Che's Daughter Embraces Islamists in Common Struggle

By Barry Rubin

How can I possibly resist this one? Dr. Aleida Guevara, daughter of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, visited Lebanon recently and voiced support for Hizballah. Guevara, who works at a children’s hospital in Havana , laid a wreath at the tomb of Hizballah leader Abbas Al-Musawi.

No, she wasn’t wearing the tee-shirt.

The Hizballah official escorting her explained, “We are conducting resistance for the sake of liberty and justice, and to liberate our land and people from the Zionist occupation, which receives all the aid it needs from the U.S. administration."

Guevara responded: "I think that as long as their memory remains within us, we will have more strength, and that strength will grow and develop, until we make great achievements and complete our journey to certain victory….If we do not conduct resistance, we will disappear from the face of the earth. It is the only way to prevail and to continue on our path forward." 

What does that mean, we will "disappear"? Will the United States and Israel commit genocide and wipe out all of the Muslims and Cubans? And resistance to what? Democracy, equality for women, peace?

The mayor of Baalbek , Hashem Othman, chimed in: "Che, the hero, is the symbol of Cuban resistance. We and you stand together against injustice."

Where are Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin when you need them? They might have said, “The reactionary clerical-fascist forces try to fool the working class through the opiate of religious demagoguery. But the proletariat will continue to fight against these evil minions of the bourgeoisie and institute a new secular Communist society!”

Yes, I made that up but they would have said something like that about Hizballah. Oh, I didn't have to make anything up. Here's Lenin!: "Religion is a sort of spiritual booze...."

Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Hizballah's spiritual guide, advised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in a letter: "It is clear to everyone that communism should henceforth be sought in world museums of political history" and advised him to study the Koran and become a Muslim.


Not since the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, which emboldened Adolf Hitler to launch World War Two, however, have we seen such a convergence of the “left” http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39503revolutionaries and the “right” revolutionaries.

If Che Guevara had been a Muslim, Hizballah would have executed him.

I can only wish that all the Hizballah members had to live in a Marxist state and all the Marxists (and their spiritual heirs) in an Islamist state.

Oh, right, there was a little war in Afghanistan about that.

OK, I’ll stop here since neither sarcasm nor satire suffices in the situations we face in this wacky era of ours.

But for a hysterical story about the last time there was an attempt to make an Islamist-Che synthesis, see here.