By Tubal Páez Hernández on April 23, 2024
“In the mural painting I am working on, which I will title Guernica, and in all my latest works, I clearly express my revulsion towards the military caste that has plunged Spain into an ocean of pain and death (…) it is the battle of reaction against the people, against freedom,” Pablo Picasso expressed about the painting that would become a dramatic symbol of the barbarity of war.
This April 26th will mark one more anniversary of the fascist massacre in Guernica, Spain, in 1937, and looking back at the events, it is striking to see the parallels with the ruthless actions of the Israeli government against Palestine.
Although the numbers of casualties, the duration and intensity of the actions differ, both can be identified as the bloodiest in proportion to the number of civilian victims in the territories attacked, the great asymmetry of forces, the impunity of the aggressors and the worldwide repulse.
In the bombing of the Basque town in Republican hands during the Spanish Civil War, 1,654 residents died, a third of its inhabitants, without counting those who remained under the rubble that would not be removed until four years later. A total of 889 inhabitants were wounded.
The number of Palestinians killed now exceeds 34,000, most of them women and children, a figure that is rising as Tel Aviv ignores calls for a cease-fire and obstructs humanitarian aid.
In Guernica, Operation Rügen was carried out in a coordinated manner by the Condor Legion of Nazi Germany and the Legionary Aviation of fascist Italy, in support of the military rebels against the legitimate government of Spain.
Over an area of less than one square kilometer in the center of the small town, the attackers dropped 31 tons of bombs of great destructive and incendiary power, precisely on the day and at the hour of greatest concurrence in the local market.
The aggression lasted three hours and 20 minutes. During that time, several waves of warships carried out specific missions. First, a light bomber dropped a series of six bombs, followed by a squadron of lighter aircraft strafing the villagers. The fires lasted several days, and more than 85% of the total buildings were completely destroyed.
Terror bombings like that one would be the most destructive method to conduct a war and demoralize the attacked areas, which Germany and Italy, plus the allied forces of fascism, would undertake during World War II, a war that left a balance, according to estimates of researchers, of between 80 and 100 million dead, civilians and military and incalculable destruction.
The greatest weight in the defeat of Nazism fell on the Soviet Union, whose flag waved victoriously over the German Reichtag, and which ended with the surrender of Japan after the United States unleashed nuclear terrorism in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nowadays, the planet is experiencing a similar horror, after six months of devastating offensive by the Israeli army in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis has forced the displacement of more than 80% of the population, leaving more than one million people in famine, despair and helplessness.
Palestinian women and children flee after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photo: Mohammed Sable / Efe
Since last October 7, with the total destruction of the hospital network and the breakdown of food and fuel distribution, the lives of innocent people, mostly children, women and the elderly, have been targeted.
With unbounded ferocity, Israel’s forces have neither respected the spiritual observance of Ramadan nor hesitated to assassinate the children and grandchildren of the adversary leader or attack the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, where they killed 13 people, including senior Persian military commanders. Such a horror machine, which feeds on the hatred it generates, does not listen to the world clamor for a cease-fire.
As was to be expected, from the beginning of the conflict, the US has sided with the aggressor, supplying 69% of the arms received by Israel, according to the latest report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which published revealing data following the approval by the UN Human Rights Council of a resolution calling on countries to stop selling or sending arms to the Netanyahu government.
Last December, Washington delivered to Tel Aviv thousands of 900, 500 and 225 kg bombs, 5,000 munitions and 61 new fighter planes. These arms packages included more than 1,800 MK84 bombs of 900, 500 and 225 kilos, according to the U.S. press.
Recently, the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, declared that in order to defend its old ally, the US forces intercepted “dozens” of missiles and drones launched from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen towards Israeli territory.
To specify that nothing has changed in the philosophy of “dispossession and war” ─inseparable concepts, as Fidel would recall at the UN in 1960─, Joe Biden has just written in The Wall Street Journal, about the conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine:
“We would send military equipment from our own stockpile and then use money authorized by Congress to replenish that stockpile, buying it from U.S. suppliers,” the president wrote.
“That includes ─he added ─ Patriot missiles made in Arizona, Javelin missiles made in Alabama, and artillery shells made in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas. We would be investing in America’s industrial base, buying American products made by American workers, supporting jobs in nearly 40 states and strengthening our own national security.”
The cold confession is repugnant in its disregard for the dignity of the human condition: war helps the U.S. Of course, this is not new, only that it is expressed amidst the bloodshed of victims, the mourning of families and destruction of the work and home of generations of Palestinians.
As if that were not enough, the U.S. House of Representatives has just approved $26.4 billion to assist Israel.
Let us remember the cost of Washington’s decision to militarily prevent the reunification of Vietnam. In that war, more than three million people died, civilians and military. The US dropped 7.5 million tons of bombs on the Southeast Asian nation (more than all the bombs detonated in World War II), hundreds of millions of artillery rounds, 400,000 tons of napalm and 75 million liters of chemical defoliants such as Agent Orange.
Behind the United States, the government that supplies the most weapons to Israel is Germany, with 30% of sales to that country, which, despite the appeal, expects to receive four submarines from Berlin. Germany’s Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was one of the first world leaders to appear with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv at the beginning of the war in Gaza.
Italy is third on the list. In December 2023, a few weeks after the start of hostilities, supplies to the expansionist client were worth $1.4 billion, three times the level reached in the same month of 2022, according to international media.
Other arms suppliers to Tel Aviv are France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia.
The horror captured in Picasso’s most famous painting also reminds us of the role of lies, the concealment or manipulation of reality when the Spanish reaction, the military coup leaders and the media network lined up to give the world their version of what happened.
The denial of the bombing of Guernica, as well as other cities, by the Condor Legion was maintained during the 40 years of Franco’s regime, just as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy did until their defeat in 1945.
In addition, the attack on Guernica was a forbidden topic among the inhabitants of the village, who were threatened with imprisonment if they commented on the attack or possessed a reproduction of Picasso’s painting. The repression after the war also meant 114, 226 forced disappearances of Spaniards and other nationalities who were persecuted, captured, murdered and buried in mass graves.
Lieutenant General Queipo de Llano, according to experts and historians, was responsible for the execution of more than 45,000 people, including some 14,000 in Seville alone. The war criminal was also known for his public interventions on the radio, in which he threatened to “make all” ideological rivals “disappear”.
During the six months of the war in Palestine, hundreds of tons of explosives have fallen on the Gaza Strip, which has become a heap of ruins. To the number of local victims must be added those suffered by humanitarian organizations, as Israel has not fulfilled its obligation to protect those who carry out this function. According to the United Nations, 224 missionaries have been killed.
Picasso’s ‘The face of peace’. Second version September 29, 1951.
After painting Guernica, in which two women claim justice from heaven, Picasso became a militant symbol of the anti-fascist struggle and a reference of the role to be played by artists and intellectuals committed to a peace that would guarantee that history would not go back to the dark times of the recently concluded war.
A white dove on a black background, which stands out in soft tones with which the painter from Malaga manages to recreate the bird’s plumage, would go down in history as The Dove of Peace, was the response of the already militant communist to the request he received to create an illustration for the poster of the call to the First World Peace Congress, which would take place in Paris in 1949.
On April 20, 1949, the First World Peace Congress was held in Paris. A lithograph by Pablo Picasso was used for the poster of the meeting and since then it has become the universal symbol of peace.
From that successful proposal, the dove would become a recurring theme in Picasso’s work, in which his genius multiplied it in the different manifestations of the plastic arts, such as engraving, ceramics, drawing and oil painting, among others.
Today that symbol, of tireless flight, makes its way through the flames and explosions of war and, frightened by so much horror, looks for a safe shoulder on which to rest again.
Tubal Páez Hernández is a Cuban journalist. Honorary President of the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC).
Source: Cubaperiodista, translation by Resumen Latinoamericano – English