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Labor Action, 3 February 1947

 

Albert Findley

A Detailed and Damning Documentation:

Stalinism’s Dirty Record
on the Jewish Question

 

From Labor Action, Vol. 11 No. 5, 3 February 1947, pp. 6 & 7.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

An Editorial Note

In reading the following article, our readers should bear in mind the position of the Workers Party and Labor Action on the Jewish question as it relates to Palestine. We hold the right of Jewish immigration to Palestine to be unquestioned; and not only for Palestine, but for the whole world. For that reason we give high emphasis to a democratic slogan in this country: Open the Doors of the U.S.! Those who speak out in behalf of the Jews and other displaced persons in Europe and who are not ready to fight for their right to come to this country, are dishonest and hypocritical.

So far as the specific problem of Palestine is concerned, we are for Arab-Jewish unity against British imperialism. In that country, the grave, immediate problem of Arab-Jewish relations, for example, overcoming Arab resistance to Jewish immigration, can only be solved by an intelligent policy which is calculated to unify both peoples in a struggle for national independence of the country. That can best be done, in our opinion, by advocating the establishment of a constituent assembly, based upon universal suffrage and majority rule, guaranteeing at the same time full national and democratic rights for all the peoples who inhabit the country. Such a policy would defeat the reactionary activities of both the Arab feudal chieftains and the Jewish leaders and organizations. The former oppose further immigration as a threat to the Arab state, while the latter seek to set up a Jewish state at the expense of the Arabs. The propaganda of both sides is reactionary and against the best interests of the Jewish and Arab masses.

In the light of world position and power of Stalinism, the following article is an important contribution and a warning. While we do not necessarily endorse every crossed “t” or dotted “i” in this study, we believe it to be a well-merited indictment of the most dangerous force inside the working class movement. The documented material speaks for itself.

Comrade Findley, the writer of this article, is the co-author of a resolution on the Jewish Question which was presented to the last national convention of the Workers Party in May, 1946, and is at present under discussion. The resolution is at variance with the resolution of the National Committee of the WP, in several important respects.

*

The Communist (Stalinist) Party has again changed its policy on Palestine and the Jewish question. Ignoring the suffering of hundreds of thousands of survivors of fascist terror, it is now once more opposed to Jewish immigration into Palestine.

This latest zig-zag in line recalls bitter memories of the Stalinist policy changes on the Jewish question.

As always, the Stalinists pretend to base themselves on the theoretical works of the founders of Marxism, but they distort and reduce these works to an absurdity.

Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks, for example, were opposed to Zionism. Like most Marxists at that time, they held that the Jews were not a nation or nationality, and they were therefore opposed to Zionism; they urged that the Jews of each country find a place in the internal socialist struggle. Yet their position was completely different from the later Stalinist attitudes.

After World War I, the Palestine section of the Communist International (Comintern), while absolutely opposed to Zionism (the Palestine CP was against the national boycott, against slogans for a Jewish majority and a Jewish state) declared that the Jewish population could not be indiscriminately identified with Zionism. It favored free and unlimited Jewish immigration into Palestine. It also demanded from the British government material aid for the establishment of Jewish immigrants in the country. While acquiescing in the maintenance of an Arab majority, the Palestine Marxists pointed out that the legitimate objections of the Arab national movement against political Zionism did not include stoppage of Jewish immigration. They declared that the struggle against Jewish immigration deflected the anti-imperialist struggle onto racial anti-Jewish rails and was therefore profitable only to England. That the Stalinist distortions actually did involve shifting the Arab struggle to anti-Jewish rails, we shall prove later.

Before 1926–27, the Palestine CP was for protection and recognition of the Arab tenant farmer in his right to the land. At the same time, however, it supported Jewish settlement on uncultivated land. It repeatedly declared that there were still large areas of land in the hands of the government and the Arab effendis, cultivable but uncultivated, which should be given to Jewish settlers.

Such was the position of the Bolshevik movement on the Jewish national and Zionist movements. It took a position independent of both the Arab feudal lords and the Zionists. Any attempt to make an amalgam between this position and latter day. Stalinist pogrom-like attitude is a deliberate attempt to smear Bolshevism with the taint of Stalinism.

With the Stalinization of the Comintern in 1926–27, there was a complete shift to the right in its colonial policy: the adoption of a policy in colonial countries of subordination of the proletariat to the native bourgeois nationalist movements.

In Palestine, this meant a change from the previous independent position to one of uncritical support of even the most reactionary elements of the Arab nationalist movement. As the Palestine Communist Party said, they considered “the Jews as an ‘undifferentiated reactionary group,’ as opposed to the Arabs who were considered an ‘undifferentiated progressive group.’”

Even during the ultra-leftist “Third Period” during 1929–1935, they maintained this point of view. The official Stalinist slogan for all colonial and semi-colonial countries was “Workers and Peasant’s Government,” but with one exception – Palestine. Their explanation was that this slogan could have no meaning in Palestine other than the dictatorship of the Jewish proletariat over the peasant masses. This is the only case in Comintern history, even under Stalinist degeneration, where slogans were abandoned solely because of the national character of the proletariat involved. It is interesting to note that while fearing the domination of the Jewish proletariat in Palestine, the Stalinists persisted in denying the very existence of a Jewish proletariat in the country. “The Jewish proletariat does not emigrate,” pontificated the Stalinist theoreticians.

The official position of the Stalinists on Jewish immigration into Palestine is stated in the Communist International, Vol. VI, page 865:

“The Zionist movement is a counter-revolutionary movement of the Jewish big bourgeoisie which has succeeded in attracting large contingents of the Jewish petty bourgeoisie.” It adds, “These colonizing tendencies were controlled by the Zionist movement, at whose head were the financial magnates of Germany, France, Britain and in recent years, America.”

The truth is, however, that Jewish “financial magnates and bankers” have usually been anti-Zionists. That they figure in Stalinist literature as the leaders of Zionism, shows the superficiality of the Stalinist approach to this movement. At the 7th Congress of the Comintern, Yussuf, their Arab leader, declared that “beginning from 1921, British-Zionist finance capital was able to settle in Palestine 250,000 Jewish immigrants.”

The West European Bureau of the Executive Committee of the Communist International declared in 1929 “It is the duty of all our parties to fight against Jewish immigration to Palestine.”

*

One of the main arguments used by the Stalinists against Jewish immigration is the legend, long since exploded, that the Jews have driven the fellahin (the Arab peasantry) off their land. This argument unfortunately still lingers in the minds of many radicals.

The facts are as follows: Sir John Hope Simpson was sent by the British Colonial Office to report on the land situation, following the recommendation by the Shaw Commission, which investigated the 1929 pogroms. He reported 30,000 Arabs landless. The Stalinists not only continued Simpson’s exaggerated “conclusions” but even exaggerated his exaggerations. It was left to International Press Conference (a Stalinist world news service), to say: “In 1930 the number of peasants driven front their land by force and thus deprived of the right to work reached 30,000, according to the official report of Simpson. From 1939 to 1946 the number doubled.”

The matter was later investigated by another official government commission, the French Commission (not sent to justify a political report, but sent to make an economic survey), which found the number of peasants landless as a result of Jewish agricultural settlement, to be no more than 600, instead of the falsified Stalinist figure of 60,000.

When questioned as to why Jewish immigrants in Palestine are needed by British imperialism and Jewish capital, the Stalinists have two stock answers: in order to enslave the Arab population and to build an army against Russia.
 

A CP Expert Waxes Profound

Paul Novick, American CP “expert” on Zionism (before the recent elevation of Morris Schappes to that position) wrote as follows in the introduction to the Russian edition of his book on the Jewish question:

“In Palestine Zionist fascist brigades are mobilized to support British imperialism in its struggle against the agrarian revolution and at the same time as part of the international armies against Soviet Caucasus, in order to seize the oil wells of Bolen and Grosni.”

In an appeal of the Palestine Communist Party, issued as an anti-war proclamation on August 1st, 1934, we find:

“British imperialism ... brings in, through legal and illegal channels, tens of thousands of Zionist-imperialist soldiers in order to strengthen with their aid the suppression of the liberty of the Arab masses and to prepare legions for the intervention in the Soviet Union.”

With such an attitude – that the Jews are invaders, robbers, “anti-Soviet agents,” imperialists – it was only logical for the Stalinists to oppose the entry of Jews into Palestine. The Communist parties all over the world have, until World War II, opposed Jewish immigration into Palestine.

Nor was it a passive opposition. For many years the Stalinists have been urging the Arabs to maintain active resistance against the Jewish “conquerors.” In 1930, they appealed to the Arab populace to guard the harbors to prevent Jews from landing.

In 1936, THE CP of Palestine called upon the Jewish youth to aid the Arab youth in the struggle against the entry of Jews. In the same year, Harry Pollitt, speaking in the name of the English Communist Party, declared that the justice of the demand for the “stoppage of any further Jewish immigration” cannot be disputed.

During the heyday of the Peoples Front, 1938-39, just prior to the Stalin-Hitler pact, we find a change in the Stalinist position on these questions. In the U.S., Palestine and Eastern Europe, the Jewish Stalinists dropped their flat and unequivocal opposition to all Jewish immigration and began to propose “political solutions” for the Arab-Jewish problems, which we will take up later. However, at no time did the Comintern itself give up its opposition to Jewish immigration. But of that later.
 

The Stalinists Enter Their Pogrom Period

According to the Stalinists before 1938 there were no Jews in Palestine – only Zionists. And who are the Zionists? British agents! Herein lies the key to the Stalinist interpretation of the pogroms on the Jews.

The Stalinist reasoning was simple: Where there are no Jews, there can be no pogroms. When an Arab kills a Jew, they maintained, he kills only a British agent and when many Arabs attack many Jews, it is a revolution against British’ imperialism. That is the reason for the Communist Party support and encouragement of the pogroms of 1929, 1933, 1936, 1939.

From August 20 to August 28, 1929, the American Communists, in the Freiheit, their American Jewish daily, denounced the attacks on the Jews as pogroms. On orders from the Comintern, they reversed their position, and on August 29, 1929, the pogroms became a “revolutionary uprising.”

In conjunction with the riots of 1936, the Palestine Communist Party issued the following appeal (Imprecorr, June 27, 1936):

“The everspreading imperialist-Zionist occupation of the country demands speedy and effective resistance, or Zionist robbery will deprive the Arab people of Palestine. The Arab liberation movement is endeavoring to make the continuation of Zionist colonization impossible by means of ridding the economy of the Zionist conquerors by acts of sabotage and partisan attacks.”

The “partisan attacks” praised here were not attacks on British soldiers but attacks on unarmed Jews, including a bomb thrown into a school in Tel-Aviv in which children between the ages of 6 and 11 were wounded.
 

Who Are the Robbers And Who the Robbed?

The fundamental line of the Stalinists concerning the relations between Jews and Arabs was remarkable for its simplicity: Jews are the robbers, Arabs are the robbed. Jews are the aggressors, Arabs the attacked. Jews are the invaders, Arabs the expelled. It is easy to explain, as did the Morning Freiheit, Yiddish daily organ of the American Communist Party, in relation to the pogroms of 1929:

“The war of the Jews against the Arabs has always been and still is an unjust one. The war of the Jews against the Arabs is a part of the imperialist suppression. The war of the Arabs against the Jews is, regardless of its religious appearances, a part of the world struggle for the liberation of the downtrodden masses.”

This, then, was the Stalinist line, dressed up in pseudo-revolutionary phraseology. It called a pogrom a revolution, and developed its reactionary policy on this foundation.

(Our readers should not misunderstand our comments as support for Zionism or the Zionist movement. We are merely indicating that it is, and was, wrong to identify the Jewish population of Palestine with political Zionism. In describing the development of Stalinist policy we are showing its wholly opportunist anti-socialist character.)

Despite the betrayals of the working class by the Stalinists, they have in most places been able to pose as internationalists, bringing together people of different nationalities in common struggle. That such struggles emerge for the power and prestige of the Stalinist bureaucracy rather than for socialism, is quite another matter.

In Palestine, a country inhabited by two nationalities, and ruled over by a foreign imperialist power, the policy of the Stalinist CP has not been one of uniting the two nations into a common anti-imperialist struggle against the foreign yoke, but to deflect this struggle to an anti-Jewish pogrom policy. We have already demonstrated this in relation to Jewish immigration and the pogroms of 1929, 1933, 1936.

Did the Communists in Palestine advocate and struggle for Jewish-Arab unity within the trade unions, or even within the party itself? The answer is emphatically NO!

Since its 3rd Congress, when the Comintern raised the slogan of a united “Arabistan,” the CP of Palestine began eliminating and purging so-called “Zionist” elements and adopted the slogan of “Toward the Arabs” – which in effect meant complete acceptance of the Arabs as an undifferentiated progressive group, including their top, semi-feudal leaders.

Immediately after the pogroms of 1929, the executive committee of the Comintern issued orders that the Central Committee of the Palestine Party must contain an Arab majority. At the 7th Congress the Palestine delegate went one step further. He announced that Arabization would go on “while keeping the reliable and honest Jewish comrades in the party ranks.” This language is familiarly like the favorite defense of anti-Semites – “Some of my best friends are Jews.”
 

Results of a Sectarian Policy

As to the trade unions, the CP during the 3rd period of 1929–35 characterized the Histadruth – the Jewish trade union of Palestine with 80,000 members – as “social fascists,” “racists,” “robbers,” and even “Hitlerites.”

In 1935, Ben Gurion, leader of the Histadruth, signed a pact with Vladimir Jabotinsky, establishing working arrangements with the reactionary Revisionist wing of Zionism. The agreement also contained a “no strike pledge” as advocated by the Revisionists. This evoked a storm of protest from the rank and file of the Histadruth and was voted down by a huge majority in a referendum.

During the campaign preceding the referendum, the Stalinists issued this stupid and sectarian appeal:

“Do not vote for or against the agreement. Instead of voting, protest against Zionism, against immigration,” etc.

In the United States, the Stalinists had been demanding that the Histadruth admit Arab workers into its ranks. At the same time in Palestine they unceasingly warned the Arab workers against joining the Histadruth. They never supported those left-wing elements inside the Zionist movement which struggled to transform the Histadruth to one extent or another into a union of both Jewish and Arab workers.

Instead they have called upon the Arab workers to refrain from entering into any relations with Jewish labor. When the Arab workers of the Nesher cement plant went on strike, the Histadruth gathered funds for their support. The Communists demanded that the strikers not accept any help from the Jews.

When in November 1935 an attempt was made by unknown persons to smuggle arms into Haifa, the CP did not wait to determine who was responsible, but without hesitation issued a fiery call to the Arabs: “the aim of these arms is only one – the hearts of the Arabs whom the Jews want to erase and eradicate from the earth.”

This appeal was so openly a pogrom-call, that the Jewish section of the French CP was forced to repudiate the proclamation under pressure from the Paole-Zion who were part of the Jewish Peoples Front of France.

In the United States the Jewish Stalinists claimed at first that this leaflet was a lie – a forgery by red-baiters. Later they admitted that the Palestine CP did issue the statement but said that due to the inexperience of the leaders of the Palestine CP, an error in principle had been made which had been “speedily corrected,” promising at the same time to publish a correction. Eleven years have passed and this correction has not seen print yet.
 

The Palestine CP Accepts White Paper

During the entire thirties, the CP position on Palestine was entirely one-sided. The Jews had only duties to perform, the Arabs only rights. All demands for compromise and surrender were directed exclusively to the Jewish bourgeoisie; the equally reactionary Arab leaders, were seldom attacked. In the words of William Gallagher, Communist member of British Parliament, the “ONLY right of the Jews in Palestine is to cooperate with the Arabs in building a prosperous Arab State.”

The Freiheit in 1939 stated that “perhaps it may be worth while to accept formally the temporary stoppage of immigration to Palestine in order to start a larger immigration to all Arab countries ...”

Later in 1939, the British imperialist government followed this advice and issued the White Paper, the most severe blow it ever directed against the Jews in Palestine.

The White Paper, in the face of the unprecedented need of refugees fleeing from Hitler, prohibiting Jewish immigration after a period of five years or after 75,000 immigrants were admitted, was promulgated by the British government with the consent of the “great humanitarian” Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The “theory” behind the White Paper was to limit immigration to such amounts as would bring the Jewish population up to ⅓ and no more of the total population of the country. Here the Stalinists were even more stringent than the British imperialists. The Communist Party of Palestine submitted a memorandum to the Woodhead Commission (which prepared the White Paper) demanding that the then existing population ratio of 30 to 70 not be disturbed under any conditions.

The Stalinists had for years demanded that Jewish acquisition of land be stopped. The White Paper did so and set up racial criteria for the purchase of land by forbidding Jews to buy land in the main fertile sections of Palestine. No attempt was made to protect tenants – the prohibition was entirely on a racist basis.
 

Openly Agree with British Oppressors

The Stalinists themselves recognized the parallel of their own demands with those of the White Paper. The Hammer, organ of the Palestine CP, urged the Arabs to accept the White Paper and cease their anti-British acts in the following weasel words:

“Not to further the uprising movement because the partial concessions and promises of the English government to put through gradual reforms in the country are at present a limited achievement, which, given the proper political vigilance, can bring more fundamental rights ...”

But the American Communist Party, too, attempting to build its own imitation of a popular front amongst the Jews, urged the Jews to reject the White Paper! This is but one of the more illustrative acts of the cynical and hypocritical doubledealing which the Stalinists practice in relation to the Jewish question.

*

The rise of Hitler in 1933 added 500,000 Jews to the desperate number who wished to immigrate to save their lives. This was in addition to millions in Poland, Rumania and Hungary, who were seeking a place to live. The doors of all nations were closed, and remain so to this day:

The two largest countries of the world, Russia and the United States, could have, with the greatest of ease, absorbed these people, but they did not do so – with the result that 6,000,000 died via crematories, gas chambers, starvation, etc.

After the Hitler-Stalin pact, which divided Poland between Germany and Russia according to a pre-arranged agreement, 1,000,000 Jews fled eastward from the German armies. These Jews crowded into the Russian occupied portions of Poland, where they were not welcomed and every difficulty was placed in the way of their entrance. In September, 1940, 10,000 GPU agents descended on these people and in two days and two nights transported 500,000 people in tightly packed cattle-cars to Siberia. Little or no food was given for the trip that took four to six weeks. The Jewish press still prints letters from refugees who are now beginning to contact the outside world, describing the horrors of those days.

During the early part of the war, following the Stalin-Hitler pact, the Stalinists continued their opposition to Jewish immigration. It was only in later years of the war that any Stalinist party came out directly in favor of Jewish immigration. The those “who considered the Jews as [1] an undifferentiated reactionary mass opposed to the Arabs as an undifferentiated progressive force.”

While the Stalinist parties the world over almost always have the same line and use the identical phrases and arguments, on the question of Jewish immigration there has been a rather sharp division.

While the Jewish Stalinists changed their position to fit Jewish popular opinion, the Stalinist propaganda to the Arabs always maintained a consistent line of opposition to Jewish immigration.

The Arab League for National Liberation, the name of the Palestine Arab Stalinists, has consistently opposed Jewish immigration. In October 1945 a conference of the Near East Communist Parties took place in Damascus at which representatives of Palestine, Lebanon, Irak and Syria participated. This conference adopted resolutions against Zionism and Jewish immigration. Mustafa Alarais of Lebanon, just returned from Russia reported, “the best friends of the Arabs in Palestine and other countries, are the Russians, and Moscow considers the Zionists as tools of British and American imperialism.” He appealed for the workers to join in a united national front to combat Jewish immigration.

Since the “dissolution” of the Comintern,. the Stalinists in Palestine have separated into two distinct organizations. The so-called PKP is 100 per cent Jewish. The Arab Stalinists are organized into the Arab League for National Liberation.

According to the Herald Tribune of December 30, 1946, the Arab Stalinists in Palestine “have doubled their membership during the last years. They have tightened their hold on the Arab Federation of Trade Unions. They claim a membership of 20,000 for the Federation.”

“Meanwhile, the Jewish Communists have gained only a few hundred members and remain almost as weak as they were in the election of August, 1945, when they won 3 of 171 seats in Asefata-Hanivchorim, the Jewish Parliament of Palestine.”

“Moscow always has evidenced sympathy for the Arab aspirations toward independence. Since the Palestine Communist press unanimously opposes partition and the creation of a Jewish state, the Communists stand to gain if the British turn to partition as the solution of the Palestine problem ....

“The Arab paper Al Ithat (Stalinist) opposes further immigration.”

The Jewish Day of New York reports that publicly the Stalinists make no attempt at crossing national lines in Palestine. In fact, the Arab Stalinists did not even send greetings to the latest conference of PKP, the Jewish Palestine Communist Party!

Emil Tuma, editor of Al Ithat declared that the present Arab Higher Committee is the symbol of Arab unity and that the Stalinists are prepared for further collaboration with the Husseini (Mufti) Party. The Stalinists have declared that they will not organize any organization (trade union) in those sections where there are rightist Arab organizations. As to Jewish-Arab cooperation, the Stalinists have said “they are opposed to official united actions of Jewish and Arab workers through the Hlstadruth because of political purposes.” Complete support and unity with the Mufti is all right with these so-called communists, but any attempt to cross national lines for working class cooperation is opposed by the Stalinists.

That the Stalinists are returning to their old position of viewing all classes of the Arabs as progressive, is indicated by Bulah Poroch, another CP leader who disclosed that “all Arabs, regardless of class, have suffered from Zionism.” (my emphasis – A.F.)

Despite the weakness of the Stalinist party amongst the Jews, they have influenced the left wing parties of Palestine – the Hashomer Hatzair and the Achduth Avodah Party. Both of these groups support Stalinism in every phase, except on the Jewish question. The Left Paole-Zion, who make up the main core of the Achduth Avodah, have been pro-Stalinist for many years. They have no criticism to make of Russia; they regard that anti-working class police state, as Socialist, and they supported the Moscow trials, etc.

Unfortunately for the Achduth Avodah, this plea for a pro-Russian orientation came on the heels of the world change in the Stalinist position, which is now against the rights of the Jew’s to enter Palestine. The Hashomer Hatzair in Palestine, which advocates a variety of binationalism based on political parity, also is pro-Russian.
 

Post-War Line of American Stalinists

With the end of World War II thousands of Jews began a desperate attempt to find a permanent place of refuge. They filled the displaced persons camps as a temporary resting place in their search for a permanent haven. Most of them were survivors of concentration camps, who miraculously escaped the gas chambers. Others were new arrivals who were driven there by the growing post-war wave of anti-Semitism which a chaotic capitalist Europe was developing.

The Stalinists joined in the campaign to admit 100,000 Jews to Palestine. The Morning Freiheit printed dozens of articles on this subject, and attacked the British Labor Party for not permitting the refugees to enter Palestine.

In the meantime, the Russian press had begun a campaign of denouncing Zionism, while the Russian government undertook a tentative rapproachment with the governments of the Arab states in its efforts to acquire an imperialist foothold in the Near East. The Russians, and their satellites at the UN, voted for Arab League proposals to prevent Jewish immigration into Palestine.

As a result, the American Stalinists changed their line. On November 4, the Morning Freiheit published a resolution on Communist work among the American Jewish masses, the net result of which is to make the line of the American CP conform to the interests of Stalin’s foreign policy in the Near East.

The demand for the admission of 100,000 Jews into Palestine has disappeared from their press, and while declaring that “the concept of a Jewish world nation” is “reactionary utopianism,” they do not completely give up their slogan of a Jewish Nation Home, but declare that “our use of the slogan ‘Jewish National Home’ was characterized by distortion and one-sidedness.”

The resolution calls for the United Nations to take the responsibility of re-settling Jewish displaced persons. It demands “greater possibilities for Jewish refugees to immigrate and settle in the United States.” Toward the rulers of the country with which they have the closest ties – Russia – they dare make no demands.

The resolution is purposely vague regarding a solution for the problem of Arab-Jewish relations in. Palestine. It proposes an “independent Palestine state under supervision of the United Nations,” with “national rights” for the Jewish inhabitants, but not as a “homeland for the Jews of all countries.”

The resolution is left purposely vague to allow for varied interpretations, to be made in accordance with the requirements of Russian policy in the Near East.

Principles mean nothing to the cynics in the leadership of the Communist Party. Their words mean less than nothing. In practice, however, one thing is certain – they have dropped the demand for Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Without offering a positive presentation of our own on the Jewish question (available in the November issue of The New International) we have charted here in some detail the zig-zags in line of Stalinism on the Jewish question. One thing should be clear: the Stalinist position on this, as on all other problems, is based not on any consideration of the needs of either the Jewish or Arab masses, but rather exclusively on the transient needs of the Stalinist bureaucracy. To understand this simple fact is to begin to understand the reactionary nature of Stalinism – and that has been the purpose of this compilation.

*

Author’s Note: Much of the factual material in this article has been taken from an excellently-documented pamphlet now unfortunately out of print: The Communists in Palestine (1939) by Bezalel Sherman. Other material has been taken from articles by L. Rock in The New International. The use of this material, however, is my own.

*

Footnote by ETOL

1. There seems to be a formatting error at this point. The following passage appears at this point but does not seem fit anywhere in the text:

... “American CP even came out in favor of a national home in Palestine.

Alex Bittleman, then Jewish “expert” of the CP, in his pamphlet The Jewish People Will Live On made a remarkable about-face from the previously quoted Stalinist position:

“The Jewish workers in the U.S. are in full agreement with the Jewish workers of the Palestine Yishuv on the national tasks of upbuilding of the Yishuv as a free national composition of the Jewish people of America and all Jewish communities.”

“It becomes necessary to insist that the thing to concentrate on at present is the task of aiding the Yishuv in the fight for the abolition of the White Paper, for the free economic, industrial and agricultural development of the Jewish community.”

In 1944, the Jewish Stalinists of Palestine gave up their opposition to the Histadruth and joined that trade union. On re-entering they declared that they had purged the party of” ...

 
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