From the revolution to polio: Cuba continues standing firmly with Gaza

Poliovirus was detected for the first time this century in Gaza over the summer, recently paralysing a 10-month old infant. Poor sanitation and unhygienic conditions created by Israel's destructive war that began in October has allowed the disease to steadily spread through the enclave.

Health officials around the world have expressed horror about the return of polio in Gaza. But Cuba is one of the few nations to have drawn a straight line from the crisis to the cause of that crisis.

In a statement on X in July, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that "Genocide of Israel against the people of #Palestine in #Gaza is the cause of the polio epidemic that threatens Palestinians."

This wouldn't be the first time the Caribbean state has condemned Israel's violent and genocidal tactics against the Palestinian people, including purposeful starvation and the bombing of vital infrastructure.

Longtime champion

Cuba has served as an historic ally of Palestine both in political and humanitarian terms, since the United Nations first carved up the holy-land under the 1947 Partition Plan.

It was the only Latin American country to vote against the partition. At the time, its representative Ernesto Dihigo noted, "We have solemnly proclaimed the principle of free determination of the peoples, but we see with great alarm that, when the moment to apply it comes, we forget it."

A more operational form of support would take shape after Ernesto Che Guevara - an Argentine doctor by profession, better known for his role in the Cuban revolution - visited Gaza on June 18,1959.

Here, Che met with Palestinian revolutionary leaders, touring the refugee camps and discussing anti-colonial resistance. It is said that Che asked, "Where are the training camps? Where are the factories to manufacture arms? Where are people's mobilisation centres?"

Cuba offered guerrilla training to Palestinian anti-colonial movements, but also to invest in both the education and healthcare of Palestinians.

In October 1979, President Fidel Castro addressed the Palestinian people's plight by comparing it to other colonised nations, stating, "No more brutal dispossession of the rights to peace and existence of a people has been committed in this century…I cannot remember anything more similar in our contemporary history than the eviction, persecution and genocide carried out today by imperialism and Zionism against the Palestinian people."

Under Fidel's leadership, the island nation continued to offer both forms of social care to Palestinians and its own people.

Stepping back a bit, it's important to note that during Cuba's revolution against the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1953, it would be Fidel who would fight back by prioritising action on housing, unemployment and education and healthcare.

This effort would later go on to benefit other countries who suffered under colonial destruction, including Palestine.

Influencing the development of Cuba's healthcare system was Che Guevara. A year and a half after the revolutionary triumph, he spoke out against the privilege associated with working as a medic, and the importance of making education and health care accessible to the working class.

Che's aim was to create a medical system that functioned as a sustainable humanitarian endeavour.

Decades later in 1999, his vision and Fidel's aim came to fruition with the inauguration of the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), which is internationally accredited and hosts international students to study medicine for free, in alignment with the principles of internationalist solidarity.

Cuba wanted to offer the same opportunities to its comrades, in this case the Palestinians and so in 1974, it began to offer scholarships to around 1,500 Palestinian students, many of them studying to become doctors.

This system of training Palestinian doctors continues today, and as Israel continues to bomb what remains of Gaza's infrastructure, it's now a new generation of Palestinian medical students in Havana who continue their studies, hoping to return and build back their country.

Some already have, like Dr Muhammad Abu Srour. After graduating from University of Medical Sciences of La Habana, the young doctor returned to Bethlehem, where he set up Project Cuba, treating hundreds of patients from Aida refugee camp for free.

Last year, Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel met with some of the current students and called out both the Israeli genocide and US complicity. Out of 144 Palestinian students studying in Cuba, 53 medical students are from Gaza.

Calling out Israel's erasure of Palestinians, Canel described the Palestinian medical students as the "future of Palestine."

It is a powerful statement to make in the face of annihilation. For Palestinians, there has been nothing more stark than Cuba's insistence on saving lives in Gaza while Israel insists on eliminating them.

While Cuba's effort may seem small in the midst of a Western community determined to see Israel's genocide through, Fidel's ongoing revolutionary legacy is offering a simple way forward to emulate and practice.