Fidel Castro's Doubts About Cuban Communism and Iranian Anti-Semitism
By ROBERT MACKEY
In what seems like a case of life imitating "The Simpsons," Fidel Castro
said, during a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic,
that Cuba's communist economic model has proved to be a failure.
In a blog post about the interview, Mr. Goldberg wrote:
I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something
worth exporting.
"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he said.
Some readers might hear an echo of a 1998 episode of The Simpsons, in
which a cartoon version of Mr. Castro told disappointed colleagues,
"Comrades, our nation is completely bankrupt. We have no choice but to
abandon communism…. I know, I know, I know — but we all knew from day
one this mumbo-jumbo wouldn't fly."
Mr. Goldberg reports that his first reaction was to think of another
American comedy series:
This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the
leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, "Never mind"?
All joking aside, Mr. Goldberg also noted that Julia Sweig, an expert on
Cuba who was with him in the room, interpreted the remark by the man who
led Cuba's Communist revolution this way:
He wasn't rejecting the ideas of the revolution. I took it to be an
acknowledgment that under 'the Cuban model' the state has much too big a
role in the economic life of the country.
In a previous blog post about his trip to Havana, Mr. Goldberg wrote
that Mr. Castro, "the grandfather of global anti-Americanism," was
worried about tensions in the Middle East:
His message to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, he
said, was simple: Israel will only have security if it gives up its
nuclear arsenal, and the rest of the world's nuclear powers will only
have security if they, too, give up their weapons. …
Castro's message to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, was
not so abstract, however. Over the course of this first, five-hour
discussion, Castro repeatedly returned to his excoriation of
anti-Semitism. He criticized Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and
explained why the Iranian government would better serve the cause of
peace by acknowledging the "unique" history of anti-Semitism and trying
to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.
Mr. Castro also said that the Christian tradition of blaming Jews for
the death of Jesus was at the root of centuries of anti-Semitism. Mr.
Goldberg reported that the former Cuban leader said that he wanted to
pass on some thoughts to Iran's president:
He said the Iranian government should understand the consequences
of theological anti-Semitism.
"This went on for maybe 2,000 years," he said. "I don't think
anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than
the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because
they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims
for anything."
The Iranian government should understand that the Jews "were
expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world,
as the ones who killed God. In my judgment here's what happened to them:
Reverse selection. What's reverse selection? Over 2,000 years they were
subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms. One might
have assumed that they would have disappeared; I think their culture and
religion kept them together as a nation."
He continued: "The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder
than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust." I asked him
if he would tell Ahmadinejad what he was telling me.
"I am saying this so you can communicate it," he answered.
Mr. Goldberg also reported that Mr. Castro, who seems to be trying to
carve out a new role for himself as an antinuclear activist, even
expressed regrets about his own behavior during the Cuban Missile Crisis:
I asked him, "At a certain point it seemed logical for you to
recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S. Does what you recommended still
seem logical now?"
He answered: "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I
know now, it wasn't worth it all."
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