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From Workers’ International News, Vol.2 No.6, June 1939, pp.8-9.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
During the last war there was keen competition between the British and the Germans for the allegiance of the Jews, principally the American Jews, who constitute in the United States a factor not to be neglected. The Germans offered a Chartered Company in Palestine to the Zionists, the British offered them a National Home. These offers were made, as Lloyd George cynically put it, for “propaganda purposes,” and for similar propaganda purposes, both sides offered the Arabs the same territory they were holding out to the Jews.
At the present moment there is no question of German imperialism competing against British for the support of the Jews in the coming war. Hitler for “propaganda purposes,” built Jew-baiting into the fundamental structure of the Nazi state and by so doing, eliminated the possibility of Jewish war support. For the Jews, there is only one side that can possibly be taken in the coming conflict if any side is taken at all, and the recent White Paper on Palestine of the British Government has tacitly taken that fact for granted in concentrating its attention entirely on placating the Arabs. The Jews are callously abandoned, just as callously as the Arabs will in their turn be abandoned, once they have served their purpose in the next war of protecting Britain’s Near Eastern connections and interests.
Jewish immigration is to be ended, Jewish land purchase to be restricted, the Jewish population to be stabilised as a permanent minority. The publication of the paper has been followed by protest demonstrations and a renewed outburst of fighting between Arabs and Jews, threats of rebellion and plans for non-co-operation and passive resistance.
The Arab nationalist leaders, in spite of the sharp lesson they received on the treachery of the imperialists in the last war, are once again intriguing with Germany, seeking to play one rival against the other, and demanding complete control of Palestine as the price for their acquiescence in the plans the imperialists.
The Jewish nationalist leaders, deprived of similar opportunities to indulge their taste for intrigue, are forced now to contemplate the results of their previous intrigues.
They have made the Jewish people into instruments of imperialism, to be used against the Arabs and then tossed aside as soon as they had served their purpose. Having helped to safeguard British pipelines to supply oil to the navy, having maintained Britain’s strategic position in the eastern Mediterranean, they are now relegated to the position of reserves, to be kept in the background until needed by the imperialists.
Once again the lesson is forced upon Jews and Arabs alike – there is no possibility for the preservation of the culture and the traditions of small nationalities within the framework of imperialism.
The national aspirations of Jew and Arab alike are callously utilised for the protection of the interests of the British bourgeoisie, which plays one against the other in order to keep both enslaved. The problem of Palestine is one that can only be solved by the victorious socialist revolution.
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