Jewish Radicals: A Documentary Reader

58. A Revolt of the Oppressed Arab Masses (1929)

| 301 58 A Revolt of the Oppressed Arab Masses (1929) Di morgn frayhayt Dimorgnfrayhayt,liketheForverts,originallydescribedtheriots in Palestine as “pogroms,” implying they contained an unjustifiable , anti-Semitic character. However, due to pressure from the CommunistPartyleadership,thenewspaperchangeditsposition and described the disturbances as a warranted uprising against imperialism. Over the ensuing days and weeks, the newspaper escalated its rhetoric and organized anti-Zionist rallies, touching offafuriousreactionintheimmigrantJewishcommunity. The Zionists and Jewish nationalists and chauvinists of all kinds led a demonstration yesterday on the streets of New York as a protest against the events in Palestine. Against whom did the Jewish nationalists protest? What have they demanded? The Zionists, the longtime agents of British imperialism in Palestine, are looking to present the events in Palestine as an outbreak of “half wild Arab bandits, which . . . have in one week destroyed and ruined that which has taken many years for the Jews to build”—so writes the Zionist bourgeois newspaper Der tog.1 They have protested, that is, against wild pogromists; they have demanded that the British authority in Palestine adopt means to put down the pogrom. But has a pogrom taken place in Palestine—a pogrom in the sense of a bloodbath, which a ruling people makes against an oppressed people? All the reports which come from Palestine are strongly censored and do not tell the truth about the events in Palestine, but it is difficult even for the capitalist newspapers to hide the fact that in Palestine a revolt of the oppressed Arab masses is taking place against British imperialist rule. Surely this is a revolt of the unconscious masses, which are being misled on a false road. But the Arab masses are not to blame for this. Who are the ones truly guilty for the bloody events in Palestine? 302 | The Question of Zionism Guilty, first of all, are the agents of British imperialism in Palestine, the Zionists. For the Arab toiler, the Zionists are the unmitigated enemy. He cannot see British imperialism with its silent interests in Palestine, Arabia, India, Egypt, and so on. But he does see Zionism, which has driven him from his land. He sees the Jewish capitalist, which has planted orange plantations on his land and exploits him, the former owner of the land, in a merciless way. The oppressed Arab toiler sees the Jewish labor fakers, the leaders of the Jewish labor federation,2 the Palestine section of the Amsterdam International ,3 which leads a boycott agitation against him, the leaders that have mobilized the Jewish workers to tear away the Arab workers’ morsel of food. This labor faker is, for the Arab toiler, the embodiment of the conqueror, the culprit in his difficult, bitter situation. The kindling, which has over the course of years gathered among the Arab masses against the Jewish imperialists in Palestine, is now being utilized by the Arab landowners, the effendis, for their own interests. They, the effendis, exploit the Arab toilers no less than the Jewish capitalist colonists do. And national and religious hatred is an old, proven means of the ruling classes. Through incitement of religious superstition, the attention of the masses is diverted from their own exploitation. The Arab landowners and clerics have hoped to establish their own power over the misguided masses. And guilty is the British MacDonald government, which uses the slogan “divide and rule” in all countries that find themselves under the yoke of British imperialism. The MacDonald government hoped that a little Arab and Jewish blood would give it the opportunity to establish its feet more strongly on the oppressed Arabs of Palestine. But the imperialists have unleashed forces that they can no longer control. The events in Palestine have taken on a character of a mass revolt against imperialist domination. The masses struggle instinctively against all of their exploiters. The current struggles in Palestine should be transformed into a struggle against British imperialism and its servants. An independent workers’ and peasants’ Palestine for the masses of Palestine, for both Arabs and Jews—this is the correct demand, which the Communists in Palestine put forward. This evening in Irving Plaza Hall, the Jewish workers of New York will protest against the Jewish and British imperialists, the true guilty ones in the bloody events in Palestine. They will express their brotherly support for the Palestine Communists in their struggle for an independent, workers’ and peasants’ Palestine for all toilers, Jews and Arabs. A Revolt...