Laura Pollan, a founding member and leader of the Ladies in White, passed away in Havana after a brief illness this week.   While many Cubans may not know who she was, those who marched with her these last 9 years are missing her and vowing to keep the group she led moving forward.  The women’s group started as a silent protest after Mass each Sunday, after their loved ones were arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences in the spring of 2003 for what the Cuban government said was collaboration with a hostile foreign power (the U.S. of course).  For many years, the Ladies made a statement by saying nothing, just walking on 5^th Avenue, dressed all in white and carrying gladiolas in their hands.  In the last couple of years, the group was becoming more visible and political, and perhaps it was for that that pro-government crowds began harassing and intimidating the Ladies in Havana and Santiago on a number of occasions.  Whatever one might think of another’s politics – their means, their bedfellows, their objectives  – those who would intimidate only denigrate themselves when resorting to such tactics.  Remembering Pollan, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez wonders what those who pushed and yelled at Pollan might feel now.

Speaking of pushing and yelling, House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is at it again, so to speak.  This time her target was a Cuban children’s theater group, the famous La Colmenita (the Little Beehive).   The group of performers, ages 6 -15, came to Washington, DC this week and “brought down the house” at the Duke Ellington Theater Wednesday night.  Ros-Lehtinen sent an indignant complaint to the State Department this week.  Her beef is with one of the acts the children perform, “inspired by the story of the Cuban Five who are hailed as national heroes in Cuba for their efforts to prevent militant Cuban exile groups from harming Cuban citizens.”  Ros-Lehtinen characterizes the Five quite differently – they were sent to the U.S. to “carry out illicit operations against our homeland,” and convicted of “espionage activities.”  The Five’s work was indeed illicit – agents of foreign governments must register when they are working in our country, and they did not.  But they weren't targeting the American homeland, they were in Miami keeping tabs on groups that were targeting their own homeland.  La Colmenita's director, whose father perished on Cubana flight 455 (downed by terrorists in 1976), shot back:

“She is treating us as if we were terrorists when the facts are quite the opposite. It is a small segment of the Cuban exile community who has used threats and violence to keep Americans and Cubans apart. We are simply Cuban artists who are coming to the U.S. with a message of social justice, peace and understanding. All we want to do is to share our stories with those Americans who want to know more about the things that are important to the Cuban people...”

It always comes down to the fact that one person’s bad guy is another person’s good guy.  (Ros-Lehtinen should know this as well as anyone, since she campaigned for a pardon for Orlando Bosch, whom the FBI implicated in the Cubana attack, among others.) Ros-Lehtinen suggests in her letter that the State Department is misusing taxpayer funds by allowing exchanges such as this one to take place, though it's unclear why, since the group's visit was funded by a private entity, The Brownstone Foundation.  With the number of snowflakes the Chairwoman sends over to State on Cuba policy these days, it’s a wonder she gets anything else accomplished with her taxpayer-funds. 

Finally, I was going to just leave news of the Israeli-Palestinian thousand-for-one swap alone – I’m no expert on the Middle East – but this post by Elliott Abrams on the Council on Foreign Relations' blog just begged a response:

“Israel’s swap of roughly one thousand prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit demonstrates the extremely difficult choices any decent country faces when dealing with governments or terrorist groups that hold human life cheap. Whatever one’s view of Israel’s decision to make this swap, it is worth noting that Israel is exchanging prisoners–not changing its policies toward terrorism.

This point becomes important when one discovers what the United States was apparently willing to give Cuba in exchange for the freedom of Alan Gross, a USAID contractor who is being held as a hostage in Havana.”

Abrams complains that the Obama administration was willing to compromise its policy – embodied in part by USAID democracy funds the administration was allegedly prepared to downsize and by Cuba’s continued presence on the U.S. terrorism list – to win the freedom of USAID subcontractor Alan Gross, who has now been in prison nearly as long as Shalit was held captive by Hamas.  Abrams thinks that such an offer presents a danger to other human rights workers, because hostile governments might think they could extract something from the U.S. if they just arrest an American.  It’s certainly possible, and surely a similar thought crossed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s mind as he made his decision.  It just seems to me that if we are so concerned with the safety of human rights workers we should better protect and inform them in the first place than we did for Alan Gross, no?

So, let me just get this straight: Abrams gives Netanyahu a pass for negotiating with a terrorist organization that refuses to renouce violence against the Israeli people, but Obama can't make a deal with a geriatic has-been Cold War adversary to cut a few million dollars from a totally political program that if it's gotten any results, no one would ever know?  (H/T Cuba Money Project's Tracey Eaton for posting those highlights of his interview with former USAID official Gerald Hyman, who compared USAID in Cuba to a CIA program in the Soviet Union.)

Perhaps if President Obama had been willing to release hundreds of Cuban prisoners whose crimes included violent attacks on American citizens (or maybe just the five prisoners the Cubans want?) in order to reunite Alan Gross with his family, Abrams would just call that "an extremely difficult choice.”   Any questions?