Pro-Hamas Cuba Joins South Africa ‘Genocide’ Case Against Israel

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, center, and his wife Lis Cuesta march during a pro-Pal
AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
Frances Martel

The Cuban External Relations Ministry announced this weekend it would intervene in the ongoing case against Israel brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to “end the genocide against the Palestinian people.”

South Africa sued Israel at the ICJ at the Hague in December, accusing its government of “genocide” against Palestinians in the Hamas stronghold of Gaza. Hamas, an overtly genocidal Sunni jihadist terrorist organization, invaded Israel from Gaza on October 7, engaging in mass killings, gang rape, torture, abductions, and other atrocities. Hamas killed an estimated 1,200 people – including infants, elderly people, and disabled people – and abducted an estimated 250 people, of which about 116 remain in captivity.

The South African case claims that Israel’s self-defense military operation in Gaza, launched following a war declaration against Hamas in October, is in reality an attempt to eliminate the civilian Palestinian population of Gaza. South Africa’s case has been plagued by poor arguments and errors, including incorrect citations of the Bible.

Israeli legal adviser Tal Becker dismissed the suit in January as “barely distinguishable from Hamas’s own rejectionist rhetoric” and accused South Africa of endorsing Hamas’s attempted genocide against the Jewish people in its attempt to smear Israel as a genocidal actor.

File/An image of the late Fidel Castro hangs in the International Press Center (CPI) where Akram Samhan, the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to Cuba, left, walks with Cuban Foreign Ministry official Antonio Luis Pubillones before the start of a press conference on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

“If the claim of the applicant now is that in the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas, Israel must be denied the ability to defend its citizens, then the absurd upshot of South Africa’s argument is this,” Becker argued, “under the guise against Israel of the allegation of ‘genocide,’ this court is called to end operations against an organization that pursues an actual genocidal agenda.”

The most significant action the ICJ has taken so far on the lawsuit is its order in May demanding that Israel not engage in military operations in Rafah, the southernmost city of Gaza, a demand Israel ignored. The ICJ does not have any material enforcement mechanism.

The Cuban Communist Party, through its foreign ministry, wholeheartedly supported South Africa’s stance in its statement this weekend.

“Israel, with total impunity, protected by the complicity of the government of the United States, ignores its obligations as an occupying power as per the Fourth Geneva Convention,” the Cuban foreign ministry (MINREX) asserted in its statement on the intervention, which it published on Saturday. “Genocide, Apartheid, forced displacement, and collective punishment cannot have a place in the world today, nor can they be tolerated by the international community.”

The Cuban communist regime, which boasts a history of over half a century of committing a litany of human rights atrocities, claimed that the goal of the South African ICJ action was to “stop the atrocities against the Palestinian people as a result of the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force on the part of Israel.”

The ICJ is the official court of the United Nations. Only states can be plaintiffs or defendants at the ICJ. The court has a mechanism to allow third-party states who are signatories to relevant international law to offer statements on how the court should interpret the provisions of that legal document.

Cuba, a notoriously repressive communist state, is one of only four countries on the State Department’s official list of state sponsors of terrorism as a result of its longtime collaboration with terrorist organizations such as Hamas. Cuba maintains close relationships with the three other countries on the list – Iran, Syria, and North Korea – and has long-established friendly relationships with organizations such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist terrorist organization, and the Shiite Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah.

The Castro family regime, which has ruled Cuba since 1959, did not condemn Hamas for its torture and rape spree on October 7, instead immediately offering support to the “Palestinian” cause. In November, the regime lit up the center of Havana in the colors of the Palestinian flag and held an anti-Israel concert in response to Israel’s self-defense operations.

“We will not be among the indifferent,” Miguel Díaz-Canel, a figurehead for dictator Raúl Castro who serves as “president,” declared that month.

Díaz-Canel traveled to Iran – the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism and a close ally of Hamas – to meet with then-President Ebrahim Raisi and offer “unbreakable support” to the Hamas cause. He referred to Israel operations to prevent a repeat of October 7 as a “genocide.”

More recently, Díaz-Canel donned a keffiyeh, a scarf that many use as a symbol of anti-Israel “resistance,” to welcome a group of radical leftist American students in mid-June. The event was organized by a pro-communist group known as “Let Cuba Live” and reportedly moderated by Manolo de los Santos, a left-wing activist involved with the People’s Forum, a leftist agitator group with ties to communist China.

“Palestine hurts, and every day that we do nothing for her should hurt,” Díaz-Canel proclaimed. “The global struggle for justice and dignity is being defined there.”

Cuba will join several other left-wing states, including fellow dictatorship Nicaragua and the socialist government of Chile, in joining the case via third-party intervention. Other governments that have expressed interest in supporting the South African case against Israel include Turkey, a nation whose government publicly denies the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and Colombia, whose President Gustavo Petro has compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

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