Fidel Castro says "Stop slandering the jews!"

Jeffrey Goldberg, writer for Atlantic gets an interview with the aging Fidel Castro. Castro seems to have even more love for jews and Israel than most Evangelicals.

Castro's message to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, was not so abstract, however. Over the course of this first, five-hour discussion, Castro repeatedly returned to his excoriation of anti-Semitism. He criticized Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and explained why the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the "unique" history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.

He began this discussion by describing his own, first encounters with anti-Semitism, as a small boy. "I remember when I was a small boy - he said, "and I remember Good Friday. ..What happened? They would say, `The Jews killed God.' They blamed the Jews for killing God! Do you realize this?"

He went on, "Well, I didn't know what a Jew was. I knew of a bird that was a called a 'Jew,' and so for me the Jews were those birds. These birds had big noses. I don't even know why they were called that. That's what I remember. This is how ignorant the entire population was."

He said the Iranian government should understand the consequences of theological anti-Semitism. "This went on for maybe two thousand years," he said. "I don't think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything." The Iranian government should understand that the Jews "were expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world, as the ones who killed God. In my judgment here's what happened to them: Reverse selection. ..Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms. One might have assumed that they would have disappeared; I think their culture and religion kept them together as a nation." He continued: "The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust." I asked him if he would tell Ahmadinejad what he was telling me. "I am saying this so you can communicate it," he answered.

Castro's comments seemed to cause Hugo Chavez to backflip on his stance toward jews and Israel.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced he would meet with leaders of Venezuela's Jewish community. "We respect and love the Jewish people," said Chavez, who added that opponents have falsely painted him as "anti-Jewish."

Chavez's new rhetoric and willingness to meet with Jewish leaders is "a direct result of Fidel's statement."

from: Chavez: 'We Respect and Love the Jews'