[News] From Gaza and Cuba, They Ask – Are You Human Like Us?

Thu Nov 9 00:47:31 EST 2023

View this email in your browser 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=9955ec6f20&e=d206d0a40d> 

*From Gaza and Cuba, They Ask – Are You Human Like Us?: The Forty-Fifth 
Newsletter (2023)*

Rachid Koraichi (Algeria), /One Plate, from A Nation in Exile/, c. 1981.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=253a6ea570&e=d206d0a40d>.

More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli armed forces 
in Gaza since 7 October, nearly half of them children 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=12c5f6e8b6&e=d206d0a40d>, 
according to the most recent report 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=8ccef26403&e=d206d0a40d> 
by spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health Dr Ashraf Al-Qudra. Over 
25,000 others have been injured, with thousands still buried under the 
rubble. Meanwhile, Israeli tanks have begun to encircle Gaza City, whose 
population was 600,000 a month ago but whose neighbourhoods are now 
largely vacant due to the desperate flight of its inhabitants to Gaza’s 
southern shelters and due to Israel’s killing of thousands of 
Palestinian civilians in their homes. Israel has cut off the city and 
begun to raid it, going door to door to bring the terror of the 
occupation from the skies to the streets. Those who await these raids in 
their homes might whisper the poem of Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008), which 
is addressed to the Israeli soldier ready to kick down the door of a 
Palestinian home:

You there, by the threshold of our door,
come in and drink Arabic coffee with us
(you may feel that you are human like us)
You there, by the threshold of our door,
get out of our mornings
so that we may be assured that
we are humans like you

When Israeli soldiers begin going door to door there will be no time for 
coffee, not only because there is no coffee or water left, but because 
Israeli soldiers have been told that Palestinians are not human. They 
have been told, instead, that Palestinians are terrorists and animals 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=aa3ed369e7&e=d206d0a40d>. 
In the eyes of the occupying forces, the only treatment Palestinians 
deserve is to be assaulted, shot, killed, and eradicated 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=65eefaf7ca&e=d206d0a40d> 
altogether. A hunger for genocide and ethnic cleansing colours senior 
Israeli officials’ statements and has influenced their conduct in this 
war. Talk of civilian casualties is brushed off, and so are calls for a 
ceasefire. The spokesperson of the United Nations Children’s Fund 
(UNICEF) James Elder said 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=810b5d3587&e=d206d0a40d> 
of this situation: ‘Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of 
children. It’s a living hell for everyone else’.

Laila Shawa (Palestine), /Target 2009/, 2009.

Even when high-ranking US officials talk about a ‘humanitarian pause’, 
they continue to find billions of dollars and more weapons systems for 
the Israeli military. This idea of a ‘humanitarian pause’ is legalese 
that means nothing for the survival of Gazans: the pause would end the 
bombing for a short period of time, possibly only a few hours, to allow 
the wounded to be removed and some aid to enter Gaza City before giving 
Israelis a green light to resume their murderous bombardment. Thus far, 
Israel has dropped 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=8b66230586&e=d206d0a40d> 
a higher tonnage of explosives on Gaza than the combined weight of the 
two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The denial of both a ceasefire and the possibility of political talks 
sponsored by the UN is not a policy that the US is pushing in Palestine 
alone; it is the same policy that the US, alongside its partners in the 
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), have insisted upon in 
Ukraine. A new supplemental spending bill that totals 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=b0d08d97b7&e=d206d0a40d> 
$105 billion (in addition to the – likely underreported 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=fab8367c82&e=d206d0a40d> 
– $858-billion military budget 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=4d683381bb&e=d206d0a40d> 
for 2023) includes $61.4 billion for the grinding war in Ukraine and 
$14.1 billion for the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. Though peace 
talks opened between Ukrainian and Russian authorities in both Belarus 
and Turkey days after Russian troops entered Ukraine, these talks were 
hastily scuttled 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=6e5a6def13&e=d206d0a40d> 
by NATO, fuelling the conflict that has resulted 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=ab439c18aa&e=d206d0a40d> 
in nearly 10,000 civilian deaths so far. The civilian death toll in 
Ukraine during one year and eight months of the conflict has already 
been surpassed by the civilian death toll in Palestine in merely four weeks.

Belkis Ayón (Cuba), /La cena/ (‘The Supper’), 1991.

It is not a coincidence that these three countries – the US, Ukraine, 
and Israel – are the only ones that did not vote in favour of this 
year’s annual UN General Assembly resolution to end the six-decade-long 
US embargo on Cuba (which was imposed 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=6eca8be9c9&e=d206d0a40d> 
formally by US President John F. Kennedy on 3 February 1962 but began in 
1960). The US has not only enforced this blockade on Cuba as a country, 
but on the Cuban Revolution as a process. When the Cuban Revolution of 
1959 emphatically declared that it would defend the sovereignty of Cuban 
territory and advance the dignity of the Cuban people, the US saw it as 
a threat not only to its criminal interests on the island but also to 
its ability to maintain its grip over global affairs, which the 
potential contagion of the revolutionary process threatened to fracture. 
If Cuba could get away with looking after its own people, and even 
extending solidarity to others fighting for their right to do the same, 
before submitting to the demands of US-owned transnational corporations, 
then perhaps other countries could adopt a similar attitude. It was this 
fear of sovereignty that set the policy of the blockade in motion.

Though the blockade has cost the Cuban Revolution hundreds of billions 
of dollars since 1960, it has not been able to stop the revolution from 
building up people’s dignity. For example, the World Bank reported that 
in 2020, despite the harsh blockade and the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuba’s 
government spent 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=cbf6672c4a&e=d206d0a40d> 
11.5% of its Gross Domestic Product on education, while the US spent 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=a491d3c933&e=d206d0a40d> 
5.4%. Not only are all schools free for Cuban children, but all Cuban 
children receive meals at school and are given their uniforms. Medical 
education is also free in Cuba, creating a high doctor-to-patient ratio 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=0754a42a2c&e=d206d0a40d> 
of 8.4 physicians and 7.1 nurses for every 1,000 Cubans. At the UN 
General Assembly, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=fb4d1d95b8&e=d206d0a40d> 
that ‘attention to the human being has been and will continue to be the 
priority of the Cuban government’. The blockade might be ‘economic 
warfare’, he said, but the Cuban Revolution – which has faced this 
‘economic siege’ for decades – will not wilt. It will stand firm.

Raúl Martínez (Cuba), /Rosas y Estrellas/ (‘Roses and Stars’), 1972.

The blockade is cruel. Foreign Minister Rodríguez Parrilla offered some 
examples of that cruelty, such as when the US government prevented Cuba 
from importing pulmonary ventilators and medical oxygen (including from 
other Latin American countries). In response, Cuba’s scientists and 
engineers developed their own ventilators, just as they produced their 
own COVID-19 vaccines 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=98126f45ef&e=d206d0a40d>. 
During the pandemic, Rodríguez Parrilla said, the US government offered 
humanitarian exemptions to other countries but denied them to Cuba. ‘The 
reality’, he said, ‘is that the US government opportunistically used 
COVID-19 as an ally in its hostile policy toward Cuba’.

Darwish asks Israeli soldiers of humanity, of whether they are capable 
of seeing Palestinians as human. The same should be asked of US 
government officials who promote and prosecute the blockade on Cuba: do 
they see Cubans as human?

Tings Chak (China), /Palestine Will Be Free/, 2023.

In June of this year, the Paris Poetry Market invited the Cuban poet 
Nancy Morejón to be its 2023 honorary president. Just before the event, 
the organisers of the poetry festival cancelled this honour, saying 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=e602918a81&e=d206d0a40d> 
that they were responding to ‘pressures’ and ‘rumours’. The Cuban 
foreign ministry condemned 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=a59e392efe&e=d206d0a40d> 
this cancellation as part of the ‘siege of fascist hatred of Cuban 
culture’, another kind of blockade. Here is Nancy Morejón’s /Réquiem 
para la mano izquierda/ (‘Requiem for the Left Hand’), as if in 
conversation with the humaneness of Darwish’s poetry and with the 
rhythms of the Cuban musician Marta Valdés (to whom this poem is dedicated):

On a map you could trace all the lines
horizontal, vertical, diagonal
from the Greenwich meridian to the Gulf of Mexico
that more or less
belong to our peculiarity

There are also big, big, big maps
in your imagination
and endless globes of the Earth,
Marta

But today I suspect that the tiniest, most minute map
sketched on school notebook paper
would be big enough to fit all of history
All of it.

Warmly,

Vijay

Website <www.eltricontinental.org>

Facebook 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=e71aa5ba54&e=d206d0a40d> 

Twitter 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=02ab472b6a&e=d206d0a40d> 

Instagram 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=747a150a60&e=d206d0a40d> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20231108/cd6edf88/attachment-0001.htm>