Students at the University of Havana attended in large numbers a day-long meeting on the Gaza genocide. For centuries a colony of Spain before its exposure to American neocolonialism and continuing imperialist threats and sanctions, Cuba has endured much the same humiliation that has been the lot of Palestine. Accordingly, as the following report indicates, they warmly received the accounts of Cuban experts of the racism and human rights violations in Palestine. The original may be found here.

The University of Havana Shows that Palestine is not Alone

By Laura V. Mor on November 7, 2023

photo: Syara Salado Massip

Today the University of Havana was the scene of a confluence of young students eager to deepen their knowledge on the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on the crimes against humanity committed by the Zionist State against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

With the support of the Union of Young Communists (UJC), the Palestinian Youth Organization and the Federation of University Students (FEU), the day featured a lecture by Dr. Issam Al Khawaga, a Neuropediatrician and President of the Association of Cuban Medical Graduates in Jordan, as well as being the Vice President of the Jordan-Cuba Friendship Association and Deputy Secretary General of the People’s Democratic Unity Party of Jordan.

Dr. Al Khawaga, making a brief historical account, recalled when under Resolution 3379/75 the UN General Assembly equated Zionism with racism in general and with South African apartheid in particular, and called for its elimination, understanding it as “a form of racial discrimination”.

He also explained how that Resolution, which, although only of a declarative and non-binding nature, was a harsh condemnation of Zionism, was annulled under a new Resolution (4686/91) due to pressure and manipulation by the State of Israel, which made it a condition for attending the talks in Madrid, making it one of the shortest resolutions in the history of the United Nations General Assembly.

He also detailed the “elementary right denied”, by denying the creation of the Palestinian State and by approving in the United Nations, under Resolution 181/47, the Partition Plan with Economic Union of the Palestinian region under international control, without recognizing the historic Palestinian territory.

Mariela Castro, Director of the National Center for Sex Education of Cuba (CENESEX), denounced the tools used by the hegemonic power to justify the genocide in the Gaza Strip.

“The same groups that enriched themselves (with the World Wars), continue to enrich themselves at the cost of human suffering,” she said, referring to the financial bourgeoisie and the big bankers, for whom the conflict in the Middle East is nothing more than a business. Israel’s actions “respond to the interests of big business, interested in the natural resources of Palestine, interested in having geopolitical control of the area,” he said.

In the same sense, she referred to President Joe Biden’s statements which made it clear that for the United States “war continues to be a business”.

“Humanity is outraged, but unfortunately with words, with shouting, we are not going to change the situation of the Palestinian people”, she said while calling for continued international action.

Also contributing to the discussion was, pediatric physician and Ambassador for the Return of Palestine, Aleida Guevara March who recalled Israel’s first actions in the 1940s when the Zionist state began the “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinian people, who have been fighting for 75 years of unparalleled resistance, fighting for a right that belongs to them but that’s been denied them, as Dr. Al Khawaga had detailed.

“As a physician, we defend life, but life must be defended with dignity,” she said. “It cannot be that we talk about peace or the cessation of war, if there are no conditions for the Palestinian people to live and develop,” he added.

“The question is what we really cando to be able to reach that People.” “Count on me,” she concluded with that humanist commitment that reminds us of her father, Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Graciela Ramirez, Coordinator of the International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity for the Peoples and Head of Resumen Latinoamericano’s correspondent in Cuba, affirmed – in the same sense of the resistance Aleida was talking about – that “the lesson Palestine is giving us has managed to awaken the world”.

“Palestine today is a watershed between the horror of the massacre and fascism,” she said.

“Where is the legality?” asked Graciela, denouncing the disregard of the repudiation of different governments and peoples around the world in the face of the massacre that the State of Israel is committing in the Gaza Strip.

Ramirez blamed the great powers: “The United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, need to have a garrison state in a key place for the whole Middle East”, “this gigantic military base which is Israel”.

“The UN has become a stage for which the only thing it is useful for the peoples is to present denunciations and resolutions, which are violated, which are mocked”, she denounced, in the same sense as Mariela Castro, who described it as “another instrument of imperialism”.

Graciela mentioned the resignation of a high-ranking official of …
“How will the Palestinian people be left after this? How will the child who sees his brother trembling, the mother who wordlessly rocks her dead son wrapped in a shroud, the father who shows the mutilated body of his son and asks “this is the Hamas terrorist”? How will Humanity be left?”, asked Graciela.

“Just as Nazism ended, Gaza and Palestine can be the Vietnam of Israel, and enter a new era of humanity”, leaving us a share of hope among so much horror.

“How will the Palestinian people be left after this? How will Humanity be left?”, Graciela asked the audience. Her question makes us reflect and reminds us of Aleida’s father when he told us to be “capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone in any part of the world”.

“Just as Nazism ended, Gaza and Palestine can be the Vietnam of Israel, and enter a new era of humanity”, leaving us a share of hope among so much horror.

Source: Cuba en Resumen