On May 2, 1918, Zeire Zion, a ramified Zionist organisation, met in secret conference in Moscow. The conference was attended by representatives from Petrograd, Moscow, Vitebsk, Voronezh, Vologda, Rybinsk, Saratov, Astrakhan, Irkutsk, Orel, Kazan, Tula, Kozlov, Kaluga, Dubrovka, Tambov, Borisoglebsk, Livny, Kineshma, Yelets, Samara, and Ryazan.
A report was delivered whose theses had been carefully discussed and approved in advance: “The basic issue of Russia’s policy is that of the Russian revolution; the experiments of the socialist revolution are Bolshevik experiments in the sphere of industry, finance, state economy, foreign policy. . . . The results of these experiments are the collapse of the state, economic decline . . . and strong reaction in the West; the position of the Jewish people is economic deterioration and impoverishment of middlemen, traders, employees and artisans as a result of requisitions in the occupied regions of Russia with the same thing happening in socialist Russia as a result of Bolshevik experiments which are killing trade, industry. . . . Our political demands remain unchanged: the formation of a coalition government without the Bolsheviks.” [1]
A heated debate ensued. Dr. Ryss made the following point in his statement: “The Bolsheviks said that as soon as they established the dictatorship of the proletariat they would be able to achieve everything. . . . What will be our stand on this issue? We should have a Jewish orientation: a Russian Federative Republic must be set up in the interests of the Jewry. . . . What are we to do? Should we serve the Bolsheviks? Yes, we should, for it would not be a political recognition of their rule, but a question of bread.” [2]
Another speaker, one Lezlin, said: “So far Bolshevism is strong, therefore it is necessary to determine ways and means of fighting it. In our daily activities we constantly come up against Bolshevik institutions. The Russian intellectuals have already renounced sabotage. We too should to a certain extent renounce sabotage. And we should work in whatever Bolshevik government departments we can.” [3]
Silberg, a delegate from Astrakhan, said: “The purpose of our struggle is to organise all democratic elements in order to take power into our hands with the fall of Bolshevism. . . . The community is the first step in the organisation of Jewry.” [4]
Thus, when the Zionists meet behind closed doors they lose all interest in discussing questions connected with the “holiness” of Zion, biblical testaments on “loving thy neighbour.” Hatred for internationalism, Soviet rule and Lenin’s Party was the pivot of all their sentiments in the period of the October Revolution, while the elaboration and implementation of concrete methods of struggle against communism stood at the centre of their practical activity. It could not have been otherwise with people in whose “credo” socialism was characterised as follows: “Never in the course of its long history had Jewry such an enemy . . . for Jewry, for the Jewish national idea socialism is a mortal foe. . . .
“Socialism is all the more dangerous because its bitter pill is lavishly sugared, because it comes to the unfortunate Jewish people . . . in the guise of a ‘friend’ and ‘deliverer.’ It tells them: ‘Come you, the underprivileged, and I shall deliver you.’ But socialism is not such a ‘platonic altruist’: it demands compensation for its labours.”
“What does it require of the Jews?” ask the authors of the document. “A great deal. First, it demands flesh and blood sacrifices. Socialism is preparing to overthrow the existing system by force, and such upheavals are inconceivable without bloodshed. . . . Socialism has inscribed on its banner the words ‘The history of mankind is the history of class struggle,’ i.e., it views crude materialism, the call of the belly as the sole factor of history, an almost exclusive code of life. . . . Whatever form, international or national, socialism might crystallise into, it is equally fatal. . . .
“Yet, if Jewry is to be capable of further historical existence it will have to develop in itself an antidote to the venom of socialism.
“And that is exactly what has happened. Raised . . . among the Jews of the world . . . the movement known as Zionism is that antidote.
“Zionism is creation, revival; socialism is destruction, corruption.
“Zionism is peace; socialism is enmity. . . .
“Zionism is the unification of the whole of Jewry; socialism is the struggle of one class against another.
“Zionism needs a modern system [i.e., capitalism—Y.I.]; socialism raises its sword against this system. . . .
“Socialism blocks the path to Zionism. Hence, Zionism and socialism are not merely two mutually repellent poles, but two elements, one completely ruling out the other. Zionism is needed wherever there are Jews, and it is essential where there is ferment in the minds of the Jews.” [5]
The Zionists were quite happy to maintain contacts with the Russian tsar Nicholas II, through his ministers Pleve and Stolypin. Herzl successfully negotiated with Pleve, as did his successor Volfson with Stolypin. The demands advanced by the Zionists suited the counter-revolutionary governments both of Prince Lvov and the Socialist-Revolutionary Kerensky perfectly. According to Sokolow, the Seventh Conference of Russia’s Zionists held in Petrograd in 1917, unanimously (522 votes) supported Kerensky “against his enemies” and expressed solidarity with the cause of “colonising Palestine.” The only thing that did not suit the Zionists in Russia was Soviet rule, the new social and state system established under the guidance of Lenin and the Bolsheviks which did away with the exploitation of man by man. This system did not suit the Zionists any more than it suited their imperialist patrons.
“. . . Once the lifeline of the British Empire was threatened by a Revolutionary Communist State to the north,” Richard Crossman wrote in A Nation Reborn, “British Governments were bound to re-assess the value to them of the Jewish National Home.” [6]
On November 17, 1917, Kiev Zionists received an urgent dispatch from Petrograd which read: “We have much pleasure in conveying to you the text of the declaration released by the British Government on November 10 which We have received today from representatives of the Zionist organisation in London. Here is the text, word for word. ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. . . .’ The noble act of the British Government opens a new era; Herzl’s behest is being realised. Bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Jews of your region, organise meetings, adopt resolutions. Cable. Merkaz.” [7]
That was how the Petrograd Merkaz* informed the Kiev Zionists about the Balfour Declaration issued by the British Government in November 1917, that is, simultaneously with the opening of intensive talks between the British and other imperialist governments concerning military intervention against the young Soviet Republic.
[* NOTE: Centre.]
Shortly after the Kiev Zionists had received instructions from the centre in London on measures to be taken in connection with this clear statement of Britain’s firm intention of gaining possession of all regions adjoining the Suez Canal by any means possible, a notorious adventurist Vladimir Jabotinsky made his appearance in the Ukraine. A poet from Russia, Zionist and agent of a number of powers, large and small, Jabotinsky had only recently won the absolute trust of the British by organising together with a certain Trumpeldorf a Zionist Legion which had moved in with the British troops to occupy Palestine.
According to Kornei Chukovsky, who edited Colonel Patterson’s book and wrote the preface to it, the British professional colonialists were very pleased with the efforts of their henchmen. “We, naturally, were interested only in those chapters,” Chukovsky wrote, “which dealt with volunteer Zionist detachments that had joined the British Army to win back Palestine. Patterson is not a Jew, but a pure Anglo-Saxon. He is an experienced military man and an authority on all kinds of combat. . . . He learned his trade all over the place. In India, in South Africa . . . in Uganda, in the Klondike. . . . Therefore his praise for the fighting qualities of the Zionists carries special weight.” [8]
Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the inspirers of some of the most decisive moves in support of the British occupation of Palestine, was hastily sent to the Ukraine to establish contact and co-operate with the leader of the Ukrainian counter-revolution, Petlura.
Let us make a short digression. The attention of a person making his way along the winding corridors of the Zionist labyrinth at the height of the stormy developments following the world’s first socialist revolution, is involuntarily attracted by a somewhat faded Zionist “business” document written in a clear hand.
On April 5, 1914 the Board of Jewish Colonies in Cologne sent a business message to a clerk of Sharkansky Bros. Abram Itskov Domovich, head of the Herzlite Zionist circle in Lomza. “Upon re-checking your account of donation money-boxes we find that you have only sent us donations from 97 out of 108. . . .
“. . . We collect 5,000,000 francs annually, a sum large enough to buy 10 colonies each year. . . . We said long ago, in 1911 and 1912, that Russian Jews had been zealous and that we were grateful to them. But despite their efforts they could have made a still greater contribution to the cause lately, since, according to our information, we know that about a thousand towns in Russia have not started paying.
“Although many towns, for example, Vilnius, Zhitomir, Kovno and Riga, are paying, their contribution is very small.
“We derive our biggest income from Russia . . . but compared with the size of the Jewish population of Russia and that in other countries, she gives us very little and if we took all countries according to the number of Jews in them and the income we get from them, Russia would come 19th on the list.
“Our total income from Russia amounts to two kopeks from each Jew, i.e., if all the money collected in Russia is divided by the number of Jews living there, the figure will be two kopeks from each.” [9]
Here is another document, a general list of revenues received by the World Zionist Organisation for 1913 in German marks: [10]
Russia 237,284.83
Austria 144,133.27
North America 143,740.50
Germany 107,905.17
Canada 37,563.50
South Africa 20,766.97
England 18,862.14
and so forth.
The international Zionist corporation clearly understated its income, but even the above figures clearly show that the nationalisation of the means of production on a sixth part of the world which had formerly paid a large tribute, and the triumph of Lenin’s principles in the nationalities policy of the young Soviet Republic had dealt a severe blow to the Jewish Colonial Trust in London and the Zionist leaders who always relied on anti-Semitism in all their plans. Yes, the October Revolution had a devastating impact on the international Zionist concern and, accordingly, Zionism henceforth concentrated its efforts on attempting to overthrow the Soviet state.
Zionists participated in the “governments” of Denikin, Hetman Skoropadsky and Petlura*, and were busy forming Zionist military units which fought against Soviet Russia. Incidentally, from 1918 to 1921 the counter-revolutionary bands of Denikin, Petlura, Bulak-Bulakhovich and Makhno organised 1,520 pogroms, during which tens of thousands of Jews were tortured or killed. This, however, was no obstacle to a firm ideological, economic and military alliance between the counter-revolution and the leaders of the international Zionist centre.
[NOTE: * Counter-revolutionary “governments” formed in areas under temporary whiteguard occupation during the Civil War and foreign intervention in Russia.]
The Zionists were equally zealous in conducting subversive activities within the Soviet Republic. Besides engaging in sabotage and spying activities, they devoted serious efforts to “legal” forms of opposition, organising, under a variety of pretexts, numerous societies and unions which became centres of anti-Soviet activities.
A case in point is the Leningrad Jewish Aid Committee (LJAC) whose predecessors were the Jewish Benevolent Society, registered with the Petrograd Gubernia Executive Committee in 1919, and the Jewish Mutual Aid Society.
The Charter of the Jewish Benevolent Society read: “The Society has been set up to assist the indigent population of Petrograd for which purpose it will issue interest-free loans and grants, maintain and organise Jewish kosher canteens . . .” [11] and so forth.
So much for words. Let us take a look at its actual activities. Here is an excerpt from the record of a meeting of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of the Central City District held on January 10, 1930, to discuss the liquidation of the LJAC. “The artels organised by the LJAC accepted merchants in arrears to the Regional Revenue Office and not only Jews but also those of other nationalities. While under-taking to assist needy Jews the LJAC did its utmost to help the traders by shielding them under the name of its firm from the Regional Revenue Office. The artels were headed by people wholly unacquainted with production . . . Aizberg, Lesman. The LJAC acted as a link with religious organisations. It fans nationalistic sentiments, engages in commerce (the auction hall) and has class-aliens in its leadership.” [12]
In 1927, I. S. Schneerson left the Soviet Union for bourgeois Latvia to assume the office of the Chief Rabbi of Riga. Shortly afterwards, while in Germany, he met two representatives of US Big Business, and not without personal profit became a central figure in transferring very considerable sums of money from the US subversive Zionist organisation, Joint, to its agents in the USSR. The LJAC was, in effect, one of the screens masking the activity of Joint agents in the Soviet Union.
Years passed. The Soviet Union withstood the onslaught of external and domestic counter-revolution. The Soviet state gained strength. And the more evident it became that the plans of imperialism and its henchmen for destroying the world’s first working people’s state were quite futile, the more furious became the hatred of international reaction for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In this, the Zionists kept their own account in a special column marked “Communism.”
“World Jewry [read “the Zionist leaders”—Y.I.],” wrote Richard Crossman, MP, “failed equally to fulfil its share of the task, the provision of half a million immigrants in the first few years [after the establishment of the Zionist corporation—Y.I.]. The main cause of this failure was, of course, the Bolshevik Revolution. Zionists had always assumed that Russia would provide the main Source of mass immigration into Palestine.” [13]
It will become absolutely clear why Zionists hate the Soviet Union if to the direct obligations of the Zionists (to the British imperialists) we were to add a still more determining factor mentioned above, namely, the enactment of Soviet laws which stopped the flow of money from Russia into the safes of the Zionist corporation.
Jewish working people actively supported the October Socialist Revolution and joined in the building of socialism in the USSR. This predetermined the crisis of Zionism which was further aggravated following the liquidation of the Zionist underground in the Soviet Union and the refusal of many Jews to co-operate with the Zionists.
In these circumstances Zionist leaders resorted to new tactics and began to look for other ways of salvaging their enterprise. The bugbear of “eternal anti-Semitism” was temporarily relegated to the background to give way to new, more flexible slogans. “We have never built our Zionist Movement on the sufferings of our people in Russia or elsewhere,” [14] wrote Nahum Sokolow in those years.
The depleted forces of “socialist” Zionists closed ranks and took to elaborating “new” theories. Berl Locker, a representative of this chosen detachment of the Zionist guard, formulated the thesis: “In Socialist society especially, our nation would be unable to bear its homelessness, and we should earnestly strive with all our strength to build up our national centre in Palestine.” [15]
Backed by representatives of major imperialist financial associations, the Zionist concern set up a number of organisations especially for the purpose of conducting massive anti-Soviet propaganda to discredit the idea of socialism, and also to build up inside the socialist state a section of “liberal intelligentsia” whose freedom of “thought” would be nothing more than readiness to accept thoughts furnished from abroad and to present them as their own.
In 1921 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was simultaneously established in Britain and the USA. Its organisers were Jacob Landau, a Zionist capitalist, and the journalist Meir Grossman. The views of the former were determined by his wealth, those of the latter by his love for wealth.
Grossman edited Zionist newspapers and magazines between 1913 and 1916 in Berlin and Copenhagen, in 1917 in Kiev and from 1919 to 1931 in London. In 1933 he came to the conclusion that the super-reactionary extreme faction in the World Zionist Organisation led by the social-chauvinist Jabotinsky did not fit the bill and created another one, the Jewish State Party, to uproot communism in—Zionism.
The functions of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency more than conformed to the biographical characteristics of its founders.
The representative of the Agency and its Zionist leaders in Austria was Grossman’s adherent Robert Stricker, a close friend of Nahum Goldmann, former official for Jewish affairs of Kaiser Germany’s Foreign Ministry. (Together with Goldmann and a white emigre named Soloveichik, in his time Stricker formed a group of “radical Zionists” which had its centre in Berlin.) Stricker and Goldmann often got together, talked, lamented the decline of the prestige and influence of German Zionists in the international Zionist corporation (after Germany’s defeat in the First World War) and discussed how they could re-establish their influence. In these conversations they frequently mentioned one Stephen Wise who created a great-Zionist faction in 1929 and gained notoriety by his malicious anti-communist utterances.
Rabbi Wise rapidly rose up in the world and at the time when Stricker and Goldmann had their chats in Vienna, he was already president of the American Jewish Congress, a rather influential “non-Zionist” organisation for those days. The Congress was backed by some of the biggest US financiers, who, as it transpired, “yearned” for Palestine no less than their British counterparts.
In view of the disappointment of part of the British ruling circles with the Zionist corporation for its failure to “do its bit,” intrigues among the leadership of the Zionist concern, the sharp decline in the flow of funds into the Zionist treasury, and above all, the refusal of a considerable number of Jewish workers to co-operate with Zionism, Zionist circles conceived the idea of establishing a “world organisation” ostensibly having nothing in common with Zionism and functioning solely under the slogan of “defence of the rights of world Jewry.” Its actual aim, however, was to act as a bridge for US capital, which was stepping up its efforts to replace Britannia, or the “Ruler of the Waves,” in the Middle East, and to set up close ties with fascism which was rapidly developing in Europe. In short, it was trying to play safe by backing three of the fastest horses running in the capitalist derby. For the early 1930s this was a new idea, although the principle underlying it was old-twenty years earlier Zionism had shamelessly flirted simultaneously with Lord Balfour, Wilhelm II, Pleve, the Turkish Sultan and the King of Italy.
This was the background against which Nahum Goldmann’s star came into the ascendant. His success was due to his extensive connections and unbridled but cautious careerism bred in the gloomy offices of the Foreign Ministry of the Second Reich.
Goldmann’s first step was to come to an agreement with the President of the American Jewish Congress Stephen Wise on the question of establishing a “non-Zionist” World Jewish Congress. Having made sure American financiers, the real bosses of the Congress, were well-disposed, Wise approached the proposal with understanding. Then after negotiating a controlling block of shares in the enterprise, and promising to cover 50 per cent of the new organisation’s budget in exchange, he agreed.
Chaim Weizmann, the then President of the World Zionist Organisation, who had firmly linked up his future with Britain, persuaded his patron that Goldmann’s venture had been planned with his knowledge, and would be extremely profitable for Great Britain.
The third step was to obtain the support of the fascists.
Zionist intelligence having made a few deep probes and found that the omens were favourable, in November 1934 Goldmann hastily left for Rome. A great deal depended on the outcome of his meeting with Mussolini. The fascist dictator’s reaction to the Zionist project was a matter of great concern not only to Goldmann, but to all Zionist leaders, and they followed the mission of the former German diplomat with close attention.
Mussolini received Goldmann on November 13, 1934, and their thirty-minute talk passed in an atmosphere of good will and mutual understanding. Mussolini approved of the idea of founding a World Jewish Congress and promised his support. The Goldmann mission was a success and signified a great deal for him personally. On November 14, 1934, his name appeared for the first time in the biggest European newspapers next to the name of “one of the most powerful personalities of the Western World.”
The question of the formation of the World Jewish Congress (with Goldmann as one of its leaders) as the ante-room to the World Zionist Organisation, could thus be regarded as settled.
Until as recently as 1968 Goldmann was president of both the World Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organisation.
Thus having created another international association into whose activities it would be possible to draw people who had initially refused to have anything to do with Zionist concepts or aims, and secured additional support from US capital, Italian fascism, and later nazism, Zionist leaders, in pursuance of their own aims, continued to serve the British crown maintaining their alliance with it because of Britain’s leading role in the rapacious world of capitalism.
On receiving the mandate of the League of Nations, in 1922–23 Great Britain established her control over Palestine. Since the Arab population of the country vigorously opposed British colonial oppression, Britain began to depend more than ever on the Zionists in the matter of “fitting up” Palestine with a population prepared to guard British interests, and generally encouraged Zionist colonisation. Let us recall what the British papers wrote in anticipation of these developments. When the whole of Palestine is “to be brought securely under our control,” wrote The Manchester Guardian, “then on the conclusion of peace our deliberate policy will be to encourage in every way in our power Jewish immigration. . . .” The Irish Times stated: “From the British point of view the defence of the Suez Canal can best be secured by the establishment in Palestine of a people attached to us. . . .” [16]
After more than twenty years of intense efforts (from 1897 to 1919) British ruling circles and the Zionists managed to increase the Jewish population of Palestine from 5 to 10 per cent of the total. [17] It was a torturous process not only because Jews refused to be coaxed into taking up residence in the area of the Suez Canal, but also because the Arabs, who accounted for 90 per cent of the population of Palestine, justifiably viewed both the British and the Jewish settlers sent by the Zionists as colonialists out to rob them.
Ahad Ha’am who visited Palestine about this time made a few interesting admissions. “We think,” he wrote, “that the Arabs are all savages who live like animals and do not understand what is happening around them. This is, however, a grave error. . . . Yet what do our brethren do in Palestine? . . . They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them, offend them without cause and boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination.” [18] (This was said by a prominent Zionist ideologue, although by then retired since his services were no longer needed.)
Ahad Ha’am had sufficient foresight to visualise the ultimate results of the Zionist leaders’ persistent efforts to foster contempt and hatred for the native population of Palestine among the Jewish settlers. But the British Lords were least concerned with them. Lord Balfour, with native cold-blooded cynicism, declared in public that the principle of self-determination justified (!) Zionism however inapplicable it might be from a purely technical point of view. [19]
Those familiar with the history of British colonial expansion and rule are perfectly aware of the “technical” methods and motives of British ruling circles.
In its 1937 report, the Palestine Royal Commission wrote: “In 1920, 1921 and 1929 the Arabs attacked the Jews. In 1933 [not to mention the 1936–1938 uprising—Y.I.] they attacked the Government. . . . The Mandate was merely a cynical device for promoting British ‘imperialism’ under a mask of humane considerations for the Jews.” [20]
The crux of the matter was unwittingly explained by Lord Alfred Mond Melchett, who wrote that the Arab people rose against any civilised immigration, of any sort, against people of any race or religious belief.* The Moors in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia always rose against newcomers; Italy encountered similar difficulties in Tripoli, too. [21]
[* NOTE: A prominent Zionist’s frank admission that the Arabs’ fight against colonisation was not specifically anti-Semitic.]
Taking up this issue, Chaim Weizmann reiterated that “the choice in Palestine was not between right and wrong but between a greater and lesser injustice.” [22] Indeed, a brilliant example of Zionist “dialectics”! This thought is even more clearly expressed by an English publicist, Herbert Sidebotham.
“It is a false view of democratic or liberal principle,” he writes, “which holds that because a race or a nation happens to occupy a certain territory that territory is its own for all time. . . . Occupation must be beneficial and in the long run beneficial for the world at large, or it loses its moral or political justification. Nor has any race an absolute right to ‘determine’ its own future at the expense of the future of some other race which may have more to give the world.” [23]
Thus, the Zionists’ ideological baggage was supplemented by yet a further concept which had much in common with the theories elaborated by the ideologues of the Third Reich.
A year before Hitler cable to power in Germany and two years before Goldmann’s talks with Mussolini, the Jews made up just over 19 per cent [24] of the total population of Palestine. This was the limit which the Zionists and their British patrons managed to attain at the cost of tremendous efforts over a period of 35 years.
In fact this figure was not attained solely through the efforts of the Zionists. In 1917, half the Jews living in Palestine (who then accounted for 10 per cent of the population) were native Palestinians and, consequently, their presence there could not be credited to Herzl & Co. Later, some of the Jews who had fled from the counter-revolution in Eastern Europe settled down in Palestine, as they did in other countries, in search of a haven and not with the Zionist objective of winning back Canaan. In these 35 years, therefore, a very insignificant number of people came to Palestine on a Zionist “ticket” or with Zionist intentions. In this connection the fact that in 1919 a Communist Party was founded in Palestine, which to this day is waging a successful struggle from internationalist positions, was highly indicative.
Even those who “professed” Zionism were well aware of its far from lofty goals. “We know what you expect from us,” declared Max Nordau in a speech in the Albert Hall in 1919 in which he went over in detail the mutual commitments of the Zionists and British ruling circles. “We shall have to be the guards of the Suez Canal. We shall have to be the sentinels of your way to India via the Near East. We are ready to fulfil this difficult military service, but it is essential to allow us to become a power in order to enable us to do our task.” [25]
And the British worked consistently towards their goal of establishing this “power” in Palestine. Although they made up an insignificant part of the Jewish population in Palestine, the Zionists, as representatives of a major international corporation, assumed a dominating position in the economy. In the political and military spheres they benefited from the generous assistance of the holders of the League of Nations’ mandate.
All democratic elements among the Jewish population, not to mention the Arab majority, were under constant surveillance and systematically subjected to persecutions. A ramified system of Zionist educational and propaganda institutions slowly but surely corroded the Jewish colony in Palestine.
The British actively helped the Jewish settlers to form well-armed “self-defence” units which could be used against the national liberation movement of the Arabs. According to Vladimir Jabotinsky, Jews with a bent for colonisation were called upon to rule the country. As regards measures for guaranteeing security, Jabotinsky made the following statement to the Palestine Royal Commission: “A nation with your colossal colonising past experience surely knows that colonisation never went without certain conflicts with the population on the spot. . . . Legalise our self-defence, as you are doing in Kenya.” [26]
Captain Orde Wingate, a professional secret agent, was attached to the command of the Jewish self-defence units for the purpose of turning them into professional military punitive detachments. One of their tasks was the forcible eviction of the Arabs from their ancient lands. Israel Bir, Ben-Gurion’s former adviser, wrote the following about the functions of Zionist punitive detachments after being trained by Wingate (Bir was describing the suppression of the 1936–1938 Arab uprising): The special night units did more than any other forces to suppress the (Arab—Y.I.) disturbances, which were directed more against the British than the Jews, as the Palestine Royal Commission admitted. Wingate’s special detachments were formed not only with the object of putting an end to the guerilla warfare (using the same tactics), but more especially for the purpose of protecting a valuable imperial objective—the Iraq oil pipeline (which ended at Haifa—Y.I.). [27]
One of the top commanders of the Haganah, as these detachments were called, was Feivel Polkes who was also the chief resident agent of the nazi Intelligence Service in Palestine and Syria. The following appeared on the pages of the West German Der Spiegel on December 19, 1966: “Agent Reichert of the German Information Bureau in Palestine was in contact with a leading functionary of a secret Zionist organisation which more than anything else (with the exception of the British Intelligence Service) captured the imagination of German Intelligence. This organisation was called Haganah. In the general headquarters of this secret army worked . . . Feivel Polkes. . . . He was in charge, according to von Mildenstein’s successor as Chief of the Division for Jewish Affairs of the intelligence head-quarters, Hagen, of the administration of the entire security apparatus of the Palestinian Jews” [28] (emphasis added—Y.I.).
While Feivel Polkes with his cutthroats ministered to nazi Germany’s external “needs,” Dr. Nossig, the same Dr. Nossig who in the reign of Wilhelm II upheld the project of settling the Jews in the Ottoman Empire outside of Palestine, was equally zealous in ministering to the “domestic needs” of the nazis. Zionist leader, writer, sculptor and politician in whose Berlin office such prominent Zionists as Arthur Ruppin and Jacob Thon had worked in their time, [29] Nossig together with the nazis designed the plan for destroying aged and needy German Jews. Nossig lived to the age of eighty, when, according to Moshe Sneh, he was executed by the fighters of the Warsaw ghetto who had found out about his crimes. Such was the degree of this prominent Zionist leader’s loyalty to German imperialism, Sneh added. [30]
Goldmann, Polkes, Nossig, these direct links with fascism, were by no means exceptions. “Zionists,” wrote Heinz Höhne, a German journalist, “viewed the consolidation of the nazis in Germany not as a national calamity, but as a unique historical opportunity for achieving their Zionist objectives.” He asserted that “since the Zionists and the National Socialists had elevated race and nation to the scale of all things, it was inevitable that a common bridge should have appeared between them.” [31]
US columnist Morris Cohen seconded this view, stressing that “Zionists fundamentally accept the racial ideology of these anti-Semites, but draw different conclusions. Instead of the Teuton, it is the Jew that is the pure or superior race.” [32]
In 1933, the 238,000 Jews living in Palestine accounted for about 20 per cent of the country’s total population. By 1936 their number had risen to 404,000, i.e., by more than 50 per cent. [33] And it would be naive to think that this considerable influx of newcomers was due to the “triumph” of Zionist ideas. It was fascist atrocities which forced Jews to seek a haven, and Palestine was merely one of the numerous regions where they found it. Forced to admit this fact, the Zionist Edelman wrote that the Jews went to Palestine not with the express intention of setting up a Jewish national home there, but simply to save their lives. [34]
At that period the so-called Palestine Office supported by the nazis was busy “selecting” refugees with the direct participation of the former Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. In their book The Secret Roads, David and Jon Kimche wrote: “Jewish emissaries had not come to Nazi Germany to save German Jews. . . . They were looking for young men and women who wanted to go to Palestine and were prepared to pioneer, struggle and . . . fight for it.” [35]
Quoting documentary evidence Heinz Höhne wrote: “. . . von Mildenstein, Chief of the Division for Jewish Affairs of the intelligence headquarters did all he could to assist Zionist organisations in the establishment of re-education camps where young Jews were trained for work in kibbutzes in Palestine. He carefully followed the activity of the Zionists, and ordered his Division to draft maps showing the progress of Zionism among German Jewry.” [36]
These re-education camps were set up in nazi Germany following an agreement between Zionist emissaries and Adolf Eichmann. Disclosing Eichmann’s attitude to the Zionists, Israeli journalist Hannah Arendt wrote that the latter “unlike the Assimilationists, whom he always despised, and unlike Orthodox Jews, who bored him, were ‘idealists’ like him.” [37]
Zionists, as we know, have always favoured anti-Semitism in which they openly placed all their hopes for the future. Therefore the conclusion of a secret alliance between Zionism and fascism was not at all unnatural. Intent on achieving their goals, the Zionists reacted in a most peculiar fashion to the anti-Semitic orgies of the nazis. The British Zionist Lord Melchett wrote in a book published in 1937 that the persecution of the Jews in Germany was an obstacle to closer relations between the German and other European nations. To improve the situation Melchett recommended a mass and complete evacuation of German Jews to Palestine. His book can in no way be qualified as an indictment of nazi outrages. [38]
Chaim Weizmann viewed the developments in Germany with still greater equanimity and tolerance. In reply to a query of the Palestine Royal Commission about the possibility of transferring 6,000,000 West European Jews to Palestine, he said: “No, the old will go. . . . They are dust, economic and moral dust of the world. . . . Only the branch will remain.”
Twenty-one years after the rout of nazi Germany, Zionist leaders let slip the causes of their loyal neutrality. “If we [Zionists—Y.I.] had regarded the saving of the maximum number of Jews as our basic task [emphasis added—Y.I.],” declared Eliezer Livneh, a prominent Zionist, “then we would have had to co-operate with the partisans. There were partisan bases in Poland, Lithuania, in the nazi-occupied parts of Russia, in Yugoslavia and later in Slovakia. If our main task [emphasis added—Y.I.] was to prevent the liquidation (of the Jews) and if we had entered into contact with the partisan bases, we could have saved many lives.” [39]
Zionist leader Chaim Landau made public the views entertained on this issue by Yizchak Gruenbaum, who in the period of the fascist atrocities headed the Zionist Salvation Committee. “When I was asked,” wrote Landau quoting Gruenbaum, “whether I would give money from the Karen Haechod [Zionist fund—Y.I.] to save the Jews of the Diaspora, I said ‘no.’ And now, too, I shall say ‘no.’ I consider that we have to withstand this wave, otherwise it will engulf us and push our Zionist activity into the background.” [40]
The Zionists’ policy towards the fascists was one of tacit consent (on the basis of the deal between the Zionist emissaries and Eichmann) and helped create the conditions which enabled the persecution of the Jews in Germany to attain the maximum possible proportions; this policy also consisted in the post-factum organisation of noisy protests to gain political and other capital.
Pointing to the main consequences of the “mutually highly satisfactory agreement between the Nazi authorities and the Jewish Agency for Palestine” Hannah Arendt writes: “The result was that in the thirties, when American Jewry took great pains to organise a boycott of German merchandise, Palestine, of all places, was swamped with all kinds of goods ‘made in Germany.'” [41]
David Flinker, an American journalist, noted on May 24, 1963, in the Tog Morgen Journal that “Ben-Gurion, as head of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem in the thirties, concluded what was known as a transfer-deal with the Hitler government under which the assets of the Jews who had left the country were transferred in the form of German goods and thus prevented the institution of a boycott of the nazis. . . .” Moreover, writer Ben Hecht publicly accused Ben-Gurion of deliberately keeping silent in the period when the world public was already informed of the nazi atrocities.
On November 25, 1940, the ship Patria was blown up in the port of Haifa in Palestine. Fifty members of the crew and 202 emigrants on board perished.
These people were killed at one of the junctions of the tortuous labyrinth of developments, knowing neither their killers nor the true motives of the crime. A whole chain of events led up to this tragedy which could be called a landmark in a complex manoeuvre designed and methodically executed by the leaders of the Zionist concern. We must take look at it before returning to the explosion on the Patria.
Among the American bankers, Jacob H. Schiff, his son-in-law and successor Felix Warburg and the latter’s son Edward Warburg were regarded as people with imagination. The foundation for this reputation was laid by Jacob Schiff, owner of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. Bank, who became the factual owner of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) founded in 1906, which proclaimed “defence of the rights of world Jewry” as the central point of its programme. Although not entirely original, since it copied the project of the British who staked on Herzl’s World Zionist Organisation; Schiff’s plan was nevertheless new for America. Under the guise of concern for the lot of the Jews in various countries, the AJC was an instrument used by Kuhn, Loeb and Co., the Lehmen Bros., and the Strauss family for investing their capital in different parts of the world. (It was with representatives of this group of financiers that the Riga Rabbi Schneerson established contact while in Germany.)*
Following the instructions of its chiefs, the AJC at first vigorously opposed Zionism since the Zionist leaders encouraged the movement of capital from another country—Britain. In 1926, however, Kuhn, Loeb and Co., and the Lehmen Bros., founded the Palestine Economic Corporation, A. Marshall and L. Strauss also providing capital, and, in the interests of their own pockets, defected to the Zionists. In just ten years, this financial group which had the backing of a number of the wealthiest Jewish capitalists, “remoulded” the majority of American Jewish organisations (including religious unions) into Zionist or pro-Zionist organisations and in slightly over 20 years increased the corporation’s share capital fivefold, bringing most branches of the Palestinian economy under its sway.
[* NOTE: See p. 71 [Chapter III] of this book.—Ed.]
In 1929, A. Marshall, a shareholder in the Palestine Economic Corporation, brought off a successful round of talks with the pro-British leadership of the World Zionist Organisation concerning the entry of American “non-Zionists” into the Zionist Jewish Agency, a legal advisory body under the British Commissioner for Palestine.* (Some of the wealthiest US businessmen were among the “non-Zionists” that made up 50 [!] per cent of the Agency’s membership.)
[* NOTE: Not to be confused with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, international Zionism’s propaganda organ.]
The World Jewish Congress (WJC), the “non-Zionist branch” of the World Zionist Organisation, was founded in 1936. Manifestly predominant in the WJG leadership were representatives and paid agents of US financiers headed by Nahum Goldmann.
The Zionist leaders viewed the formation of a “Jewish national centre” in Palestine as a highly profitable enterprise, especially for themselves. We have already described in detail the goals which they pursued. The Zionists closely collaborated with the British up to 1939, because the interests of the British ruling circles coincided with those of the Zionist leaders .in the Middle East, and because at that time Britain played the leading role among the imperialist powers.
In view of the increasing penetration of US capital into Palestine, its mounting influence within the Zionist corporation and the fact that the Zionist leaders continued their simultaneous flirtation with the nazis and the Americans, the City of London felt it necessary to put pressure on the Zionist leaders and bludgeon them into undivided co-operation.
In 1939, to further this aim, Great Britain, the author of numerous projects for resettling the Jews in Palestine for the purpose of colonising the country, produced a White Paper sharply limiting the immigration of Jews into Palestine and simultaneously encouraged the feudal leaders of the native Palestinian population to incite clashes with the Jewish settlers.
Meanwhile the nazis were intensifying their persecution of the Jews. Many thousands of people in Germany were sent either to concentration camps, or to re-education camps and thence to Palestine. “National Jewish circles,” wrote Hagen, pleading Polkes’s view, “are very pleased with the radical policy of the Germans with regard to the Jews, since it tends to increase the Jewish population in Palestine so that in the near future we shall be able to count on a preponderance of Jews over the Arabs.” [42]
Heinz Höhne stressed that “the Zionist group, which was backed by the ‘Haganah’ whose leadership included Eichmann’s confidential agent Polkes, opposed Britain’s new policy on the question of resettling the Jews.” [43] This organisation “set up a network of confidential agents in Europe who secretly smuggled Jewish settlers to Palestine. Golomb’s * people had no scruples about availing themselves of SS assistance in this work. . . .” [44]
[* NOTE: Eliahu Golomb, a Haganah commander.]
Unravelling the knot of secret ties between the nazis and the Zionists, Höhne wrote: “During the Jewish pogrom which had the code name ‘Crystal Night,’ two representatives of the Mossad,* Pino Ginzburg and Moshe Auerbach, arrived in Hitler’s Reich. They suggested speeding up the Zionist programme of re-educating the Jews prepared to go to Palestine. . . .
[* NOTE: An organisation set up by the Haganah leaders.]
“. . . German transports of the Mossad which carried the Jews—and this was a secret condition put forward by German Intelligence—were not to disclose Palestine as their destination.” [45]
Pino Ginzburg had his first contingent ready in March 1939. “He had 280 emigrants,” wrote Höhne, “and Mexico was named as the destination in keeping with instructions from Reich headquarters. In Vienna these 280 people joined a group organised by Moshe Auerbach; in the Yugoslav port of Susak they boarded the Colorado, transferred to the Otranto near Corfu . . . and were delivered to Palestine. . . . The more rigorous the British counter-measures, the more prepared Heydrich’s headquarters was to help (the Zionists). In the middle of the summer it let Ginzburg direct his ships to Emden and Hamburg to transport the Jews straight from Germany. . . .” [46]
As we know, the Zionists were acting not out of concern for people’s lives, but in order to increase the number of Jewish settlers in Palestine. This policy was fully in keeping with the interests of US monopoly capital with which the international Zionist corporation was coming into an increasingly open alliance in violation of its long-standing agreement with Britain. It was these circumstances that determined the fate of Patria’s passengers.
When the ship dropped anchor in Haifa, British colonial authorities, implementing the new immigration laws, refused to let the passengers disembark and said that the ship with its passengers would be taken to Mauritius. Thereupon Zionist Intelligence decided to destroy the Patria with all on board.
There was one obvious reason among many unknown ones behind this barbarous act: before destroying the Patria with its passengers, the Zionists invented the legend about an unprecedented case of mass suicide of people who “preferred death to separation from the homeland.” Their death and the circulation of this rumour, the Zionists calculated, would strengthen the “spirit of Zionism” everywhere, incite world public opinion against the British and thus lead to the abrogation of the British White Paper limiting entry into Palestine, something for which certain US financial circles were now actively working.
“The origin of the explosion was never formally established,” wrote Jon and David Kimche, “but it was an open secret that it had been organised by the Haganah. . . . But in Palestine and outside the legend that immigrants had themselves blown up their own ship was accepted. . . .” [47]
Following the establishment of effective contacts between the leadership of the World Zionist Organisation and prominent US financiers (late 20s–early 30s), the membership of US Zionist organisations steadily increased and by 1945 numbered 400,000. Disclosing the true reasons for such a rapid growth, the US Jewish newspaper Forward wrote on December 11, 1943, that the Jewish Conference (in the USA—Y.I.) keeps awake only when Palestinian affairs are in the air, and sleeps when the question turns to saving the lives of Jews in the Diaspora.
No small part in encouraging such sentiments was evidently played by Kuhn, Loeb and Co. We might note that their “waking up” during the discussion of Palestinian affairs was not due to a desire to settle down in the “promised land.” Emigration from the USA to Palestine was always negligible.
As the US State Department admitted, “throughout the mandate period the United States [in other words, US monopolies—Y.I.] took an interest in Palestine. However, we opposed the British White Paper in 1939 which limited migration.” [48] In December 1942, 63 Senators and 181 Congressmen called on Roosevelt “to restore the Jewish homeland.” [49] In July 1945, the majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives asked Truman to “use all his influence to open Palestine and thus ensure unimpeded Jewish immigration and colonisation. . . .”
(Documents from the most diverse periods show that all the interested powers, beginning with Napoleon Bonaparte and ending with the ruling circles of the imperialist USA which came to the forefront after the Second World War, directly spoke about the colonisation of the land known as Palestine.)
A. Lilienthal notes that from December 1942 onwards US presidents were subjected to massive pressure from Senators and Congressmen demanding that Britain should be forced to lift her restrictions on immigration to Palestine. Incidentally, by then the share capital of the Palestine Economic Corporation alone had increased more than fourfold and required effective guarantees and protection.
Yet, Henry Morgenthau, Finance Secretary in the Roosevelt Administration, notes: “From August 1942 on [emphasis added—Y.I.], we in Washington knew that the nazis were planning the complete extermination of the Jews in Europe. For one and a half years after the barbarous plan had become known, the State Department did practically nothing at all.” [50]
Thus, Senators and Congressmen demanded the lifting of Britain’s restrictions on immigration into Palestine, and freedom to transport refugees to the Middle East, not to the United States whither hundreds of ships sailed empty after unloading cargoes in Europe. Thus, in effect, they closed the one road to safety for many thousands of Jews.
Behind all this we can clearly discern the hand of the Palestine Economic Corporation and the Zionist centre.
In the last years of the Second World War, the public in all countries was widely informed about the nazi atrocities.
But the Zionists, accessories to numerous brutal crimes, remained in the shadows. Availing themselves of the opportunities and means provided by their allies, they evaded retribution leaving a maze of twisted paths behind them.
At that time the so-called Salvation Committee appointed by the Zionist Jewish Agency was functioning in Hungary. It was headed by one Rudolf Kastner who had maintained very close ties with Eichmann. “The greatest ‘idealist’ Eichmann ever encountered among the Jews,” wrote Hannah Arendt, “was Dr. Rudolf Kastner . . . with whom he came to an agreement that he, Eichmann, would permit the ‘illegal’ departure of a few thousand Jews to Palestine (the trains were in fact guarded by German police) in exchange for ‘quiet and order’ in the camps [in Hungary—Y.I.] from which hundreds of thousands were shipped to Auschwitz.” Hannah Arendt pointed out that prominent Jews and members of the Zionist youth organisations who were saved by the agreement “were, in Eichmann’s words, ‘the best biological material’; Dr. Kastner, as Eichmann understood it, had sacrificed his fellow-Jews to his ‘idea.’ . . .” [51]
Arriving safely in Palestine, Dr. Kastner changed his name from Rudolf to Israel and became a prominent functionary of the Zionist Mapai Party headed by Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and others. Later he was secretly liquidated by the Israeli political police [52] for admitting that the Hungarian Zionist centre had had a hand in the liquidation of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews.
It was 1944. The German army was retreating under the blows of the Soviet troops. Its losses in men and materiel were telling heavily on Germany. To transfer its troops and concentrate them as swiftly as possible on the most vulnerable sectors of the Eastern Front the nazi command needed transport facilities—thousands of lorries.
At the beginning of May 1944, Eichmann was ordered to obtain 10,000 lorries through the Zionists for dispatch to the Eastern Front in exchange for a promise to liberate the Jews from German camps for shipment to Palestine. (By then the Jews comprised about 30 per cent of the total population of Palestine.)
Eichmann met with Joël Brandt, a Hungarian Zionist leader, who promptly communicated the nazi proposal to the Zionist Committee. The latter sent Brandt to Constantinople to discuss the matter with representatives of the Jewish Agency. [53]
The Zionist leaders, headed by Chaim Weizmann, unhesitatingly agreed to supply the nazi command of the Eastern Front with 10,000 lorries. [54] The Zionists had always regarded the Soviet Union and its armed forces as their direct enemy, and the decision was therefore a perfectly natural one for them to take.
Zionist politicians and dealers, who to this day claim to be the “defenders and benefactors” of Jews in all countries, suffered absolutely no remorse about the fact that besides Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and men of all the other nationalities of the Soviet Union, there were Jewish soldiers, sailors, officers and generals fighting with the troops whose advance the nazis wanted to stop at any price. For all of them, whether members of the Communist Party or not, there was only one homeland—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—and they defended it with honour. That they might die in circumstances which the Zionists were ready and willing to create did not worry the latter in the slightest. Morris Ernst, a US journalist, was perfectly right when he wrote that the Zionists “are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own.” [55]
Chaim Weizmann, then leader of international Zionism, and his consorts Nahum Goldmann, Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir and many other present-day Zionist leaders pressed Churchill for assistance in the matter of delivering the lorries. It was only fear of publicity and the anger of world public opinion that forced that organiser of numerous diversions against the USSR to refuse “reluctantly, and with heavy heart. . . .” [56]
In the last years of the war, under the influence of US capital which was playing an increasingly dominant role in the capitalist world, the international Zionist corporation gradually underwent all-round reorganisation in order to be able in the immediate future to establish the closest possible contact with the economic, intelligence, propaganda and military machine of US imperialism.
At this period US capital was intensifying its penetration into the Middle East, and particularly Palestine. There was a sharp growth in the number of Zionist organisations in the USA itself. Faithful to their old tactics of supporting the most powerful imperialist power of the moment, the leaders of the international Zionist corporation linked their destiny closer and closer with US monopoly capital.
Characterising Zionism in the USA, Eliezer Livneh wrote that US Zionist organisations “promoted not personal participation in upbuilding of the country but political and financial support of a function to be undertaken by other Jews.” [57] As a Zionist leader aptly put it, the Zionist dialogue in the USA was one in which an agitator tried to persuade a Jew to go to Palestine, while the latter said that he would do so after the agitator went there himself.
When the Zionist-dominated Second Session of the American Jewish Conference convened in Pittsburg in December 1944, many delegates raised the question of the growth of anti-Semitism in the USA. In his speech M. J. Slonim, representative from Saint Luis, said: “It seems that of all other problems, the problem of the American Scene has stirred the Conference most. The vast majority of the delegates are definitely in favour of including the combating of anti-Semitism in the United States in the programme of the American Jewish Conference. . . .” [58]
But taking advantage of their key positions at this forum attended by representatives of the most diverse political and ideological trends in the American Jewish community, the Zionists led the Conference away from discussion of the problem of anti-Semitism. This elicited the following observation from Rabbi Max Nussbaum: “Is it not absurd that 500 delegates have come together in this year, 1944, to discuss every matter under the sun . . . except the one that is closest to the heart of every American Jew?” [59]
Nahum Goldmann, leader of international Zionism, bluntly stated that the Conference was convened for “what I dare to call a much more important task in Jewish life than the fight against anti-Semitism in America. . . .” [60]
Giving in to the will of the Zionist leadership, the Conference completely ignored the fight against nazism and confined itself to a general statement about “the rescue of Jews and others from Axis-dominated countries”; at the same time it adopted a resolution calling for the colonisation of Palestine and another resolution on the post-war “Restoration of Property.” The resolution, which advocated the establishment of an International Jewish Reconstruction Commission, noted the need to restore the property of the destroyed Jewish communities, organisations and families, and already in 1944 laid the foundation for a reparations agreement [61] (blood money) subsequently signed by the Zionist leaders in Israel and the neo-nazi rulers of West Germany.
* * *
The Second World War was over. Nazi Germany was smashed and the red banner of victory hoisted by Soviet soldiers fluttered over the Reichstag. The gates of nazi prisons and concentration camps were flung open. Using devious ways known to few, the remaining nazi chieftains scurried for safety to all parts of the world. But probably not one of them had more concrete and extensive information on the true role and nature of the Zionist backstage machinations during the war years than Adolf Eichmann.
In June 1945, as soon as the war was over, Ben-Gurion arrived in the USA on a special mission. There he had talks with a “group of reliable men” to discuss matters concerning—another war. They talked about the creation of a war industry in the colonised part of Palestine since, as Ben-Gurion said, “the near future might see us locked in combat with the Arab armies.” In his Israel: Years of Challenge he boasted how “for less than a million dollars we bought machinery worth scores of millions, and it was all safely conveyed to Palestine.” [62]
In July 1947, as Minister of Defence, Ben-Gurion issued instructions to the Haganah units emphasising that the Haganah “will be the main factor and the decisive one. Armed Arab aggression can be met only with force, and no outcome is possible but one brought about by Jewish arms” (emphasis added—Y.I.). [63]
The victory of the pro-US wing in international Zionism had been formally clinched at the 22nd Zionist Congress held in Basle seven months earlier, in December 1946. Announcing that the consolidation of the forces of US imperialism and international Zionism was now complete, Dr. Moshe Sneh, then member of the Jewish Agency, stressed that nothing but US political influence combined with pressure by the armed forces of the Palestinian Jews could force England to comply with their demands. [64] Now that they were openly supported by US monopoly capital, the Zionists’ first demand was that Britain lift the ban on Jewish immigration into Palestine.
Simultaneously with an extensive campaign for unrestricted entry of Jews into Palestine, the Zionist centre, which had moved from impoverished England to the USA, worked hard to “save the Jews” in the displaced persons camps of post-war Western Europe.
The Zionist leaders thought of all sorts of ways.
Rabbi Klausner, for example, in a report to the Zionist-controlled American Jewish Congress proposed (in connection with the Zionist efforts to channel the stream of displaced persons to Palestine) that apart from withdrawing food supplies from persons of Jewish origin the Haganah should be ordered to “harass the Jew.” [65]
Louis Nelson, an important US labour leader, reported that Zionist organisations administering the D.P. camps were engaged in a general campaign “to force D.P.s to accept Zionism, to join the Palestine Jewish Army, and to give up legitimate political differences.” [66]
US journalist Morris Ernst made public how American Zionists frustrated all attempts to open the USA for Jewish D.P.s or to grant them the right of political asylum in any country of their choice. [67] The Zionists had no intention of losing the “live force” which back in the first years of the rise of fascism in Europe they had come to view as a contingent “subject to re-education” for the subsequent colonial “development” of Palestine.
The international Zionist concern resited its headquarters, reshuffled the serial numbers of its allies, and altered its tactics: but it preserved its old strategic objectives. Characterising these objectives with regard to US conditions, Franklin Roosevelt said: “They [the Zionists—Y.I.] know that they can raise vast sums [emphasis added—Y.I.] for Palestine by saying to donors, ‘There is no other place this poor Jew can go.’ But if there is a world political asylum for all people irrespective of race, creed or colour, they cannot raise their money.” [68]
Lilienthal supplements Roosevelt by writing: “The failure of the powerful and wealthy Jewish American community to launch one objective scholarly study of the causes of anti-Semitism is significant. Neither the religious nor the lay leaders of the many Jewish organisations wish to lose this potent weapon. Remove prejudice and you lose adherents to the faith. Make strides toward eliminating bigotry and funds for Jewish nationalist activities dry up. Hence, no scientific attack on the problem of anti-Semitism. This is the conspiracy between the rabbinate, Jewish nationalists and other leaders of organised Jewry. . . .” [69] (All emphasis added—Y.I.)
Fascism, the centre of militant anti-Semitism from the beginning of the thirties to the mid-forties, was routed. As the Zionists themselves admitted, they needed new, even if artificially created, hotbeds of anti-Semitism. Here is what Ben-Gurion said in this connection: “I shall not be ashamed to confess that, if I had power, as I have the will, I would select a score of efficient young men-intelligent, decent, devoted to our ideal and burning with the desire to help redeem Jews, and I would send them to the countries where Jews are absorbed in sinful self-satisfaction. The task of these young men would be to disguise themselves as non-Jews, and . . . plague these Jews with anti-Semitic slogans, such as ‘Bloody Jew,’ ‘Jews, go to Palestine.’ I can vouch that the results, in terms of . . . immigration . . . would be ten thousand times larger than the results brought by thousands of emissaries who have been preaching for decades to deaf ears.” [70]
Recalling the classics of Zionism who considered anti-Semitism a boon, one cannot but note a truly remarkable consistency, as likewise in the matter of qualifying as anti-Semitic any phenomenon preventing them from achieving their Zionist objectives.
A convincing example is provided by Warburg, one of the several authors of a biography of Chaim Weizmann. He pointed out how the Arabs who rose in arms to prevent their country from being handed over to Zionists were regarded not only as political adversaries, but as criminals and were branded as “gangsters and killers” when they began to actively oppose the Jews. “To many Zionists,” he went on, “it appeared that some sinister force, possibly anti-Semitic, had invented the Arabs in order to make difficulties for the Jews.” [71]
Colonialists rarely keep a statistical account of their crimes, leaving, as a rule, no documentary evidence of what they perpetrate. Nevertheless, it is known that in 1930 29.4 per cent of the Arab families in Palestine were without land. (The report of the Palestine Royal Commission indicated that it had no exact knowledge of how many of them had been forcibly evicted by the Zionists.) By 1936 a total of 3,271 applications were registered from evicted Arab peasants [72] (each family consisting of at least five members). How many families were unable to hand in their applications? How many other applications were not registered?
The Zionist philosopher Martin Buber modestly noted that the Zionists’ “basic error consisted in the tribute paid by political leadership to the traditional colonial policy. . . .” [73]
If the words “tribute paid” imply the mass forcible eviction of the Palestinian Arab peasants from their land by the Zionists, the suppression by the Zionists and the British of the national liberation movement of the Arabs, the organisation by Ben-Gurion of “shock groups” (under the so-called Federation of Jewish Labour or Histadrut) to terrorise Arab workers, the boycott of Arab goods and the systematic impoverishment of all sections of the Arab population of Palestine, and many other measures to “develop” Canaan, then to a certain extent we can agree with Buber.
Simultaneously with their steps to “save displaced persons,” Zionist leaders launched military operations against the British troops in Palestine. Disclosing the real purpose of these operations (sometimes idealised), the Haganah made the following admission in its own newspaper: “It is not the purpose of the struggle to drive the British from this country. The aim of the struggle is to renew the alliance with England. . . . There is, to the best of our knowledge, absolutely no conflict of interests between us and Britain. We are not the slightest bit interested in weakening Britain’s position in the world, nor in the Middle East or in Palestine.” [74]
The notorious Vladimir Jabotinsky compared the operations of the Zionist armed forces against the British in Palestine with those of the Boers who founded what is today the Republic of South Africa.
These statements require no comment any more than the following admission made by Nahum Goldmann round about the same time: “The Zionists are willing to grant Britain full rights to establish military, naval and air bases in Palestine, in return for its agreement to the creation of a Jewish State on 65% of the total area of Palestine. The establishment of bases in Palestine will also be proposed to the US inasfar as they are able and willing to discharge defence functions there. . . .” [75]
(Much later, at a meeting of the former Haganah leaders in April 1966, Dr. Sneh, who this time strove to prove that the Haganah had “always fought” against British imperialism, received the following rejoinder from Elen Mur, one of those present: “Despite my admiration for Dr. Sneh’s dialectical talent, with which he is extremely gifted, I should prefer it if this talent were directed towards the future rather than the past, since what he has said is disproved by the historical facts.”)
By 1947 the Jews accounted for almost 33 per cent of the population of Palestine. Theirs was a heterogeneous, diversified society not only as regards class composition and political convictions, but also from the point of view of culture, national traditions, language, appearance, dress, character, mentality, the climate they were used to, and religious practices-where applicable, for some were atheists. Most of them were indigent. To live they would have to work. They were that “loyal” “live material” which the rulers of colonial powers had hankered after for so many years in their desire to lay hands on the Middle East.
The decisive factors for getting this mass of people into Palestine were British colonialism and later US neo-colonialism each of which accordingly made use of the anti-Semitism of the 1900–1920 counter-revolution in Europe, fascism and the devastation wrought by the war. The Zionists turned both factors to their own advantage and were temporarily satisfied with playing the role of barkers outside an establishment which they owned jointly with their “more respectable” partners.
The overwhelming majority of the Jewish working people who settled down in Palestine had only one “job”: they were refugees seeking haven from a real or imaginary danger; and the Zionist leaders had yet to put in a great deal of effort in order to turn some of these people, or rather some of the children of these refugees into nazi-type shock troops.
We should bear all this in mind also in judging the degree of responsibility for all sorts of injustices and crimes which the Zionists and their followers are still perpetrating in that part of the world.
Quite naturally, the Zionist leaders were particularly concerned about the Jewish workers, their growing numbers and increasing class-awareness. “Immigration and colonisation—these are the two Tablets of the Covenant of Palestinian labour,” wrote Ben-Gurion in this connection. “Immigration gave us form, and upon colonisation rests our existence, and the two are inscribed in letters of fire and blood on the banner of our movement.” [76]
“The Labour Movement,” he continued; “has never desired to acquire power in Zionism. Its aim has been not power but faithful service [emphasis added—Y.I.], and to this end it has striven to unite all sections of the people round the Zionist Movement.” [77]
The programme of the “socialist” Ben-Gurion could not have been clearer or more frank: immigration, colonisation (caring little for the plight of the Arab workers) and subjection of the interests of the Palestinian workers to the local Jewish and foreign bourgeoisie.
Preaching that the Jews were an exclusive and chosen people, the Zionists laid the foundation for the Palestinian version of apartheid: “We must restore the values of the dignity of man, the equality and spiritual freedom of man, the sanctity of human life. These are outstanding historical Jewish values . . . ,” [78] declared Izhak Moar, one of the tutors of the young generation of colonists. And it was apparently with the aim of restoring these “Jewish values,” or rather in fulfilment of the tasks set by Ben-Gurion, that the Zionists, according to A. Lilienthal, artificially and unsuccessfully fomented anti-Semitic feelings among the Arabs.
Towards the end of the Second World War the Palestinian proletariat numbered 160,000 Arab and 50,000 Jewish workers. The Arabs and the Jews joined forces to fight against the sermons and actions of Ben-Gurion and others in the employ of imperialism. The number of strike days rose from 24,000 in 1940 to 134,000 in 1942 and 248,000 in 1944, and that according to official figures alone. [79] The strikes were both for economic and political demands.
E. Gozhansky, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Palestine, wrote in 1946: “. . . It was in the period of imperialist provocations, which found expression in mutual boycott and incitement of enmity between the two peoples, that the militant unity of the working class was directly demonstrated in the country. ‘Long live the unity of the Jewish and Arab workers,’ declared those who spoke at the general meeting of railwaymen in Haifa; the speakers included representatives of railwaymen from Transjordan who joined the strike. Demonstrators in Haifa and Jerusalem carried slogans of Arab-Jewish unity. . . . The railway strike was a formidable rejoinder to the authors of the theory of racialism and national seclusion. . . . Joint Arab-Jewish actions. . . . mass actions against imperialism in place of nationalistic, terroristic adventures—that is the content of our era.” [80]
The labyrinth of Zionist politicos and dealers was dark and intricate, and still more intricate and complicated were the manoeuvres of their allies. But life’s stream flowed on along the course of objective laws of development which always have the LAST WORD.
References
1. [Cyrillic text].
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. [Cyrillic text].
6. Crossman, R., A Nation Reborn, p. 55.
7. [Cyrillic text].
8. [Cyrillic text].
9. [Cyrillic text].
10. Ibid., p. 170.
11. [Cyrillic text].
12. Ibid.
13. Crossman, R, A Nation Reborn, pp. 62–63.
14. Sokolow, N., History of Zionism, Vol. II, p. 55.
15. Levenberg, S., The Jews and Palestine, p. 190.
16. Sokolow, N., History of Zionism, Vol. II, pp. 89, 92.
17. Hurewitz, G., The Struggle for Palestine, N.Y., 1950, p. 27.
18. Ahad Ha’am, Nationalism and the Jewish Ethics, pp. 24–25.
19. Balfour, A. J., Speeches on Zionism, London, 1928, p. 26.
20. The Palestine Royal Commission Report (CMD, 5479), 1937, p. 84.
21. Melchett, H. L. M., Thy Neighbour, N.Y., 1937, p. 252.
22. Crossman, R, A Nation Reborn, p. 61.
23. Sidebotham, H., British Imperial Interest in Palestine, Garden City Press Ltd., 1957, pp. 11–12.
24. Hurewitz, G., The Struggle for Palestine, pp. 27, 28.
25. Max Nordau to His People, p. 57.
26. Jabotinsky, V., An Answer to Ernest Bevin, N.Y., 1946, pp. 10, 12, 16.
27. Palestine and the Middle East, Vol. XVIII, Nos. 7–8, July–August 1941.
28. Der Spiegel, 19.12.1966.
29. Sneh, M., Conclusion on the National Question . . . , Tel Aviv, 1954. (Chapter: “Zionism—the Instrument of Jewish Imperial Bourgeoisie and Imperialism.”)
30. Ibid.
31. Der Spiegel, 19.12.1966.
32. Cohen, M., The Faith of a Liberal, N.Y., 1946, p. 328.
33. Hurewitz, G., The Struggle for Palestine, p. 27.
34. Edelman, M., A Political Biography of’ Ben-Gurion, p. 92.
35. Kimche Jon and David, The Secret Roads, London, 1954, p. 27.
36. Der Spiegel, 19.12.1966.
37. Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem, London, 1963, p. 37.
38. Melchett, H. L. M., Thy Neighbour, N.Y., 1937.
39. Maariv, Israel, April 24, 1966.
40. Ibid.
41. Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 55.
42. Der Spiegel, 19.12.1966.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Kimche, Jon and David, The Secret Roads, p. 54.
48. Background, Public Services Division Department of State, U.S., December, 1954, p. 14.
49. Lilienthal, A., What Price Israel, p. 92.
50. Sachar, H. M., Israel, The Establishment of the State, p. 34 (retranslated from the Russian).
51. Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 37–38.
52. [Cyrillic text].
53. Judgemens, M. D., Israel, 1965, p. 65.
54. Kimche, Jon and David, The Secret Roads, p. 13.
55. Lilienthal, A., What Price Israel, pp. 33–34.
56. Kimche Jon and David, The Secret Roads, p. 13.
57. Livneh, E., State and Diaspora, Jerusalem, 1953, p. 15.
58. The American Jewish Conference (Proceedings of the 2nd Session), N.Y., 1945, p. 70.
59. Ibid., p. 73.
60. Ibid., p. 134.
61. Ibid., pp. 307, 317, 100.
62. Ben-Gurion, Israel: Years of Challenge, New York, 1963, p. 22.
63. Ibid., p. 24.
64. Palestine Year-Book, Vol. III, edited by Sophie A. Udin, N.Y., 1947–1948, pp. 326–27.
65. Lilienthal, A., What Price Israel, p. 195.
66. Ibid., p. 196.
67. Ibid., pp. 32–33 (retranslated from the Russian).
68. Ibid., p. 33.
69. Lilienthal, A, The Other Side of the Coin, N.Y., 1965, p. 184.
70. Lilienthal, A., What Price Israel, pp. 207–08.
71. Weizmann, Ch., A Biography by Several Hands, p. 199.
72. Palestine Royal Commission Report, London, 1937, p. 240.
73. Towards Union in Palestine, edited by M. Buber, Jerusalem, 1947, p. 7.
74. Vilner, M., The Palestine Problem and the Israel-Arab Dispute, CPI, Tel Aviv, p. 5 (retranslated from the Russian).
75. Ibid.
76. Levenberg, S., The Jews and Palestine, pp. 176–77.
77. Ibid., pp. 180–81.
78. Forum, Jerusalem, 1959, p. 96.
79. [Cyrillic text].
80. [Cyrillic text].
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