Fidel

...Jerusalem had always been a city in which many religions and nationalities lived side by side...

...Fidel tells the story of the Cuban revolution from the point of view of Castro and his fellow Communists...

...And it would be an insult to all Moslems and all Arabs to leave the city in the hands of the "infidel Jews...

...Within a year and a half, having driven into exile or jailed much of the opposition, Castro discarded the facade and openly seized full power...

...A condition of near-anarchy led to a coup by Batista, which the United States, along with many Cubans, initially supported...

...cut off military aid (and forced other suppliers to do the same...

...His own narrative tells a rather different story...

...Szulc comments: "In Fidel's eyes, Matos's actions constituted a treasonable conspiracy because they threatened to split wide open his revolutionary regime and armed forces, playing into the hands of the United States and other enemies of the revolution...

...Jerusalem Whose city whose "holy city" is it...

...yet Szulc insists that compared to other world leaders, Castro enjoys only a "modest" degree of luxury and privilege, and that he "has basically remained a guerrilla leader...

...It's the place from which Mohammed is believed to have ascended to heaven...

...44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1987...

...Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work and for these messages...

...Szulc also points out that these interviews provided the "bulk of the original material" in the book...

...The book that has garnered these accolades is, to be sure, no ordinary biography...

...The two most worshipped political deities in socialist Cuba," he reports, "are Jose Marti, the great hero of the independence wars [against Spain] . . . and Karl Marx...

...That is the reason that the State of Israel has rededicated the Jewish holy city to be its indivisible capital...

...mismanagement discourages work and production, and resulting shortages aggravate the problem of low productivity and high absenteeism...

...And also that solution of the "Middle East Problem" will not be possible until Israeli Jews relinquish their "occupation" and restore the holy city—or, at the very minimum, its eastern part—to its "rightful owners", the Moslem Arabs...

...In English and Spanish...

...The notion to call Jerusalem an Islamic holy city has only come about in modern times and now has gained currency by dint of constant repetition...

...Immensely attractive and contagiously energetic, he "inspires widespread loyalty on the basis of human chemistry...

...He has an exceptional intellect, a fertile imagination, a computerlike memory, and a boundless curiosity...

...It is evidently so well entrenched now thatValladares notwithstanding—not even a book like Fidel can be recognized for what it is...

...Economic life is a disastrous failure: "masses of costly imported equipment are destroyed by the Caribbean weather because the regime remains unable to solve the problem of unloading ships and loading trucks...

...Early in 1958, says Szulc, Castro irrevocably decided to set his revolution FIDEL: A CRITICAL PORTRAIT Tad Szulc/Morrow/$19.95 Steven C. Munson 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1987 on a Communist course and secretly began plotting with high Communist party officials...

...And the Moslem Arab claim to Jerusalem, based on the Al Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount, is just as untenable...

...Six months after that, he proclaimed to the world his allegiance to Communism...

...Not only is Castro possessed of stunning intellectual and conversational powers, he is also a virtuoso at politics...

...But as democratic opposition to Batista's rule grew, Washington began to waver...

...But Szulc has by no means made as clean a break with this idea as he suggests...

...A similar disrespect for facts—even as he himself presents them—permits Szulc to embrace Castro's view that therevolution freed Cuba from the political and economic domination of the United States...

...Castro and his closest associates had, of course, been longtime Marxist-Leninists, but for tactical reasons most of them had kept their distance from the official Cuban Communist party (the few exceptions included Castro's brother and designated successor Raul, a party member since his university days...

...But Szulc does not stop at admiring Castro's turning Cuba into little more than an extension of the Soviet Union...

...By the early 1970s, Cuba was totally dependent for its survival on massive amounts of Soviet aid...

...Although he concedes all of this—and it should be noted that in criticizing Castro he goes no further than pointing out the kinds of "mistakes" that Communist officials elsewhere now routinely talk about correcting in their own countries—Szulc nevertheless clings to the view that the revolution has "bestowed extraordinary gifts" on the people of Cuba...

...What are the facts...

...Jerusalem has been the motivation of Jews, its only major holy city and its guiding light for over 3000 years...

...20007 (202) 265-2822 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1987 43 Castro's movement to power...

...3.00 Cuba's Financial Crisis: The Secret Report from the Cuban National Bank An 84-page report prepared in February 1985 for Cuba's Western creditors describes Cuba's trade with the Soviets and details the deterioration of the island's economy...

...But if Matos had to be dealt with, his punishment was relatively light...

...For the real prisoners and victims of that system, Szulc shows no such sympathy...

...He had committed the crime of writing a letter to Castro imploring him "to act against Communism in order to protect democracy in Cuba...

...Far from behaving, then, like an imperialist power protecting one of its colonial possessions, the United States helped to undermine Batista and bring The Issue is Cuba AVAILABLE FROM THE CUBAN AMERICAN NATIONAL FOUNDATION Follow the Leader in the Horn by William Ratliff Details and explores the Soviet-Cuban presence in East Africa...

...Courteous and thoughtful, he is above all fearless, having stood on "the brink of death an incredible number of times" and laughed about it more than once...

...reader who displays "accumulated knowledge and erudition," and a student of the past who delights in dissecting classical oratory...

...Although Szulc makes a point of claiming that it is an unauthorized, unofficial, independent work, Fidel could not and would not have been written without the permission and collaboration of its subject...

...By Szulc's own account, however, Castro built his revolution on the claim that it would restore democracy to Cuba...

...marines left Cuba in 1923, three years before Castro was born...

...The passion for Jerusalem was not discovered by the Moslem Arabs until most recent history...

...5.00 Castro, Israel, and the PLO by David J. Kapilow Illustrates the role of Castro in the international campaign against Israel and the PLO's presence in Central America...

...The regimentation and militarization of life, in a society more tightly controlled and "rigidly organized ideologically" than any East European Communist country, proceeds apace...

...Yes, says Szulc, but that doesn't mean he had fascist tendencies...

...The Christian world, often ready to consent to Moslem claims against Jews and Israelis, would be greatly astonished—and rightly so...

...Jews have holy sites—synagogues and temples—in most cities of the world...

...That such a book should receive this kind of acclaim, even in the postValladares climate, is not, however, as mysterious as it might seem...

...3.00 Fidel Castro and the United States Press by John P. Wallach The foreign affairs editor for the Hearst newspapers looks at the symbiotic relationship between Fidel Castro and the American media in this 24-page paper...

...stood on the sidelines...

...But if Castro is "a man of panache, a romantic figure, an ever-defiant, dizzyingly imaginative and unpredictable rebel, a marvelous actor, [and] a spectacular teacher and preacher," he has his less appealing side as well...

...Despite its subtitle, Fidel contains very little criticism of the Cuban leader, and almost all of that is qualified, explained away, or otherwise deflected by Szulc...

...The Israeli Government, in its constant spirit of accommodation to Moslem sensibilities, has largely acceded to this tradition and has put the area in and around the Al Aksa Mosque entirely under Moslem control...

...W bile such considerations may be inconsequential to Szulc, other commentators have not been so sanguine about Cuba...

...But how would Christians feel if, instead of from the Temple*Mount, the Moslem tradition had Mohammed ascend from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and if the Moslem Arabs were to claim that site as their property...

...Bureaucratic corruption and black marketeering in the streets are reemerging like a cancer...

...Yet he presents no evidence that such a condition of dignity has actually been achieved in Cuba—and what little he does say about the country indicates, if anything, that the revolution has robbed Cubans of much that they could once take pride in...

...After the fall of Batista in January 1959, the affiliated and unaffiliated Communists worked together to create a hidden apparatus that manipulated the new revolutionary government, which was outwardly pluralist and composed mostly of respectable politicians...

...Szulc views this fraud, as well as the stream of Castro-ordered statements and articles published in the Cuban and American press claiming that his was a movement for democracy and against Communism, as proof of Castro's talent for concealing his political goals...

...The basis for the claim is that Jerusalem does indeed contain an Islamic holy site, namely the Al Aksa Mosque...

...It details Castro's connections with various terrorist groups, and his efforts in the U.N...

...He applauds the Cuban dictator's efforts to help bring other countries under Moscow's sway as well...

...Writing in the Washington Post Book World, John Dorschner declared it "a major, revealing book" and "the best portrait ever of Fidel Castro...

...Was Castro an admirer of Juan Peron...

...3.00 Reagan on Cuba with a foreword by Vice President George Bush Highlights selected statements by President Reagan on Castro, Cuba, and the Cubans...

...Our overhead is minimal...

...We hear much about Jerusalem being one of the holy cities of the Moslem Arabs—the third most holy after Mecca and Medina...

...Yet it has been hailed as an original and permanent contribution to our understanding of its subject...

...During his final year in power, the U.S...

...But Szulc can say nothing specific about the quality of medical care in Cuba...

...He is no less taken with Castro's skill in stealing the revolution from its democratic supporters once Batista had fled...

...Szulc's celebration of Castro and the revolution appears to be at odds with recent writing about the island, in particular the wave of articles and reviews that followed the publication last summer of the memoirs of the poet Armando Valladares, who spent years in Cuban prisons...

...Szulc chronicles the country's total absorption into the Soviet bloc—the process by which it truly lost its sovereignty and independence and fell under the domination of a foreign power—and still insists that all along Castro has only been doing what is best for his country...

...He also "demands instant responses to his slightest whims" and is given to frequent fits of rage and brooding petulant moods...

...None of it was true, but by vastly enhancing Castro's stature, Matthews's dispatches gave his cause a decisive boost toward victory...

...No Israelis, no Jews, and no Christians can enter without the permission of the Moslem religious authorities...

...Szulc contends that Castro wanted to put an end to American domination of Cuba and win "true" independence for the island, and that his revolutionary program was as much nationalist in inspiration as Communist...

...It watched while Cuba gradually succumbed to mismanagement, corruption, and political violence...

...And if he has created an "incredible cult of personality" and "lives bathed in the absolute adulation orchestrated by the propaganda organs of the regime," he must still be understood as the lonely "prisoner" and "victim" of the system he devised...

...You deserve a factual look at...

...Jews are not the usurpers in Jerusalem...

...Szulc is no more able to appreciate the bravery of a man like Sori-Marin than he is to admit the truth of his charges...

...What is the origin of that legend...

...On the tenuous claim to the Temple Mount, they have construed a claim to the entire city of Jerusalem (or at the very least to its eastern part), which they have declared to be their "third holiest city" after Mecca and Medina...

...Over the centuries and through all tribulations, Jews never forgot Jerusalem and prayed daily for being able to return to it...

...Szulc acknowledges his debt to Castro and the Cuban leader's "seventeen close associates and comrades"—almost all of whom currently hold high Communist party or government positions—who spent hours, in some cases days, talking to him...

...The startling reality is that before the end of the 1967 Six-Day War, during which the Israeli Defense Forces reconquered Jerusalem from the Jordanians, claims to Jerusalem being a Moslem holy city were rarely, if every, asserted...

...But the city of Jerusalem—in contrast to Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus—has never played any major role in the political and religious lives of the Moslem Arabs...

...In the cultural realm, Castro's policies "have dealt a lethal blow to creativity," turning the island into a "wasteland of ideas and a reign of strict self-censorship...

...It is as official an unofficial version of historical events as one is likely to get...

...Szulc simply accepts Castro's claim to be Marti's sole legitimate political heir, though he himself describes Marti as a "classical democrat" who rejected "Marxist radical social transformations" and "believed in civilian government with the consent of the governed...

...After winning independence for the island in the Spanish-American war, the United States intervened once to restore civil order, once to protect American citizens and their businesses, and once to safeguard its strategic interests...

...In response to this firsthand account of the brutality, cruelty, and viciousness of life in the Cuban gulag, a number of writers on the left professed to have had their eyes opened for the first time to the true nature and consequences of Communism in Cuba...

...They have been living there, virtually without interruption since the Biblical era, have been the majority population for much of the time and since the 19th Century...

...2.00 Havana/San Juan — Castro's Puerto Rican Obsession A special report on Havana's support for a marxist Puerto Rico...

...This ad has been published and paid for by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America P.O...

...An unmatched persuader and a great orator himself (perhaps better, Szulc suggests, than Gladstone or Churchill), he is a great listener and a superb questioner as well...

...Szulc finds both intentions entirely understandable and justifies the evolution of Soviet-Cuban relations every step of the way: from the very early years, when Castro still had some room to maneuver in his dealings with the Kremlin, to the present, when Castro has long since become accustomed to his role as Moscow's supplicant, client, and apologist...

...But never in Moslem or Arab history, did this mosque compare in significance to the Moslem holy cities of Mecca and Medina—cities that no "infidel" may visit...

...It was never a political center, never even a provincial or sub-provincial capital...

...According to this updated argument, Castro was pushed into Communism by the United States before he took power...

...In English and Spanish...

...According to Szulc, Castro is one of the most remarkable men to have lived in the twentieth century...

...Szulc is sympathetic to Castro and his revolution and hostile to the United States...

...Jerusalem has been the center of Jewish life, of Jewish yearning, and of Jewish thinking for over 3000 years...

...So pro-Soviet was Cuba by the mid-1960s that even the dedicated but independent Communist Che Guevara, who had helped Castro make the revolution, felt he had to leave...

...Nevertheless, even while the war against Batista was still going on, Castro was planning to launch a "much bigger and greater war" against the Americans and to ask for Soviet assistance...

...Although critical of the book, Glenn Garvin of the Washington Times concluded it will become "the standard reference work on Castro...

...He treats Marti's democratic aspirations, in other words, with the same contempt he displays towards those of Huber Matos and the other rightful representatives of Marti's legacy...

...4.00 The Kennedy-Krushchev Pact and the Sandinistas by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Analyzes the 1962 agreement that guaranteed the security of Fidel Castro's regime and the implications for the Western hemisphere of a similar accord between Washington and Managua...

...It was only after the old city, the part that contains the holy places of Christianity, and the place most holy to the Jewish religion, was back in Jewish hands that the Moslem Arabs declared their willingness to wage "jihad" (holy war) to bring the city back into Arab possession...

...Shortly after the revolution, for example, the popular rebel army commander Huber Matos was arrested, tried, and sentenced to twenty years in prison...

...Instead, Sori-Mann accused Castro of being the traitor to the revolution...

...He is, Szulc admits, "long on vanity" (though not nearly as long, his biographer writes, as Marshal Tito was...

...Even K. S. Karol, who regretted in the New Republic that he could not accept Szulc's analysis, nevertheless labeled Fidel an "impressive work...

...At the same time, he is "a man of surprising shyness," "a very private person" who, despite his many responsibilities and obligations, "still tries to be a free soul, to act on the spur of the moment, to do the unexpected...

...Such behavior, however, inno way alters Szulc's admiration for Castro's "uncompromising personality, his unshakable sense of self-righteousness, his toughness, courage, risk-taking instincts, and pride...

...there were thousands of Soviet troops stationed on the island...

...Its purpose is to combat media inaccuracies, through public education and publicity...

...Does Castro personally control everything in Cuba...

...its intelligence service was run by the KGB...

...When Cuba's fledgling democracy began to fall apart, the U.S...

...For while Szulc's delirious excesses and brazen tendentiousness make him something of an exception these days, his way of looking at Communists—as fundamentally well-meaning idealists—and Communism—as just another imperfect form of government—is by no means uncommon...

...To those who took this reaction as evidence of a change in "liberal" attitudes toward Cuba and Communism in general, the response to Szulc's book may come as something of a surprise...

...Szulc describes the careful preparations made to convince Matthews, when he visited the handful of guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra mountains, that Castro commanded a substantial, well-equipped force that already controlled a large amount of territory and was moving from one military success to another...

...Yes, but we should not think that all he ever wanted was personal power...

...Even for a man of Fidel's magnanimity, Szulc suggests, this insult was too much to bear...

...It glorifies Castro and his life, apologizes for his dictatorial rule, and applauds his imperialist pro-Soviet foreign policy...

...Your tax-deductible contributions are welcome...

...Since his biography is based on official Cuban sources, it should come as no surprise that the story told by Mr...

...T his outcome, which shattered the 1 Cuban people's hopes for democracy, Szulc celebrates as further evidence of Castro's political genius...

...Politically, "the revolution [has] spawned a new privileged ruling class built around and below Fidel by the party, the security apparatus, and the army...

...What's left fills perhaps half a dozen pages near the end of the book...

...Everywhere the Cuban leader goes, for example, he is accompanied by orderlies who tuck his fatigues into his boots if they slip out...

...It was the site of one Moslem holy place, but otherwise a backwater to the Arabs...

...Noting that Cuba's decisive intervention in the mid-1970s on behalf of the Marxist faction in the Angolan civil war did not come in response to South African involvement, Szulc writes: "The truth is that Castro beat everybody to it . . . in an impressive display of instinct, imagination, and daring...

...According to Szulc, the Cuban leader would have granted the prisoner clemency if he had asked for it and apologized for his treason...

...Box 590381 • San Francisco, CA 94159-0381 CAMERA is a tax-deductible, non-profit educational 501(cX3) organization, headquartered in Washington, DC...

...In the end, these seem to consist of schools and clinics...

...He also points out that the sequence of events leading up to it renders invalid the longstanding "liberal" view of Castro, according to which he was pushed into Communism after seizing power by the hostility of the United States...

...On the contrary, it has for some time been deeply rooted in our political culture...

...After all, Szulc remindsus, Castro could have had him shot...

...But Moslem Arab assertiveness doesn't end there...

...Of course not...

...It is also what Szulc likes to talk about most in his book...

...Before reaching that point, however, one must endure more than half a thousand pages of numbing hagiography...

...Please make your check payable to CAMERA and mail to the above address...

...That action, along with Cuban assistance in installing Communist regimes in Ethiopia and Nicaragua—whose Sandinista revolution, Szulc says, Castro has continued "to stage-manage from Havana" since 1979—has made the Cuban a "hero" to the Third World, which "perceives Castro as its advocate and at times its conscience...

...on this issue...

...The opinions expressed in this review are his alone...

...According to Szulc, the CIA even gave the rebels a large sum of money...

...This became the theme of the revolutionary propaganda campaign that more than anything else undermined Batista, legitimized Castro's Twenty-Sixth of July movement, and brought him the support of leading Cuban journalists, politicians, doctors, lawyers, judges, and others who made up the genuinely democratic opposition without which he could not have succeeded...

...It's on the basis of this religious tradition that the Moslems designated the entire Jewish Temple Mount to be their holy site...

...and Castro was defending Soviet policies and actions across the board...

...The last U.S...

...Mohammed never in his lifetime set foot in Jerusalem...

...And just as pictures of the two men appear together everywhere on the island, so too are their names repeatedly linked in Fidel...

...As Szulc puts it, Castro's "bitterness towards the United States, dating back to his student days .. . must have been an extremely important factor in his decision to go the Communist route to fulfill his broad revolutionary program...

...As for the schools, it is highly unlikely that in "the most indoctrinated society in the world" they provide what we would consider a good education...

...Szulc regards Castro, in other words, as someone whose faults are more than outweighed by his strengths and virtues, and he does his best to soften Castro's image as an absolute and ruthless dictator...

...3.00 \5.THE CUBAN AMERICAN NATIONAL FOUNDATION 1000 Thomas Jefferson Street, N.W., Suite 601, Washington, D.C...

...Includes numerous news articles...

...Thanks to New York Times correspondent Herbert Matthews (whose performance Szulc defends and whom he cites as his journalistic mentor), Castro's propaganda not only made him a hero in Cuba but also won him recognition abroad, especially in the United States...

...It would be preposterous...

...3.00 Castro and the Narcotics Connection A report on the Cuban government's use of narcotics trafficking to finance and promote terrorism...

...Despite his generosity and "innate beautiful manners," he is capable of vindictiveness and outright rudeness...

...But aware that it was the holy city of Christians and Jews, and wishing to convert them to his new religion, he commanded his followers to build a mosque in Jerusalem...

...In recognition of the city's holiness to Jews, Moslems designated the Temple Mount as the place from which Mohammed ascended and built the Al Aksa Mosque to commemmorate the event...

...When it finally decided to act, it intervened against him...

...He is a voracious Steven C Munson is News Specials Chief at the Voice of America...

...Another former comrade from the struggle against Batista, Sori-Mann was jailed for trying to organize an armed resistance to Castro's emerging Communist regime...

...They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages...

...But do they claim sovereignty over those cities because of it...

...Young people drink too much because there is little else to do in their spare time...

...Castro did have others shot, including the lawyer Humberto SoriMarin...

...He seems, in fact, merely to have modified it in light of the official Cuban account of events...

...3.00 Political Hospitality and Tourism: Cuba and Nicaragua by Paul Hollander This thirty-two page study exposes a systematic campaign of "political hospitality and tourism" designed to persuade elite groups of the virtues of the Fidelista and Sandinista Revolutions...

...This is what he likes to talk about most, hour after hour, with foreign visitors...

...For his part, Castro is only glad to have been of service: "He thinks other peoples in the Third World deserve the kind of dignity as nations and individuals that the revolution has granted Cubans...