On November 10, 1975 the United Nations declared that “Zionism is racism.” The resolution was repealed in 1991, but the smearing of Zionism, and Judaism continued. It was also a setback for human rights and the United Nations more broadly.
The Cuban government, led by Fidel Castro, was one of the 26 sponsors, and lobbied for the passage of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, which labeled Zionism a form of racism and racial discrimination. The resolution was principally supported by the Arab League and numerous Muslim-majority states. Later, in 1991, Cuba was one of the few countries to vote against the revocation of Resolution 3379 (via Resolution 46/86), underscoring its consistent stance. Nevertheless, the libelous resolution was revoked.
In the midst of this evil act by the international community in 1975, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan delivered a speech that refuted this immorality with moral clarity.
The Cuban dictatorship has a history of antisemitism that runs to the present day.
Hours after 1,200 people were slaughtered in Israel by Hamas Islamist terrorists, who kidnapped hundreds more on October 7, 2023, the Cuban government condemned Israel.
Their agents in the United States organized a pro-Hamas rally in Times Square, calling the murder of civilians “an act of resistance.”
On October 8, 2023, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations issued a statement condemning Israel’s “impunity,” labeling the Jewish state as an occupier and the US as historically complicit. Their allies in the region took an equally anti-Israel line.
Dictators Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and President and former M-19 terrorist Gustavo Petro in Colombia all failed to denounce the terrorist assaults on Israel.
Pro-Hamas protests in NYC led by Pro-Castro activist
Manolo de los Santos of The People’s Forum with Miguel Diaz-Canel in September 2023, and on October 8, 2023 celebrating Hams terror attacks on Israel.
On October 8, 2023, one day after the terror attacks in Israel, militant leftists held a protest in Times Square to celebrate the terrorist attack as a form of resistance, yelling anti-Semitic slogans and waving banners and posters. On October 11, 2023, The People’s Forum (TPF) released a statement justifying their October 8th demonstration in Times Square and reaffirming their support for the rampage. Manolo De Los Santos, the group’s co-executive director, is a researcher at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, with links to the Cuban dictatorship, and he was “based out of Cuba for many years.”
On January 15, 2024, Manolo De Los Santos said the quiet part out loud at The People’s Forum in New York City: “When we finally deal that ultimate blow to annihilate Israel. When the state of Israel is completely abolished and obliterated from history, it will be the single most powerful blow we can deliver against capitalism.“
Harassing Jewish children in 2019, and spreading a blood libel in 1975
Parents Olainis Tejada Beltrán and Yeliney Lescaille Prebal with their two children.
Cuban officials in 2019, in an act of continuity with Fidel and Raul Castro’s hatred of Jews, barred Jewish children from wearing kippahs in school.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) on December 23, 2019 reported that Liusdan Martínez Lescaille, a twelve year-old Jewish boy was forbidden by Cuban educational authorities from entering his school while wearing a kippah ( also known as a yarmulke) since December 11, 2019 with the result that he has been prevented from continuing his education. His younger brother, Daniel Moises, has also been subjected to the ban and government authorities threatened to open legal proceedings against his parents, jailing them and taking their children away, for “threatening the children’s normal development.”
CSW documented that Liusdan was regularly beaten up at school since the family moved to the Nuevitas municipality in 2016, and that the situation worsened in September 2019.
“According to his parents, Olainis Tejada Beltrán and Yeliney Lescaille Prebal, members of the Sephardic Bnei Anusim community, their son was singled out for ridicule soon after he started classes in September 2019 at the Latin America Urban Basic Secondary School in Nuevitas. Since then he has been subjected to four severe beatings instigated by a classmate who is the son of a military captain, along with other students. Despite multiple complaints by the parents to Martínez Lescaille’s teacher, who is head of the grade and the school director, no action was taken to protect the child.
After Tejada Beltrán publicly denounced the treatment of his son in the independent media, the Cuban educational authorities created a commission to review his son’s situation. However, during this period, he was pressured by school administrators on multiple occasions to retract his complaints. At one point there was an attempt by the school director to expel his son for supposed acts of violence, however, five teachers stepped in to defend Martínez Lescaille and the expulsion did not take place.
On 11 December the commission announced its findings, holding a school guard responsible for failing to stop the attacks on Martínez Lescaille. However, rather than sanctioning the guard, a kippah ban was put in place instead. Tejada Beltrán has called for the ban to be revoked, pointing out that it effectively prohibits his son from entering the school grounds and that there are no other educational alternatives.
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.
Origins of the relationship
Che met Abu Sitta, leader of the fedayeen (& front leader in the 1936 Arab Revolt)
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, representing Fidel Castro’s new regime, visited Gaza in 1959, and encouraged Palestinian refugees to “continue the struggle to liberate their land” “through resistance to occupation,” according to the publication Palestine Land Society. He asked, “where are the training camps? Where are the factories to manufacture arms? Where are people’s mobilization centers?” … According to the publication Palestine Land Society, “Guevara was accompanied by General Caprera, an expert in Guerilla warfare. Caprera met with community leaders to advise on methods of resistance.” They identified Caprera as the bearded individual in the photo below.
Caprera accompanied Che Guevara in the 1959 Gaza visit. A guerilla warfare expert.
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.
When Castro equated Israel to Nazi Germany
Fidel Castro 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.”
Fidel Castro died in 2016,but his niece continues to spread this despicable lie today.
Mariela Castro denies the existence of the Jewish people.
Mariela Castro, Raul’s Castro daughter, made anti-Semitic statements during an appearance on the state-run television program Mesa Redonda Informativa on May 10, 2025.
Echoing her uncle, Fidel Castro, she repeated the slander of equating Zionism with Nazism, describing it as “the worst” political supremacist movement, emerging before Nazism and closely related, now reemerging with force.
She went further in denying the existence of the Jewish people, something she did not do to the German people.
“There isn’t a Jewish people; there is a Jewish religion.” Mariela Castro also asserted that Jews “exaggerated their victimization” to occupy Palestinian lands, using “biblical myths” for justification, supported by imperialist powers like the United Kingdom and the United States.
She denied the existence of the Jewish people, and downplayed their suffering.
When Cuban troops attacked Israel
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.
Fidel Castro with Palestinian terrorist leader Yasser Arafat.
What of the libels against Israel?
Numbers do not lie, but the communist regime in Havana, and their Islamist allies do.
In 1933 there were 9.5 million Jewish people living in Europe. Following the Nazi holocaust, the Jewish population in Europe in 1950 was reduced to 3.5 million. The world Jewish population in 1939 was 16,728,000, and in 1945 it had shrunk to 11,000,000.
Palestinians and the Castro dictatorship for decades have accused, and continue to accuse, Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide”.
In 1948 there were 1.4 million Palestinians living in what is today, Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. In 2023 there were 5.6 million Palestinians living there, and 7.05 million living in the diaspora. There are also 1.9 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.
The Palestinian population under 75 years of Israeli “occupation” and “genocide” has grown four fold, and the total world population has grown.
This is the antithesis of what happened to Jewish people during the Nazi regime both in Europe, and worldwide.
A Pro-Castro communist in the United States murdered two Israelis in Washington DC in 2025
Sarah Milgrim and Yarón Lischinsky murdered in DC by Elias Rodriguez in 2025.
Sarah Milgrim and Yarón Lischinsky, two Israeli Embassy staffers, were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC by Elias Rodriguez, a member of the Chicago branch of Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) on the evening of May 21, 2025.
The PSL is a Marxist-Leninist group with ties to Havana, and the title of the assassin’s manifesto posted on X ” Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home” echoed Che Guevara’s call for terrorism against civilians. Guevara’s widest circulated case for political violence and terrorism is found in the letter he wrote and had delivered at the 1966 Tricontinental Conference.
… “Carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be; make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move.”
The conference held in Havana from January 3, 1966 through January 16, 1966, gathered terrorists and guerillas from around the world to coordinate efforts to subvert and destroy democracies using violent means, replacing them with communist regimes.
The letter was later published by the Cuban dictatorship in 1967 in a book format and titled ” Message to the Tricontinental ”, and is still circulated today.
Communist activist linked to Cuban dictatorship advocates killing more Israeli diplomats
American communist activist Calla Walsh, co-founder of Unity of Fields (formerly the U.S. branch of Palestine Action, proscribed as a terrorist group by the U.K.), and co-chair of the National Network on Cuba in an interview on October 24, 2025 with Beirut-based journalist Laith Marouf on Wartime Cafe in which she called for the killing of more Israeli embassy staffers as an act of resistance.
“We should be asking ourselves why there weren’t 100 more Elias Rodriguezes [who murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington D.C.]? Why there weren’t 10 of us able to evacuate him and take out more Zionist diplomats? And I think the response we saw from people in the region and in the Axis of Resistance countries shows the importance of his action. … “And that resistance anywhere in this world is justified and necessary. And you don’t have to go to Palestine to take part in resistance. If you live in the U.S., you can do it right there, and that’s exactly what Elias did.”
A month prior to the October 7, 2023 terror attacks on Israel, Ms. Walsh was welcoming Miguel Diaz-Canel to the United States and posting it on Twitter.
Havana bears responsibility both for collaborating with terrorist groups and Islamist terror sponsoring states, like Iran, that seek the destruction of Israel, and through Havana’s propaganda efforts creating the climate of hate and antisemitism that is inviting violence against Jewish people both in Israel and around the world.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his speech following the vote to equate Zionism with racism prophetically warned what the impact would be to the cause of international human rights.
The terrible lie that has been told here today will have terrible consequences. Not only will people begin to say, indeed they have already begun to say that the United Nations is a place where lies are told, but far more serious, grave and perhaps irreparable harm will be done to the cause of human rights itself. The harm will arise first because it will strip from racism the precise and abhorrent meaning that it still precariously holds today. How will the people of the world feel about racism and the need to struggle against it, when they are told that it is an idea as broad as to include the Jewish national liberation movement?
As the lie spreads, it will do harm in a second way. Many of the members of the United Nations owe their independence in no small part to the notion of human rights, as it has spread from the domestic sphere to the international sphere exercised its influence over the old colonial powers. We are now coming into a time when that independence is likely to be threatened again. There will be new forces, some of them arising now, new prophets and new despots, who will justify their actions with the help of just such distortions of words as we have sanctioned here today. Today we have drained the word “racism” of its meaning. Tomorrow, terms like “national self-determination” and “national honor” will be perverted in the same way to serve the purposes of conquest and exploitation.
The best antidote to bad speech is good speech, and I invite you to listen to Ambassador Moynihan’s full speech here.
In an interview with Beirut-based journalist Laith Marouf, American activist Calla Walsh, co-founder of Unity of Fields (formerly the U.S. branch of Palestine Action, proscribed as a terrorist group by the U.K.), called the United States “the most violent genocidal empire that has ever existed in the history of the world.” She questioned why “there weren’t 100 more Elias Rodriguezes [who murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington D.C.], why there weren’t 10 of us able to evacuate him and take out more Zionist diplomats.” Walsh noted that Iranian TV responded to the attack by claiming that “100 Yahya Sinwars were born in the United States.”
Citing an article by Beirut-based Canadian PFLP leader Khaled Barakat, she stated that Zionists have made the entire world a battlefield and that “resistance” anywhere is “justified and necessary.” Walsh added that participation in resistance does not require travel to Palestine and can be carried out in the U.S. as well. For more information on Unity of Fields, see MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 12096. Laith Marouf is a Beirut-based former Canadian government “anti-racism trainer.”
Calla Walsh: “We’re in the U.S., in the 21st century, in the most violent, genocidal empire that has ever existed in the history of the world.
[…]
“We should be asking ourselves why there weren’t 100 more Elias Rodriguezes [who murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington D.C.]? Why there weren’t 10 of us able to evacuate him and take out more Zionist diplomats? And I think the response we saw from people in the region and in the Axis of Resistance countries shows the importance of his action.
“You know, on Iranian TV we hear newscasters saying that Yahya Sinwars are being born in the United States, and that this was a martyrdom operation. Khaled Barakat [Beirut-based Canadian PFLP leader] wrote an amazing article contextualizing Elias’s actions in the history of external operations in the Palestinian revolution. And that the Zionists and the imperialists have made the entire world a battlefield and therefore we have to be behind enemy lines everywhere.
“And that resistance anywhere in this world is justified and necessary. And you don’t have to go to Palestine to take part in resistance. If you live in the U.S., you can do it right there, and that’s exactly what Elias did.”
https://www.memri.org/tv/unity-of-fields-calla-walsh-resistance-us-elias-rodriguez
When Zionism was maligned at the UN, he fought for truth — what would he say today?
Fifty years ago, one speech countered the onset of pernicious lies about Israel
Jeffrey K. Salkin November 11, 2025
Ask most New Yorkers today, and they will tell you that “Moynihan” is the name of a grand, elegant train hall on the West Side.
But the real Daniel Patrick Moynihan made his greatest mark across town, on the East Side, at the United Nations headquarters.
There, 50 years ago this week, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” It was a Soviet- and Arab-backed effort, cloaked in the language of human rights, designed to delegitimize the Jewish state.
And Moynihan, then the United States ambassador to the U.N., rose before the General Assembly and thundered:
“The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.”
The resolution, he added, “reeked of the totalitarian mind, stank of the totalitarian state.”
With those words, Moynihan showed that friendship with the Jewish people need not be sentimental; indeed, his was not. That friendship must root itself in something far deeper than affection — in fealty to truth itself.
And the truth was simple: Zionism was, and is, not racism.
“There are black Jews, brown Jews, white Jews, Jews from the Orient and Jews from the West,” Moynihan said, correctly noting that Israel’s citizenry was among the most diverse in the world. And Zionism was not a form of hatred, he argued, but rather “part of the general upsurge of national consciousness and aspiration that overtook most peoples of Europe and in time spread to all of Africa and Asia.”
As Gil Troy shows in his biography Moynihan’s Moment, Pat Moynihan was an unlikely champion of Israel. “Israel was not my religion. I had never even been there,” he admitted. Born in Hell’s Kitchen in 1927, Irish Catholic and rough-edged, he had no personal ties either to Zionism or to Jews.
But he understood that the vote on Resolution 3379 was a warning sign about the health of the U.N., and the noble principles it aimed to uphold. By enacting the resolution, he said, the institution risked becoming “a place where lies are told.” He cautioned that diluting the word “racism” to include Zionism would pollute the fight against racism itself. And he foresaw “ideological secondhand smoke” — falsehoods that linger long after their supposed repeal.
And as he predicted, years later, we still live with the fallout of Resolution 3379 — even though it was rescinded in 1991, thanks to American diplomacy under President George H.W. Bush.
Antisemitism is resurgent. Lies about Israel metastasize with every news cycle. The U.N.’s obsession with Israel continues, even as atrocities elsewhere draw barely a mention.
To remember Moynihan’s stand for truth is to remember that it did not, inevitably, need to end this way. In 1975, Moynihan — whose speech propelled him to a Senate seat, which he held for four terms — was not alone. Activists like the late Vernon Jordan, César Chávez, and Bayard Rustin opposed the “Zionism is racism” resolution. The Black militant Eldridge Cleaver, writing from prison, declared: “To condemn the Jewish survival doctrine of Zionism as racism is a travesty upon the truth … Of all people in the world, the Jews have not only suffered particularly from racist persecution, they have done more than any other people in history to expose and condemn racism.”
Moynihan’s brilliance was that he defended principles, not parties. He would have celebrated our current moment of tentative reconciliation, amid the ceasefire. And, with his trademark Irish bluntness, he would also have warned Israel’s leaders not to erase his moral victory with policies that cheapen Zionism’s meaning.
He would remind them that Zionism at its core is the Jewish people’s right to self-determination — a liberation movement, not a supremacist one.
Can we all, today, receive his message?
The peace now unfolding offers the world a test. The same institution that once branded Zionism racism now witnesses Jews and Palestinians daring to think about the possibility of building together. It must support them.
This anniversary should not pass quietly. It is a reminder that moral clarity is possible — and necessary. Moynihan stood up in 1975 not because it was popular, but because it was right. He refused to acquiesce in a lie.
That is what leadership looks like.
https://forward.com/opinion/782749/zionism-racism-united-nations-moynihan/
The US delayed a resolution removing equating Zionism with racism to avoid ‘damaging clash’ with Arabs, UK docs reveal
Newly uncovered British documents have revealed that the United States delayed its efforts to overturn a United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism for two years to avoid a “highly damaging clash” with Arab nations.
The documents show that the US and the UK were concerned about the diplomatic fallout with the Arab world if it moved too quickly.
On 10 November, 1975, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, which declared that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. The resolution, proposed by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Cuba, without consulting the Arab group at the UN and served as a substitute for a direct attempt to suspend or expel Israel from the organisation. It passed with 72 votes in favour, including all Arab member states, 35 against (including the US, UK and most Western countries), and 32 abstentions.
Since its adoption, pro-Israel lobbies in the US and Europe have periodically campaigned to have the resolution rescinded. One such campaign began in December 1989, led by US Vice-President Dan Quayle and supported by Assistant Secretary of State for International Organisation Affairs, John Bolton. However, British diplomatic reports from that period, unearthed by MEMO in the National Archives, described Quayle’s initiative as “naked political opportunism”.
The British contacts in the US mission in the UN found that Quayle was looking for an idea “which would go down well with the Jewish audience in New York” and appealing “to Zionist feeling”. “The vice-president’s espousal of this cause is irresistible to right-wing republican sentiment,” contacts added.
The British mission at the UN reported that Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar advised the US against pursuing the issue, suggesting that it was best to “let sleeping dogs lie.” Crispin Tickell, the UK’s head of mission, warned that any attempt to repeal the resolution would likely fail due to the ongoing deadlock in the Middle East peace process and the lack of US recognition of Palestinian statehood. Raising the issue at the time “would provide an opportunity for the extreme Arabs to make mischief”, Tickell argued
Tickell also predicted that a US-led campaign could draw attention to discriminatory Israeli policies, including its immigration laws. He argued that most non-aligned countries would be compelled to support the existing resolution under such circumstances. The British senior diplomat further strongly believed that given the broader context of the peace process “a clash between the Americans and the Arab group (on the issue repealing Zionism/racism resolution) could be highly damaging”.
He advised the UK should find ways of expressing to the Americans “at a high level” the UK”s “deep misgivings about the political damage that any campaign on this issue could do to the UN and to the peace process generally”. So the Americans “should be urged not to pursue” Quayle’s campaign to revoke 1975 resolution “in the near future”.
The report maintained that any new resolution to disavowing the old one “would have to offer something to Arab sensibilities to gain broad consensus.”
The British government advised the US to avoid pushing for the resolution to be repealed unless the effort also addressed Arab concerns, such as Palestinian self-determination. The UK’s Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd echoed this stance, suggesting that a successful repeal would require balancing recognition of Zionism’s legitimacy with a clear acknowledgment of Palestinian rights. While instructing his staff to express to the Americans the UK’s “firm wish that no action will be taken in the near future”, he argued that repealing the resolution “might stand better chance of success if it offered something to the Arabs”.
After bilateral discussions with the British, the US mission became “well aware of the danger that a repealing resolution might well end up like a Christmas tree” as “the hard-line Arab states adding other unacceptable amendments” to any US new draft resolution. The Egyptians also revealed that they were “lobbying the Americans regularly” on the damage that might be done to the peace process if the repeal of the Zionism/Racism resolution were pushed forward in near future.
The US also sought Saudi Arabia’s support for its campaign, but failed. Saudi officials rejected a US proposal to replace the resolution’s wording with a statement describing Zionism as a “movement for the liberation of Jewish people.” In a letter to the UK, the Saudi government condemned any move to repeal the resolution, accusing Israel of systemic abuses against Palestinians.
The strongly-worded letter argued that such a move “would only provide support to the racist measures practiced by Israel.” It highlighted that these measures targeted “the unarmed children” and included “the savage treatment of women and the aged as well as the demolition of homes, the expulsion of the Palestinians from their country and their detention in prisons for long periods of times with their subjection to all sorts of horrifying tortures.” It strongly criticised Israel for “gouging of eyes, the breaking of bones and entombment (of Palestinians) while alive.”
Internal UK government communications showed that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) viewed the timing as unfavourable for a repeal attempt. The FCO feared that a failed attempt “could embarrass moderate Arab states like Egypt and Jordan”, while Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi and others “would probably have a field day appealing to the Arab popular opinion.”
Moreover, Israel “might also find itself embarrassed” with its new-found East European friends given the escalation of Intifada and the Israeli intransigence. Any failed attempt would be “disastrous” while a guaranteed success “must probably await more propitious political circumstances”, it was concluded.
Recognising the diplomatic risks, the US informed European partners that it would not immediately push for a repeal vote but would continue to “work hard” to build sufficient support.
The US resumed its campaign in 1991 after the Middle East peace process gained momentum following the Madrid Conference. Syria and the PLO involved in talks with Israel which subsequently succeeded in establishing diplomatic relations with Russia, China, India and other countries.
On 16 December, 1991, the UN General Assembly passed a new resolution revoking the 1975 determination that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. This time, 111 countries voted in favour, 25 against, and 13 abstained. Notably, the new resolution did not address Palestinian or Arab rights, and Arab states voted against it, but seven states; Egypt, Bahrain, Comoros, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman and Tunisia were absent from the vote.
Human Rights
Activist who vandalized Israeli defense contractor welcomed Cuban communist leader Diaz-Canel during U.N. visit
A former Disney actress and a self-described “communist” activist Calla Walsh was arrested with two others on felony charges for allegedly vandalizing an Israeli company’s New Hampshire offices
By Gelet Martínez Fragela
A former Disney Channel actress and a self-described “communist” activist Calla Walsh was arrested with two others on felony charges for allegedly vandalizing an Israeli company’s New Hampshire offices.
The felony charges stem from an incident in which Walsh, a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts reportedly vandalized a Merrimack, New Hampshire building along with Bridget Shergalis, of Dayville, Connecticut, and a third demonstrator, all aligned with the anti-Israel group, “Palestine Action U.S.”
The group calls itself a “direct action network dismantling Elbit Systems and the Zionist War Machine,” and was issuing online “Action Target Maps” to target Israeli companies as well as instructional manuals on how to weaponize fire extinguishers “to spray a jet of vicious liquid.”
The Merrimack, New Hampshire building targeted by Walsh and her two co-defendants houses Haifa-based defense contractor Elbit Systems.
Walsh has promoted herself on social media as a “communist,” and to prove her point, on Sept. 21, she posted a photograph of herself in September welcoming Cuban Communist Party leader and appointed president Miguel Diaz-Canel to the United States.
The communist leader came to New York with his wife, Lis Cuesta, to participate in a discussion at the United Nations about “fostering debt sustainability” despite Cuba not being a member of the World Bank or International Monetary Fund.
The tweeted photograph depicts a smiling Walsh wearing a black evening gown and leaning into the communist president who has his arm around her while sporting a charcoal suit, white Oxford shirt and blue tie with a Cuban flag lapel pin.
“An honor to welcome Cuban President @DiazCanelB to the US The first Cuban President born after 1959, President Diaz Canel symbolizes the continuity of revolution, generation to generation. May the youth of today be the last generation that has to live with the cruel US blockade!” Walsh wrote on Sept. 21.
Supporting communist Cuba has been one of the actresses’ top priorities. In a topic based graphic, ADN chartered Walsh’s most frequently used words in her tweets up until 2022.
The most frequent word Walsh used was “Cuba” while other leading phrases were “BDS,” “Zionist” “NATO” and “war.”
Cuban Exile leaders who combat the Castro/Diaz-Canel military dictatorship lashed out at Walsh for being on the wrong side of history.
Marcell Felipe, who serves as president of Inspire America and also as the Chairman of the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora said Walsh was abusing her celebrity to validate human rights violations.
“The combination of ignorance and self-righteousness of some actors allow them to be used as PR tools for people like Miguel Diaz Canel who disguise themselves as political figures as a cover for their torture, killing and trafficking of people, drugs and arms,” Felipe said in a telephone interview with ADN.
Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, spokesman for the Cuban Democratic Directorate and Chairman of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistancesaid Walsh’s support for Diaz Canel sends a damaging message that champions evil and promotes historical revisionism.
“Praise and recognition for dictators from a privileged position is the worst sort of violence, the one that facilitates oppression,” Gutiérrez told ADN. “At its core is the left wing arrogance that seeks to impose slogans on reality.”
Walsh’s post also received critical responses from other X users who chastised her for her revisionist version of Cuban history.
“You got the continuity part right. As for the Cuban Revolution by the way, that one got betrayed soon after toppling the Batista dictatorship by replacing it with another one, a Castro dictatorship that would be much longer and more cruel,” wrote one user named neuvondacuba.
“As for the U.S. embargo against Cuba, using the term blockade is quite sensationalist. The Cuban regime that @DiazCanelB represents likes to use the term to create an alternative reality. It’s a successful strategy applied to so much of what’s actually real for Cubans.”
While Walsh has courted foreign dictators such as Diaz-Canel, she has also endeared herself to the likes of Democratic Party leaders in the U.S.
In a response to pro-Israel activists illuminating a photograph of Walsh with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the self-described communist ex-Disney star ridiculed Zionists.
“Not to expose myself, but the Zionists trying to cancel Elizabeth Warren for being associated with me through a picture I took with her when I was 15 might be the funniest turn this has taken,” she wrote on June 13, 2022.
The photograph depicts Warren wrapping her left arm around Walsh outside in a wooded area as the senator and then 15-year old activist both smile. Her comments contradict her former comments in a 2020 interview with a Boston magazine in which she boasted about her time working on the Massachusetts senator’s political campaign.
Walsh is the daughter of Mary Sullivan Walsh, a writing instructor at Harvard Extension School and Boston University English professor Chris Walsh. Her political activism coupled with her radical turn as a self-ascribed “communist” has earned her the adulation of liberal news outlets.
Boston Magazine and The New York Times both heralded the then-16-year-old’s participation in Ed Markey’s senate campaign, saying she helped the progressive democrat achieve reelection in 2020.
She has also been a longstanding critic of Israel and U.S. policy supporting the Jewish homeland, and has even revealed the names and addresses of pro-Israel organizations online as part of the “Mapping Project.”
Such maps have been utilized since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks to help pro-Palestinian activists pinpoint the location of Jewish and pro-Israel organizations.
The map’s lines extend outwards to pinpoint and isolate those the project says is responsible for “the colonization of Palestine” and other purported “harms that we see linked, such as policing, U.S. Imperialism and displacement,” according to an online report published by the Anti-Defamation League.
A total of nearly 500 organizations are named.
“Under the guise of this interactive map, the authors essentially name, shame and blame Jewish communal organizations in Massachusetts for many of the world’s problems and specifically calls out Zionism as a ‘harm’ thus implicating the vast majority of the Jewish community that identifies in some way with the state of Israel, the ADL reports.
“This BDS Boston-endorsed Project includes a disturbing and antisemitic call to “dismantle” and “disrupt” most of Boston’s Jewish community and concludes with a thinly veiled threat that “every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted.”
On June 3, 2022, Walsh shared a copy of one of the maps on X with her anti-U.S. sentiments.
“From our friends at the Mapping Project! Their map and articles illustrate how local support for the colonization of Palestine is structurally tied to policing, evictions, and privatization locally, and to US imperialist projects worldwide,” Walsh wrote.
She has also implied violence is the only solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.
“Not supporting the Palestinian resistance means asking them to peacefully submit to Israeli colonization. There is no “peaceful solution” under military occupation. One can’t claim to want to see Palestine liberated if one doesn’t support Palestinians’ actually means of liberation,” she wrote on X on April 18, 2022.
Bridget Shergalis, 27, also arrested alongside Walsh appeared in the 2011 Disney comedy series “So Random!” and “Criminal Minds.” She has also appeared in films such as “All About Steve,” and “Bad Teacher.”
Pro-Palestinian protestors were blocked the driveway to the Elbit Systems, according to a report published by NBC Boston.
The building was vandalized with red spray paint, and smoke was seen coming from the roof. Once inside, police officers found evidence of other property damage including HVAC equipment and broken skylights.
One of the suspects reportedly had possession of an incendiary device similar to another found on the roof where the smoke was emanating from.
Walsh, Shergalis, and a third activist, Sophie Marika Ross, 22, of Housatonic, Massachusetts, are facing several felony charges for vandalizing the Israeli defense contractor’s offices.
Those charges include attempted burglary, rioting, sabotage, and one count of misdemeanor criminal trespassing for each suspect, according to the local Merrimack, New Hampshire news outlet, Patch.
Walsh, who was held on $20,000 bail, complained on X after paying for her release that she is “facing an extreme level of political repression from the state” and declared that “History will absolve us and Palestine will be free.”
Walsh has denied any wrongdoing despite the felonious accusations against her. Her mother chastised the prosecutors’ discretion, calling for the “totally inflated and embellished” charges to be dismissed.
Rabbi Matthew Levin of the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County said that the rise in recent antisemitism jeopardizes the commitment the free world has to preventing genocide.
“’Never Again’ has to have real meaning, and if we allow antisemitism and this poisonous false narrative to live on, we will betray our solemn commitment to ensuring the Holocaust and now October 7, never happens again,” Levin told ADN. “That means there is no place in our politics, in our social media, academia or on college campuses.