Is Israel an ‘apartheid’ state? This U.N. report says yes.[Wash.Post]

If being an apartheid state means committing inhumane acts, systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, then Israel is guilty, a United Nations panel has determined.

The report, published by the U.N.’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), drew sharp criticism from the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, who called it “anti-Israel propaganda.”

Titled, “Israeli Practices Toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” the report was written by Richard Falk, a former U.N. special rapporteur to the Palestinian territories known for harsh criticisms of Israel, and Virginia Tilley, professor of political science at Southern Illinois University.

The two concluded that Israel has established an apartheid regime aimed at dominating the Palestinians. The authors write that the Palestinian people face “the racial oppression that results from the apartheid regime.”

“This dual legal system is indicative of an apartheid regime,” said the authors.

“Israel defends its rejection of the Palestinians’ return in frankly racist language," wrote Falk and Tilley.

Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, welcomed the report.

Emmanuel Nahshon ✔@EmmanuelNahshon #UN #ESCWA has issued today a " Der Stürmer"like report, NOT endorsed by @UNSG . Friendly advice- dont read it without anti nausea pills.... 1:17 PM - 15 Mar 2017

“The attempt to smear and falsely label the only true democracy in the Middle East by creating a false analogy is despicable and constitutes a blatant lie,” said Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, also in a tweet.

“The United States stands with our ally Israel and will continue to oppose biased and anti-Israel actions across the U.N. system and around the world,” wrote U.S. ambassador Haley.

Richard Falk, world’s greatest Jew-hater?

Tuvia Brodie, 19/02/14
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/5575

Richard Falk is in the news again today. He is the United Nations’ ‘Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967’. He is a man with a mission. His mission is to demonize Israel.

He returns to the news just as Israel Apartheid Week prepares to open its month-long Israel-is-apartheid extravaganza, beginning next week. Perhaps Falk wants to be first to attack the hated Israeli. Perhaps he simply likes the words, Israel-is-apartheid. Perhaps he just hates Jews.

He has been ‘The UN Special Rapporteur for six years. His anti-Israel portfolio is extensive. An academician by training, his attacks against Israel have been uniquely un-collegial. They have been excessive. They have been beyond reason.

He repulses Jews. He repulses pro-Israel advocates. He has even repulsed anti-Israel ‘Palestinians’.

That’s hard to do. But Falk is an expert. His expertise is demonization. He may be the world’s greatest Jew-hater today.

To understand such a label, consider the following: in June, 2011, this master of demonization posted a cartoon on his personal blog which, he said, was anti-American. But that description did not explain the anti-Israel and anti-Jew content of the cartoon.

The cartoon showed the Statue of Lady Justice carrying a sword. She (‘Justice’) was blindfolded. She had a dog beside her. She had the dog on a leash. The dog wore an Israel flag as a ‘doggie’ coat. It was angrily crunching on ‘Palestinian’ bones. The dog was simultaneously crushing Arab bones in its mouth—and urinating on Justice. The dog wore a kippa—the head-cap worn by religious Jews. The dog appeared to be grinning. It was destroying Arab bones and soiling Justice.

The message was clear. Jews in Israel ‘consumed’ Arabs. Israeli Jews had no regard for Justice.

It’s unclear why Falk should call this cartoon anti-American. Lady Justice is not a purely American icon. There was no item in the picture identified with America. The only items identified were marked as Jewish—the flag and the kippa.

When Falk was heavily criticized for posting something so blatantly ugly, he denied the viciousness of the cartoon. He denied it was anti-Semitic. Finally, under intense pressure, he took it down. (“Timeline: Richard Falk’s Anti-Semitic Cartoon, Denial, and Non-Apology Apology”, unwatch.org, July 7, 2011).

Almost eighteen months later, Falk was asked to resign from his position at Human Rights Watch (HRW) (“Human Rights Watch Expels Anti-Semitic Official Richard Falk”, JewishPress.com, December 19, 2012). The NGO UN Watch had campaigned hard against Falk being at HRW. They had argued that such an anti-Semite at HRW undermined HRW’s founding principles (“Human Rights Watch Should Remove Anti-Semitic U.N. Official Richard Falk from Its Board,” unwatch.org, December 17, 2012). HRW agreed. They fired Falk.

UN Watch has long argued that Falk is an extreme anti-Semite. They reference his support of Hamas, which is an identified terrorist organization whose stated goal is to destroy Israel. UN Watch told HRW that Falk has been condemned for spreading anti-Semitism and 9/11 conspiracies by British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay (ibid).

Falk has said that Jews run Washington (JewishPress, above). He has regularly accused Israel of plotting a ‘holocaust’ against ‘Palestinians’ (ibid). He calls Israel, ‘genocidal’ (“Israel is ‘genocidal,’ says UN’s Richard Falk in TV interview,” Times of Israel, December 17, 2013). He has berated Israel for demanding that Palestinians renounce violence (ibid).

He has said that Israel treats ‘Palestinians’ the way German Nazis treated Jews (“Israel deports American academic”, The Guardian, December 15, 2008). He has endorsed a book that praised Adolf Hitler. This book, The Wandering Who?, by Gilad Atzmon, is so vile that 20 anti-Zionist activists condemned it as racist and anti-Semitic. Anti-Israel Palestinians condemned it for the same reason.

The book was so ugly that Tony Greenstein, a founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a member of “Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods”, tried in vain to convince Falk to pull his endorsement of the book (see “UN’s Richard Falk meeting anti-Semite in London, condemned by Palestinian activists for racism”, unwatch.org, December 25, 2013). He failed to convince Falk to recant.

Now, Richard Falk will retire from his UN position. He will present his last ‘report’ to the UN later in March. The contents of that report have been released (“UN’s Falk Accuses Israel of Inhuman Acts”, Arutz Sheva, February 19, 2014). He accuses Israel of apartheid and inhuman acts against the Arab.

The report is pure Richard Falk. It is, in other words, pure anti-Israel propaganda.

Of course, the UN will not call this final Falk attack an anti-Semitic screed. The UN won’t call it anti-Israel. They won’t call it demonizing.

They’ll call it an official report. Richard Falk will no doubt retire with a smile on his face.

Championing global human rights: interview with Richard Falk

Victor Kattan The Electronic Intifada 24 December 2008
https://electronicintifada.net/content/championing-global-human-rights-interview-richard-falk/7873

In June 2007, Professor Richard Falk called on world governments to prevent Israel’s “current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy” in the Gaza Strip. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

Earlier this month, Israeli authorities deported Professor Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who had arrived in the country to conduct his duties to investigate rights abuses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Electronic Intifada contributor Victor Kattan interviewed Falk about the motivation behind his deportation, comparisons he has made between Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and Nazi crimes committed during World War II, his dual role as an academic and a human rights advocate, and how defenders of Israel deflect attention from what is happening on the ground by attacking critics of the state’s policies.
Richard Falk is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Emeritus, Princeton University and a member of the New York Bar. He is currently Visiting Distinguished Professor of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has, since March 2008, been the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Falk is the author of over 20 books on international law and served on the MacBride Commission of Inquiry to investigate the atrocities in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982, as well as a UN Commission of Inquiry to investigate human rights violations at the onset of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2001. His latest book Achieving Human Rights was published by Routledge in October 2008.

Victor Kattan: You were recently deported by the government of Israel when you landed at Ben-Gurion airport in your role as UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights even though the two assistants traveling with you had been given visas to enter the country, and despite the fact that Israel’s foreign ministry had advance notification of your travel itinerary, which included a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Why do you think you were detained for 20 hours and then deported?

Richard Falk: Of course I can only speculate on the Israeli motivations. The representative of the Ministry of Interior at the airport insisted that she was merely implementing an instruction from the foreign ministry to deny me entry. Yet, this fails to explain why there was no effort to inform the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in advance of the visit. My best guess is that Israel was eager to teach me a lesson for my prior outspoken criticism, and more importantly, to send the UN a message that Israel was not willing to cooperate with a UN representative who was unacceptable to the government. Of course, the real significance of my experience involves asserting the authority of a member state to claim authority to determine who can represent the UN in evaluating contested behavior. If Israel succeeds it would be an unfortunate precedent, and for this reason I will resist the temptation to resign, and will work hard to be an effective Special Rapporteur despite my unfortunate inability to visit the Palestinian territories under occupation.

VK: In June 2007, you wrote an article entitled “Slouching Towards a Palestinian Holocaust.” In the article, you posed the following question: “Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with [the] criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity?” You answered by saying:

“I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy. If ever the ethos of ‘a responsibility to protect,’ recently adopted by the UN Security Council as the basis of ‘humanitarian intervention’ is applicable, it would be to act now to start protecting the people of Gaza from further pain and suffering.”

Do you regret writing these words? If not, why not?

RF: This is a complicated question for me. I wrote those quoted words before I was appointed as Special Rapporteur, as an engaged citizen deeply concerned because the desperate plight of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza was being ignored in international circles. I felt at the time that it was both an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe, and that it could at any moment morph into a tragedy of massive proportions resulting from famine and disease. In retrospect, I think it was unfortunate to link explicitly these concerns, which remain as acute as before, with the historical experience of Jews in the Holocaust. Pragmatically, it played into the hands of apologists for the Israeli occupation tactics by shifting the debate from the Palestinian ordeal to the inflammatory implications of the linkage to the events of the Nazi era. This is consistent with a wider Israeli pattern of shifting debate from the realities of the occupation to the alleged bias of those who are reporting on these realities. I insist that the test of bias should be based on the truth or falsity of what is observed, and that is a debate I would welcome. On the level of principle I also regret my connecting the Gaza situation with the Nazi memories as it is hurtful to many people, and facilitates distraction from my objective of calling attention to the situation in Gaza. I have tried to avoid using this kind of rhetoric in my subsequent observations on the Palestinian reality, but I would stress that the underlying condition of massive collective punishment of the entire Palestinian civilian population is an ongoing reality that is both immoral and unlawful.

VK: Some international lawyers consider academic scholarship and human rights advocacy to be mutually incompatible: they say one cannot be a serious scholar and an activist. As an eminent American international lawyer with a long and distinguished track record of academic scholarship and human rights advocacy for almost half a century, which has included, among other things, opposition to the Vietnam war, apartheid in Southern Africa, the nuclear weapons industry, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and its military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, do you think that international lawyers should speak out more often? Is it possible to be a serious scholar of international law and a human rights activist?

RF: This is an important question that I have pondered throughout my career. As mentioned earlier, the true test of either scholarship and advocacy is truthfulness and accuracy, and I have always endeavored to be objective in this fundamental sense. I believe we all have multiple identities, and that it is perfectly consistent to be a scholar writing and speaking for academic audiences and an engaged citizen doing the same for the general public. In some respects, it is a matter of translating one form of communication to the other. I believe it is an important contribution to the vitality of democratic society to have the benefit of the views of academic specialists. At the same time I believe that in a classroom it is essential for a professor to be receptive to viewpoints that contradict his or her own, and I have always tried to do this. I have jokingly pointed out that among my Princeton students were Richard Perle and David Petraeus, which proves that I do not indoctrinate my students, but happily I think, they didn’t manage to convert me to their viewpoints either. What counts in the end is a belief in the importance of informed deliberation on the important policy issues of the day whether dealing with students, with scholars, or with the citizenry.

VK: John Dugard, your predecessor as UN Special Rapporteur compared the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with Apartheid. You served on the legal team in the South-West Africa (Namibia) cases for Ethiopia before the International Court of Justice in the 1960s. Although the court in a controversial decision ruled that Ethiopia and Liberia did not have “any legal right or interest appertaining to them” as regards the illegality of South Africa’s occupation of Namibia do you see any similarities between Pretoria’s policy of Grand Apartheid in southern Africa and what is happening in the Palestinian territories today? If so, what lessons can the Palestinians learn from the anti-Apartheid movement in highlighting the injustices of Israel’s four decade’s long occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza? Is there a role for international law?

RF: Yes, my background includes a rather intimate set of encounters with the realities of South African Apartheid. Not long after my role in the World Court case I went to South Africa in 1968 as an official observer on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists of a major political trial held in Pretoria. While in the country for several weeks I had the opportunity to visit (unlawfully) the dismal African townships, coincidentally in the company of John Dugard. It helped me appreciate some aspects of extreme political realities that are relevant to an understanding of the Palestinian struggle. I was struck at the time by the sincere failure of “decent” white South Africans to realize the misery and humiliation of the apartheid system although it was part of their immediate surrounding. The politics of denial meant that an outsider like myself could “see” this reality more clearly than could many insiders. It reminds me of a saying of Israeli peace activists: “The West Bank is further from Israel than Thailand.” In my experience, Gaza is even further away. I have been hesitant to draw the analogy between Apartheid South Africa and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories because I did not want a second controversy about my provocative language. At the same time there are some instructive aspects of the successful South African struggle that might be relevant for the Palestinians.

First, it is a crucial domain of struggle to establish the unlawful, and even criminal, nature of the prevailing set of arrangements, and thereby wage a battle for the hearts and minds of the peoples of the world. The US and Europe are particularly vital arenas in this struggle. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague can be helpful in establishing the legitimacy of claims for change. It is helpful to recall that on four occasions the ICJ was called upon to pronounce upon South African Apartheid, and although these judicial events did not achieve immediate results, they contributed to the discrediting of the Apartheid regime. Secondly, the site of struggle is outside as well as inside, and the possibilities of gaining the upper hand in relation to the legitimacy of demands is likely to be determined outside of the West Bank and Gaza, with the most important battlegrounds being pre-1967 Israel and the US. Thirdly, do not assess prospects of a successful outcome for the oppressed side by the current apparent relation of forces. An oppressive order is likely to appear all-powerful until it is on the verge of collapse. It is important to continue the struggle despite frustrations and disappointment based on an ultimate faith in the triumph of justice.

VK: Many international lawyers are afraid to openly criticize the government of Israel for its human rights violations because they believe it will affect their future job prospects through fear of being labeled anti-Semitic or a “self-hating Jew.” As an American Jew, what has given you the strength to stand by your convictions for so many years despite the attacks upon your character? Do you have any regrets? And if you could go back in time, would you do it all again? What advice would you give to others subjected to similar attacks upon their character?

RF: It is an unfortunate aspect of this debate about Israeli policy toward the Palestinians that smear tactics have been used. I have been increasingly the target of such attacks, which I console myself into believing, is a sign of a certain influence and effectiveness. Alan Dershowitz, the notorious Harvard law professor, has written a defamatory journalistic piece on my recent travails, that begins by comparing me to David Duke of Ku Klux Klan fame and [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmedinejad, suggesting that I am a comparable hate-monger. Such irresponsible hostility is an unpleasant part of my controversial role and outspoken views, and unfortunately is given undue weight by a media culture that often treats anger and vicious character attacks as more convincing, and certainly more newsworthy than evidence and reasoning. Yet I have no regrets. My integrity and self-esteem are intimately tied to my lifelong identification with the oppressed, and my belief that if humanity is to flourish in the future it is essential for the strong to respect the global rule of law as much as the weak. At present, we have a global law that does not treat equals equally; the weak are held accountable, while the strong enjoy impunity. This represents law without justice, inviting charges of hypocrisy and double standards. My work as a scholar and engaged citizen has been dedicated to advancing the cause of global justice based on a legal order that learns to treat equals equally whether states or individuals.

As far as being a Jew is concerned, it informs my identity. I believe this commitment to justice is best articulated by the Old Testament prophets, and is the most timeless contribution of the Jewish tradition to human understanding and ethical practice. I had the privilege as an undergraduate of studying Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, and hearing him deliver a series of lectures at Haverford College. His message stayed with me and reverberates to this day. Against this background I can hardly comprehend the accusations of “self-hating Jew” or of somehow being “anti-Semitic.” I respond to such attacks on my credibility by pointing out that I never feel anti-American when I criticize the foreign policy of the US government. It is an unfortunate tactic of many Zionists to treat any criticism of the state of Israel or its policies as tantamount to anti-Semitism. In my view, this is a profoundly anti-democratic attitude that tries to turn the “citizen” into a “subject.” I believe that the test of good citizenship is conscience not obedience. For these various reasons, I have no regrets, and although it might not have been prudent from a careerist perspective, I would do it all over again without the slightest hesitation. In essence, I could do no other!

Victor Kattan is a tutor at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he teaches international law to postgraduate students. His book From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1891-1949 will be published by Pluto Books in June 2009. Victor is the editor of The Palestine Question in International Law which was published by British Institute of International and Comparative Law in May 2008 and which features a collection of articles by leading scholars of international law on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Falk is also a Castro lover

On the Death of Fidel Castro

By Richard Falk | Dec 13, 2016
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/12/13/on-the-death-of-fidel-castro/

There are many reasons to celebrate the life of Castro and numerous reasons to lament the severe hardships imposed on the Cuban people by the US.

I have been bemused by the captious tone and condescending assessments of mainstream media in the West reacting to Fidel Castro’s death on November 25, 2016. Typical was coverage in The Economist, which while acknowledging Castro’s epic historical role, and even grudgingly admitting that he achieved world class health care and universal education in his impoverished country, reached the ‘politically correct’ conclusion that these achievements were “outweighed by his drab legacy. Much of the human capital was wasted by his one-party system, police state, and stagnant centrally planned economy.” The lead editorial in The Economist went on even to mock the reverence ordinary Cubans felt for Castro: “Cubans say Mr. Castro was ‘like a father” to them. They are right: he infantilized a nation. Anyone with initiative found ways to leave for exile abroad.” [The Economist, “After Fidel,” Dec. 3-9, 2016]

In contrast to generally condescending appraisals in the West, I call attention to two extraordinary essays of appreciation written by cherished friends. One by Sri Lanka’s lead diplomat and cultural critic, Dayan Jayatilleka, published as an opinion piece in the Colombo Telegraph beneath a suitable headline, “A Farewell to Fidel: The Last of Epic Heroes,” Nov. 26, 2016. Dayan not only celebrates Castro’s heroic revolutionary achievement in transforming Cuba from its gangster state identity in the Batista period to a vital outpost of Third World progressive ideals. He also underscores the admirable ethics of liberation violence that guided Castro’s revolutionary practice in ways that exhibited disciplined respect for the innocence of civilian life. For greater detail see Jayatilleka fine appreciative study, Fidel’s Ethics of Violence: The Moral Dimension of the Political Thought of Fidel Castro (London: Pluto Press, 2007). This conception of the ethics of political violence has been essentially absent from the manner in which the struggle between terrorist groups and sovereign states has been waged in various combat zones, especially since the 9/11 attacks. Jayatilleka’s assessments have been confirmed and extended in the recently published book by Nick Hewlett entitled Blood and Progress: Violence in the Pursuit of Emancipation (Edinburgh, Scotland: University of Edinburgh Press, 2016).

The other tribute to Castro’s legacy that is deeply informed and resonates strongly with my own perceptions is that of Marjorie Cohn, a lead progressive commentator on national and international issues who writes with knowledgeable passion. In her “The Remarkable Legacy of Fidel Castro,” Huffington Post, Dec. 4, 2016, she contextualizes the Cuban experience during the Castro years, especially lauding the exceptional leadership provided by Castro and the memorable resilience of the Cuban people in withstanding the determined, persistent, and criminal efforts of the United States to reverse the Cuban Revolution and restore the old dictatorial gang to power in Havana. It is truly one of the political miracles of the past century that Cuba was able to withstand this sustained and vicious superpower challenge to its right of self-determination, and as a result Castro’s Cuba served as both inspiration and engaged partner to peoples around the world in their various liberation struggles to free themselves from various forms of colonialism and hegemonic exploitation. Marjorie reminds us of the words of gratitude spoken by Nelson Mandela to Castro in recognition of the help given by Cuba to the struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Castro was a genuine internationalist, as well as an ardent nationalist, a combination that is both necessary and rare among statesmen of the last hundred years. Perhaps, it is best to appreciate Castro as a progressive humanist, devoted to improving the human condition throughout the world, and not just in his home country.

Even these tributes do not credit Castro’s leadership with its innovative responses to economic isolation and punitive sanctions, which entailed Cuba moving toward ‘a green economy’ (well depicted by Stephen Zunes in an excellent article published on December 9, 2016 by the National Catholic Reporter under the title, “Fidel Castro Left Cuba a Green Legacy”), a vivid instance of necessity serving as the mother of invention. Cuba moved away from monoculture (sugar and tobacco), and concentrated on small scale ecological farming (with greatly reduced reliance on pesticides, fertilizers, and oil consuming machinery) that produced healthier foods in sufficient quantities to meet Cuba’s food security requirements. Now with the opening of the country to a flood of visitors, especially from the United States, there are renewed reports of food scarcities confronting the Cuban people. Paradoxically, it might turn out that the Cuban people benefit more from external pressure than they do from its welcome removal.

Personal Notes of Remembrance
When I was a teenager I visited Cuba with my father, a lawyer with close friends in Havana. We were there during the height of the Batista period, and I remember being at a nightclub where other guests at neighboring tables placed their guns on the table in full view. At that time, Havana possessed Spanish colonial charm, with a small elite doing well while the mass of the people were impoverished and ignored, if not abused. Cuba as a country had no international presence beyond being known as a pawn on Washington’s Caribbean chessboard. It was against such a political background that Castro emerged, and was led to mount his historic challenge a decade or so later.

As with so many others, I found Castro to be an inspirational figure whose basic energies were directed at establishing a progressive and proud state in Cuba that stood its ground against the intense geopolitical pressures mounted by the United States under the banner of anti-Communism and in light of the ideological divide that defined the Cold War. How many poor countries, including those not subject to sanctions by its powerful neighbor to the North, would have been able under these conditions to provide universal health care and education for the whole of its population, with resulting high literacy rates and low levels of infant mortality? And not only this, that despite the massive pressures arrayed against Cuba, the government still lent material and invaluable psychological support in solidarity with progressive nationalist movements throughout Latin America and Africa that were in the midst of struggles against colonialist and oppressive forces.

No wonder the Cuban people en masse and many millions throughout the Global South deeply mourn with genuine displays of sorrow the passing of this great man, whose warm, vital, and lofty spirit, survived numerous assassination plots and terrorist initiatives launched by CIA operatives and Cuban exiles. As confirmed by declassified official documents, US Government went so far as to enlist notorious Mafia (Cosa Nostra) figures such as Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficante in its undertaking to decapitate this Cuban leader as beloved by the great majority of his people as any political figure anywhere in modern times. What an objective media should have focused upon was the degree to which the economic and political deformations in Cuba that so obstructed its political and economic development were largely attributable to the unwillingness of those who governed in the United States to live in peace with the outcome of the Cuban Revolution.

While a student at Harvard in 1959 I had a brief experience of the Castro magic. During Castro’s visit to the United States and UN shortly after his revolutionary victory, prior to the split with Washington occasioned by the nationalization of American owned properties in Cuba, he stopped at Princeton to make a guest appearance at a famous seminar on revolution taught by the celebrated historian, R.R. Palmer, and then came to Harvard to speak in the evening at an outdoor sports facility, introduced by the then Dean of the Faculty, McGeorge Bundy (later the National Security Advisor of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson). I found Castro to be a colorful revolutionary figure who spoke eloquently and in a conciliatory tone expressing fervent hopes for friendship between Cuba and the United States. These hopes were immediately permanently crushed after Castro proceeded to nationalize foreign owned investments in Cuba, especially in the vital sugar industry, offering compensation based on the fraudulently low valuations used by these companies to determine their tax responsibilities during the years when the corrupt Batista regime made a variety of ‘crony capitalist’ arrangements beneficial to foreign investors and damaging to Cuban society.

Decades later I again felt a connection with Cuba through the efforts of my son, Dimitri, who made a documentary film depicting life under Castro as affected by crippling American sanctions and assorted other disruptive tactics. I was very proud of Dimitri’s efforts, resulting after years of dedicated work that included overcoming a variety of obstacles to complete this difficult project during a period when all forms of travel to Cuba were forbidden for Americans. Dimitri’s commitment resulted in a fine film, Media Noche in Cuba (Midnight in Cuba) that was completed in 1998, shown in the Berlin Film Festival as well as other cinema venues. The film captures the vitality and confining impacts of Cuba’s isolation by tracing the lives of four ordinary Cubans, a dancer, boxer, rock musician, and a prostitute through their ups and downs, conveying a positive image of Cuba that at the same time avoids sentimentality.

Fifteen years after watching Dimitri’s film I finally got a second touristic chance to visit Cuba with my wife, Hilal Elver, while spending a semester at McGill University in Canada. Travel at that time to Cuba from Canada was easy to arrange, and as long as Americans didn’t spend dollars in the country it was quite legal to visit. Although I fell hard on a concrete tennis court on the day of our arrival due to strong winds, causing a bad gash above my left eye, we had a wonderful exposure to Cuban life, experiencing the warmth of the people and the lyrical grace of its vibrant popular culture. My injury also gave me direct contact with the Cuban health system. After the fall I was immediately driven to a nearby hospital in an ambulance, receiving seven stitches, and daily treatment for our week of residence at a clinic linked to the hotel without ever being asked to pay a single dollar for this exceptional health care. I wonder if it would take a second American Revolution to be able to have a comparable experience if a Cuban visiting the United States suffered an accidental injury.

A Final Word
As suggested, there are many reasons to celebrate the life of Castro and numerous reasons to lament the severe hardships imposed on the Cuban people by the long American unseemly campaign to undo the Cuban Revolution, and turn the country back to the malicious mercies of what would likely be a corrupt and dictatorial replay of the Batista years. True, Castro imposed one-party rule and limited the freedoms of Cubans in various ways, but could the revolution have survived if a more permissive approach to governance had been adopted? The United States tried every dirty trick in the book to get rid of Castro, with a range of macabre assassination schemes involving poisoning his food and infiltrating toxic and exploding cigars. When we look at more ‘democratic’ attempts to recover control of a nation and its resources on behalf of its people throughout Latin America, we are confronted by a series of progressive assertions of national political will followed quickly by counterrevolutionary seizures of powers encouraged and abetted by the US Government (e.g. Guatemala 1954 or Chile 1973, and many others over the years). Castro seems to have been enough of a realist to take the measures needed to safeguard the revolution from repeated efforts to overthrow the Cuban government by intervention or achieve the same results by imposing sanctions intended to strangle the country and cause the collapse of its government. Americans should never forget the Bay of Pigs (1961) failure of a CIA backed intervention that might have succeeded had not Jack Kennedy withheld air support from the invading Cuban exiles or the closeness to World War III that produced a confrontation with the Soviet Union known as the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ of 1962. In this regard, American paid a large reputational cost by its embrace of the Cuban counterrevolutionary cause, and actually risked the catastrophe of nuclear war as an indirect result of challenging Castro’s legitimacy as the head of the Cuban state.

Barack Obama deserves credit for breaking the anachronistic logjam, and taking steps to normalize relations with Cuba over the course of the last year. But even Obama could not let go of economic sanctions altogether, and endured another near unanimous resolution of censure of the US economic embargo of Cuba by the UN General Assembly. Nor would he send a formal delegation to attend Castro’s funeral, which would have subtly signaled a willingness to acknowledge how wrong had been the US policy toward Cuba over the years. Now with Trump posturing about reconsidering Obama’s normalization moves, the Cuban people are being made newly aware that their sovereign reality is cruelly subject to the arbitrary political whims of the American presidency.

The perversity of the American policy toward Cuba is underscored by its persistence for more than 25 years after the end of the Cold War. This hostility, fueled by the reactionary Cuban community in Miami, has survived even a Cuban post-Castro turn toward market economics and a willingness to turn a blind eye toward the suffering inflicted on the Cuban people as a result of U.S. policies designed to isolate, punish, and destabilize. Now it is entirely possible for the nightmare to be extended even beyond Fidel Castro’s death. It would take only one more midnight tweet from the fertile imagination of Donald Trump.

And finally, it is sad that the media coverage of Castro’s death, while acknowledging his significance, contented itself with platitudes about the failures of freedom in Cuba without ever seriously exploring the degree to which the alleged regressive patterns of Cuban governance were necessary responses, the prudent price paid for the revolutionary survival of the Cuban political experiment. Of course, domestic politics played its part in pushing American hostility to such an irrational extreme, and may continue to do so. The location of a large, activist anti-Castro Cuban exile community in Florida, a swing state in American national elections, made political leaders in Washington reluctant to challenge Cuban policy even after the end of the Cold War. Just as with Palestine, there is no political upside for such a challenge, and the adverse practical consequences of challenging the anti-Castro consensus in Washington were understandably inhibiting, and sadly, maybe still are. Unfortunately, the moral upside of challenging these regressive policies doesn’t pay dividends in domestic politics.

This article was originally published at RichardFalk.Wordpress.com.

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