Center for a Free Cuba statement on terrorist attacks against Israel one year later
The Center for a Free Cuba remembers and continues to strongly condemn the terrorist attacks carried out against Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and continues to call on all democratic nations to unite in opposing this outrage by the terrorist organization.
Over 1,200 were killed in these terror attacks, and 254 innocents taken hostage. One day later, on October 8, 2023, the terrorist group Hezbollah began launching missile attacks into northern Israel causing tens of thousands to evacuate their homes.
One year later, scores of hostages remain in captivity, and many have been killed. Missiles continue to be launched into Israel.
The United Nations’ inquiry commission “verified information concerning the deliberate targeting of civilian women, including the killing, abduction and abuse of women, as well as the desecration of women’s bodies, sexual violence and other gender-based crimes.This was the largest mass murder of unarmed Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.
Not only Hamas, and Hezbollah, but Iran’s Islamic Republic, and Cuba’s Communist dictatorship are allies in terrorism against Israel. They have a long history of conducting terrorist acts against the Jewish state.
The Cuban government did not condemn the Hamas terror attacks, but officials, and their official media, have justified the terror attacks, spreading antisemitic tropes.
The Castro regime has been an open enemy of Israel since Havana severed diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973.
October 6th of last year marked the 50th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War, a war of aggression by Syria and Egypt, with expeditionary forces from eight Muslim states. Three thousand Cuban troops supported Syria during the 1973 Yom Kippur War inflicting heavy casualties on Israeli forces. Cuban tank crews fought with Syrian troops. 180 Cubans were killed and 250 were injured.
This hostility towards Israel did not end when Cubans left Syria in 1975, but the Havana regime continued to aid and train terrorists in the Middle East, and allowed Hezbollah to set up a base in Cuba.
Today, Cuba, directly and through Venezuela, continues to provide intelligence to Hamas as it has for decades.
In February of 2023, a Hamas delegation visited the Cuban Ambassador in Lebanon. On June 15, 2023, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi met with Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel in Havana. Raisi had visited Cuban client states Venezuela and Nicaragua prior to arriving in Cuba. On December 4, 2023, Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel visited the Islamic Republic of Iran, and met with its theocratic autocrats. The last high profile leader to visit Iran was Fidel Castro in May of 2001 when the late communist dictator visited Tehran.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards fund Hamas to attack Israel, and at the same time are sending drones to Putin to kill Ukrainians.
The Cuban communist dictatorship provides intelligence to Hamas to attack Israel, and at the same time is sending soldiers to Putin to kill Ukrainians.
On September 26, 2024, the Israeli military carried out an airstrike while Hezbollah leaders were meeting in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut. Killed in the attack was Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of the terrorist group. Miguel Díaz-Canel, Raul Castro’s handpicked president, who had refused to condemn the October 7 terror attack, on September 28th, denounced the “targeted assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah” as “cowardly.”
Terrorists are united, but democracies are not. The European Union has failed to place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards or the Communist Party of Cuba on the list of terrorist organizations. Moreover, the EU remains one of the main aid providers and trade partners of the Cuban communist dictatorship. On May 15, 2024, the State Department also removed Cuba from the list of countries not cooperating in the fight against terrorism.
It is past time for democratic nations to unite and take stronger actions against this terrorist axis.