Castro Compares Israel to the Nazis

Cuba's diplomatic mission has issued a statement from Fidel Castro who likens Israel to the Nazis:

The hatred felt by the state of Israel against the Palestinians is such that they would not hesitate to send the one and a half million men, women and children of that country to the crematoria where millions of Jews of all ages were exterminated by the Nazis. It would seem that the Fuehrer's swastika is today Israel's banner.

Castro's statements come as little surprise given his long standing animosity towards Israel. Since severing diplomatic ties with Israel in 1973 shortly before the Yom Kippur War, Castro has supported infamous UN General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism, has facilitated training camps for Palestinian terrorists and has banned books by the likes of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel.

It is also not the first time Castro has likened Israel to the Nazis. Consider what he said about Israel before the UN General Assembly on October 12, 1979 when he spoke on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement:

The revolutionary movement has always affirmed its abhorrence of racial discrimination and pogroms of any kind, and deep in our hearts we repudiate with all our strength the unrelenting persecution and genocide that Nazism unleashed in its time against the Jewish people. But I cannot recall anything so similar in contemporary history than the eviction, persecution and genocide carried out today by imperialism and Zionism against the Palestinian people, stripped of their land, expelled from their own homeland, dispersed throughout the world, persecuted and murdered. The heroic Palestinians are an impressive example of abnegation and patriotism are a living symbol of the greatest crime of our age.

It should also come as no surprise that Castro was promptly applauded for these remarks.

Of course, Castro's Cuba has committed far greater crimes against their own people than Israel would ever entertain doing against the Palestinians. But when the worst abusers of human rights get a seat at the UN Human Rights Council get to sit in judgment of Israel it demonstrates that not much has changed at the UN in three decades. The same could be said for Fidel Castro.