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Correspondence, New International, Vol.5 No.1, January 1939, p.31.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
THERE is a matter I want to write to you about, the article on Palestine by L. Rock in the October NI. I see that further articles from Rock are to be printed. I hope that they are much better than this one because that was a very bad article. To talk of “Arab chauvinism” and not of Jewish Zionist Chauvinism is very bad. The Jews are playing a dirty part in Palestine. It is not the time to speak of British Imperialism but of those who are the agents of British Imperialism, and in this case it is the Jews in Palestine and particularly the leadership of the Jewish workers, the various Zionist “socialists” of all kinds. The analogy between Palestine and Ireland is almost perfect. In Ireland the garrison for Britain is a Protestant minority: in Palestine a Jewish minority. In both cases the bulk of the population is putting up a national struggle (which was betrayed by the bourgeois nationalists in Ireland and will be betrayed by the Arab nationalists in Palestine) which is fought by the garrison. We have every right to expect that the leaders of the Jewish workers, leaders with a wide background, knowledge, experience, etc., should work for the union of the workers and peasants and not hang on to the Jewish capitalists who work for Britain. If it comes to a question of who is a “chauvinist” then the Arab peasant can be forgiven a hell of a lot more chauvinism than the Jewish worker. Why not? Whose country is it? The Jewish workers must prove themselves in the eyes of the Arab masses, not vice versa.
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Paul KOSTON |
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