• Submitted by: manso
• Editorial Articles
• 10 / 26 / 2010

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The Jewish community in Cuba has a website:http://www.chcuba.org/inicio.htm complete with email contacts so I am assuming that they have adequate Internet access.

By Dana Lubow, My questions:

 1. How is it possible that Gross went to Cuba five times "to help Havana's Jewish community" and no one from the main Jewish center in Havana or the nationwide Jewish association had ever heard of him?

 2. The Patronato and the Jewish Association have email....and computers in their office. Why would they need  a US mercenary ("contractor") to help them "gain Internet access to Jews worldwide"? What Jews on the island was he     trying to contact (if indeed he was trying to contact any Jews, rather than this just being a ploy to divert attention   from what he was really doing and gain support from the US zionist community)? And more important, since the Cuban   Jewish community is already in regular contact with and getting assistance from progressive Jewish communities in     Canada, US and Europe (perhaps more), what "international" Jewish organizations would he have been trying to link them  up with (if this was not a total fabrication)?

3. Reuters is basing this article, ostensibly, on an Interview with Gross'wife. When was the last time Reuters -- which is a British, not US-based wire service, by the way -- interviewed any of the wives of the five Cubans who have been imprisoned more than 12 years in the US, not less than a year as in the case of Gross? Wouldn't an "objective media" have equal interest in both stories?

 *Notice the 180 degree spin:

"His detention has stalled efforts by Washington to improve ties with the communist-led island." Oh, it was his dentention  not the illegal activities he was carrying out -- that is to blame? That is, if Gross had succeeded in his admittedly continuous efforts to provide hi tech spy equipment to opponents of the Cuban government, and had not been detected and detained, that would have signalled "improved ties"?

 Also note that Gross' wife has already been permitted to visit him, and that the chief Cuban diplomat in Washington has offered visas to Gross wife and daughter to visit him again following reports the daughter has cancer, something the US still refuses to do in the case of two wives of the Cubans imprisoned in the US.

 Finally, Reuters concludes: "While the Cuban government has not stated its conditions for releasing Gross, a source close to the case said it likely wants Washington to end its Cuba aid programs, which Cuban leaders view as attempts to subvert the communist government.

"I think they want a recognition that their sovereignty was violated. They see USAID's 'Cuban Democratization Program' as intended to undermine their authority, and one would expect they want that policy changed," the source said.

 It's as though this is only about politics and the violation of another country's laws is irrelevant. That it's all a matter of perception, rather than an actual violation of laws and a demonstrated intent on the part of the US government to overthrow that of Cuba: "Cuban leaders view", "they want", they see". Does Reuters really want us to believe that the US AID money publicly spent to promote opposition in Cuba is not an attempt to subvert the government?
That the Cuban government is just paranoid about this?

If the Obama administration were serious about this, they would do what they just did in the case of the Russians -- release the five Cuban prisoners in US prisons and ask the Cuban government to exchange Alan Gross (a highly paid agent for USAID).

By: Dana Lubow

Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/118639