuba; Cuba has the opposite outlook, and has even offered Cuban doctors for victims of Katrina as well as for poor rural areas of the US. Cuba would never attempt to cut off needed food and medicine to any people.