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This item is a typescript of Curiel’s testimony given in Huckstep, a British Army camp in Cairo south of Heliopolis, that was made into an internment camp for various political activists including Marxists, Islamists, and Zionists. Curiel spent eighteen months there. The translation produced is of almost the entire testimony. i. from november 1945 to december 1947 On November 2, 1945—on the occasion of the twenty-eighth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration—British imperialism, fearing the growing strength of the Egyptian national movement, attempted to create a diversionary maneuver by setting up, through their profascist [local] movements, an antisemitic demonstration in Cairo. To this end, a wide-ranging press campaign was undertaken, and imperialism was counting on their plan’s successful execution. But they did not consider the Communists, and above all the Egyptian Movement for National Liberation [emnl], which published and distributed tens of thousands of clandestine pamphlets. By denouncing antisemitism unequivocally, these pamphlets put the Egyptian populace on their guard against the imperialist maneuver . Militant Egyptian Communists, at the risk of their lives, participated in the demonstrations and managed to alter their course. In the final reckoning that day, British imperialism suffered an overall defeat (notwithstanding their few smallsuccessesonthelocalscale—forexample,thedestructionofasynagogue). From that day and right up to 1948, all attempts to implant antisemitism in Egypt were to suffer a resounding defeat. During the days of 2nd November 1946 and xxxx 19471 the initiative passed completely into the hands of the Communists , supported and guided by Egyptian public opinion, which did not allow the fascist organizations—tools of imperialism—to register even partial successes in their aims of imposing antisemitism. For their part, the Egyptian 27 | Egyptian Communists and the Jewish Question Henri Curiel, “Les Communistes égyptiens et le problème juif,” 1949, in “Inventory of the Papers of the Egyptian Communists in Exile [The Rome Group],” International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, No. 317. 1. [The 1947 date is replaced by “xxxx” in the original.] Egyptian Communists and the Jewish Question | 177 Communists—in this instance the emnl—published many illegal publications denouncing antisemitism as a weapon in the hands of the imperialists to divert national movements away from their principal national struggle. ii. from the [1947] palestine partition plan to the [1948] war Ever since Gromyko presented his thesis on the Palestinian question,2 the emnl—now the Democratic Movement for National Liberation [dmnl]—has taken a position in support of the partition of Palestine in all of its clandestine publications. When [on November 29, 1947] the un General Assembly voted to approve the Palestine partition plan [unga Resolution 181]—the dmnl supported it as the only just solution given the current circumstances. It is worth mentioning that the dmnl was the first organization in the Middle East to take this position—whilst unmasking imperialist maneuvers that were intended to divide the [Egyptian] national movement around the ­ Palestinian question. This advocacy was accomplished through the dmnl’s legal publica­ tion, al-Jamahir [The masses], as well as the January 1948 tract following the banning of al-Jamahir by the Egyptian authorities. This activity [in support of unga Resolution 181] was carried out notwithstanding many instances of police harassment, the frequent arrest of al-Jamahir’s editors, the banning of the publication , attacks by fascist gangs on al-Jamahir’s offices [and the throwing of hand grenades at the office], as well as armed assaults in the streets of Cairo against al-Jamahir’s personnel. On the occasion of [Egypt’s] declaration of war [against Israel], the dmnl published in its clandestine publications—and particularly in its illegal news2 . [Andrei Gromyko (1909–89) was the Soviet Union’s representative to the United Nations from 1946 to 1952. The Soviet Union traditionally supported the establishment of a unitary secular and socialist state in Mandatory Palestine. However, by the period May-November 1947, when the Palestine question was discusssed in the United Nations, the Soviets opted for a more pragmatic position, leading them to support the partition of Mandatory Palestine into two states (one Arab and the other Jewish), each with a democratic internal structure but also institutionally joined together through an economic union. Soviet leaders believed that this solution would provide the quickest way to terminate the British colonial presence in, and long domination over, Palestine while leading to the eventual involvement of military and administrative Soviet contingents within the international force whose aim was to guarantee and implement this transition.] [18.117.153.38] Project...

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