Politico's Ben Smith reports that incoming House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen worked to shut down a potential warming of Cuban-Israeli relations after Fidel Castro made a surprise defense of the Jewish people earlier this year.  (Castro questioned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his failure to recognize the holocaust, and said that "no one has been more slandered than the Jews.")

According to Smith, Israeli officials saw Castro's uncharacteristic remarks as an opportunity. 

Israeli leaders reacted warmly to an unexpected defense of Jews and Israel, and criticism of Iran, from Cuban leader Fidel Castro in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Castro's "deep understanding" and President Shimon Peres wrote in a warm letter to Castro that the comments were "a surprising bridge between the hard reality and a new horizon." Israeli officials, I'm told, saw the moment as an opportunity to widen a fissure in the hostility of the global left for Israel.

Alan Berger, at the Boston Globe, would probably agree (h/t to the Atlantic's Goldberg).  After Goldberg publicized Castro's comments, Berger argued that Castro himself sought to moderate some of his allies with his comments.

"Whatever his personal feelings about the matter, Castro was drawing a bright line between himself and Ahmadinejad. At the same time, he was giving a lesson to his foremost student, Chávez, in the putative difference between progressive and reactionary values. Chávez has tolerated and even promoted virulent anti-Semitism in Venezuela. But a day after Castro's condemnation of Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitism, Chávez said he would meet with Jewish community leaders and declared: "We respect and love the Jewish people.''"

This is the same sort of logic that many more centrist and conservative Latin Americanists, particularly those worried about the polarizing influence of Hugo Chavez in the hemisphere, have espoused as one more excellent reason for President Obama to engage Cuba.  A 2009 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report prepared by Carl Meacham of Ranking Member Richard Lugar's staff put it this way:

"Certain Latin American leaders, whose political appeal depends on the propagation of an array of anti-Washington grievances, would lose momentum as a centerpiece [U.S. restrictions on Cuba] of these grievances is removed.

In other words, constructive engagement with Cuba could well serve a more conservative ideology, one which Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (who will become Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee this January) might be expected to embrace.  Except she didn't.  Ben Smith explains:

A Cuban exile and fierce Castro foe, she made her displeasure known to the Israelis -- and even received an apologetic call from Netanyahu, which appears effectively to have squelched the unlikely dialogue with Cuba.

“I just said look, this guy has been an enemy of Israel, just because he said something that a normal person would say—after 50 years of anti-Israel incitement it’s one phrase from an old guy who doesn’t even know where he’s standing,” Ros-Lehtinen told me of the exchange.