2023-10-27 00:06:10
“Journalists around the world must create a common communication front in the face of the Israeli government’s crime against the Palestinians. “UPEC will work to help forge it,” said Ricardo Ronquillo Bello, president of the union organization in Cuba, in the act of solidarity with colleagues and other brothers from that town.
In an event at the headquarters of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC) to condemn the most recent Zionist aggression, Ronquillo said, before the Palestinian ambassador to Cuba, Akram Mohammad Samhan, that we have a duty to help stop the crime. and announced that the call will be reiterated at the organization’s upcoming XI Congress, on November 2 and 3.
“One of the great contemporary disputes revolves around the idea of good, so addressed by José Martí. Those who massacre in Palestine and those who accompany them claim the idea under the mantle of a manipulation campaign that takes the Hamas attack as justification to annihilate a ‘savage’ people,” said Ronquillo.
Earlier, the Palestinian ambassador had asked for a minute of silence for all the victims of his people, including 25 reporters. “Journalists are like doctors; “They should not be attacked, but the Israelis are doing it,” denounced the diplomat.
The ambassador affirmed that Israel is annihilating the Palestinian people, who suffer 75 years of aggression. “But even if they demolish all of Gaza and the entire West Bank, we are not going to leave our land!” Photo: Heriberto González.
Akram Mohammad Samhan shared a summary—the numbers, sadly, growing by the minute—of the pain the attacks are causing his brothers: 6,995 dead, including some 2,800 children; 19,000 injured; 219 families that have lost more than ten of their members; 55,000 pregnant women whose birth in such conditions endangers their lives and those of their babies; one million 400 thousand displaced from the North to the South; 150,000 homes damaged… pain, a lot of pain.
The ambassador affirmed that Israel is annihilating the Palestinian people, who suffer 75 years of aggression. “They believe that our people do not exist, that they have to throw us into the desert, but even if they demolish all of Gaza and the entire West Bank, we are not going to leave our land!” He exclaimed.
A (more) moving moment of the evening was the initiative of the Argentine journalist Graciela Ramírez to organize with the attendees the roll call of 23 of the 25 Palestinian colleagues who fell in this chapter of barbarism, at whose name the attendees chanted: present!
Ramírez also delivered to the president of the UPEC the list of the 112 Palestinian journalists who have fallen, from 1972 to date, at the hands of Zionist politics.
Journalist Graciela Ramírez did a roll call of 23 of the 25 Palestinian colleagues who fell in this chapter of barbarism, at whose name the attendees chanted: present! Photo: Heriberto González.
“Cuba is the voice of internationalism. What your press says is a point of reference, that is why we must act from our spaces on networks to unmask the imposed story. The sacred right of a people to defend itself has been criminalized, but the criminals are in the White House, in the Pentagon… They are terrorists: a thousand times terrorists!” Ramírez said.
At the event, moderated by the vice president of the UPEC Jorge Legañoa and started with the reading by the Honorary President, Tubal Páez, of a previously published Declaration of the union, the Palestinian colleague Bassel Salem also intervened, who questioned the role of United Nations and rectified a very widespread concept: “Gaza is not the largest open-air prison in the world; It is the largest concentration camp.”
Tubal Páez, Honorary President of Upec read a previously published Declaration of the union. Photo: Heriberto González.
From Lebanon, journalist Wafica Ibrahim, director for Latin America of the channel Al Mayadeen, thanked the Cuban colleagues and people for what they do for the Palestinian brothers. After remembering when he arrived on the island in 1982, with his clothes stained with blood due to another Israeli aggression, he pointed out that these days he once again sees Fidel’s Cuba, which responds to any pain.
From Lebanon, journalist Wafica Ibrahim, director for Latin America of the Al Mayadeen channel, thanked her colleagues and the Cuban people for what they do for the Palestinian brothers.
«The people and politicians have to leave behind the position of “not bothering Israel and the United States.” “It is an apartheid regime and with it there will never be a solution,” she said.
Wafica made a request: “We need your voices. Cuba is an opinion maker. Her voice influences. It is a compass that we people look at to find the position we should take. On the other hand, he added that it hurts to see some confusing positions in Latin America, however, just as Cuba did with apartheid, the people will “break the neck” of the Zionist regime.”
Praised by Wafica itself, the young Cuban reporters Leslie Alonso and Yodeni Masó, correspondents in Lebanon for Prensa Latina and Cubavisión Internacional, told of their work experiences just 250 kilometers from Gaza. “We must do more, because Palestine deserves to be free,” they said.
Both discussed the challenges of their work, which include the possibility of Lebanon becoming directly involved in the conflict, but noted that there they became familiar with the cause of the Palestinian people. They told shocking anecdotes, like that of displaced people in 1948 who still have, after time and distance… the key to their home!
Leslie Alonso and Yodeni Masó, correspondents in Lebanon for Prensa Latina and Cubavisión Internacional, told of their work experiences just 250 kilometers from Gaza. Photo: Heriberto González.
The prominent Cuban journalist Elson Concepción addressed another aspect of the matter: the status of author, not just accomplice, of the United States in this aggression, which has been demonstrated in Joe Biden’s early visit to Israel, the sending of two aircraft carriers with its task forces and the gift to the Zionist regime of more than 4 billion dollars in weapons, each year.
From Syria, Fady Marouf, a contributor to Prensa Latina, commented that resistance is the only resource for Palestinians to recover their rights, he denounced the genocide and said that in the home of Palestinians who live in that country there is always a photo of Fidel or Che Guevara. Next, a group of them, with flags of the two nations, exclaimed from there: “Long live Palestine! Long live Cuba!
Cuban journalist Luis Toledo Sande said that crimes and language create habits – here we are dealing with 75 years of bloody aggression – and that leads many people to get used to it, but he noted that more can be done for Palestine from Cuba.
Toledo defined Israel not as a simple ally, but as an “armed branch” of the United States in the Middle East. In his opinion, Zionism does not carry out ethnic cleansing in Palestine but rather an inhuman amputation. For all this, revisiting a phrase by Martí about what to be in the face of certain political dilemmas, he closed with the only affiliation that now fits the worthy: Let’s be Palestinians!
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