Continued rejection of the Balfour Declaration, disputes with increasing numbers of Zionist settlers over access to land and Holy sites, Arab peasant displacement, and British colonial brutality all led to riots and killings between Arabs and Jews in Mandatory Palestine during August, 1929. Hundreds died. At that moment profound changes were underway in the Communist Party of Palestine, recently becoming an Arab majority and moving to a pan-Arab political position. These changes accompanied the Communist Parties’ transition into the Third Period and deep factional conflicts. The Central Committee of the C.P. felt it necessary to release this theses establishing an official position on the events while scolding some comrades for their reaction to the riots, particularly the Party’s Yiddish-language Morgen Freiheit, then largely influenced by the so-called Right Opposition.

‘The Revolutionary Uprising in Palestine and Tasks of the Party’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 153. September 3, 1929.

Thesis by Agitprop Department of Central Committee, C.P. of U.S.A.

The Secretariat and Agitprop Department present this thesis as a guide for Party agitators and propagandists discussing the Palestine revolt. All units shall discuss this question on the basis of this thesis, criticize the opportunist errors committed by some comrades (Freiheit), organize mass meetings everywhere all over the country under the auspices of the Party, making special appeals to Jewish masses to explain the class character of the revolt and bringing out our slogans with the purpose of freeing the masses from the influence of the Jewish reformists.

SECRETARIAT AGITPROP DEPARTMENT COMMUNIST PARTY U.S.A.

(1) The events in Palestine illustrate anew the correctness of the analysis of the Sixth World Congress concerning the present period of post-war capitalism. This Third Period, as analyzed by the Sixth World Congress and further developed by the Tenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, is characterized by the development of the productive forces of capitalism upon a level outdistancing the pre-war period. This fact, cited by the apologists for capitalism and by the social democrats as a proof of the inherent strength and health of capitalism, is in reality reproducing its crisis of 1914 only on a more intense scale. The growth and development of the productive forces is faced with a simultaneous contraction of the markets. As a result the redistribution of the world among the imperialist powers again becomes the order of the day. A new world war becomes inevitable. Trying to solve these insolvable contradictions imperialism continues and intensifies its oppression and exploitation of the working class and of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples, this leads to a tremendous intensification of the class struggle, uprisings against the imperialist oppressors of the peoples in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The theses of the Tenth Plenum point out that: “Neither has the bourgeoisie succeeded in suppressing the revolutionary movement in the colonies. The antagonisms between imperialism and the colonial world powers are even sharper in the most important colonial and semi-colonial countries.”

The theses of the Tenth Plenum say further:

“Simultaneously with the growing revolutionary wave in India there spreads again a struggle in the colonies and dependent countries against the foreign oppressors (Morocco, Congo, countries of Latin-America, etc.) under conditions where the wave of the revolutionary labor movement is rising in the mother countries and the U.S.S.R. is strengthening. The revolutionary movement in the colonies will grow stronger and with a more rapid tempo than heretofore, thus bringing nearer the collapse of the entire capitalist class.”

The revolutionary uprising in Palestine bears out this analysis completely. It decisively refutes the line of the international right wing, who in all countries underestimate the general radicalization of the workers, failing to see the growing struggles of the oppressed peoples against imperialism. This opportunist conception is in the last analysis an aid to the bourgeoisie and can be compared only with the conceptions of social democracy. These conceptions received a hard blow by the events in Palestine.

(2) Palestine is an Arab country. Of its 747,000 inhabitants only 83,000 are Jews, as against 600,000 Moslems and a few Christians. Politically and economically it is a British colony occupied by the British army during the world war. Its strategic importance is illustrated by its nearness to the Suez Canal, the maritime road of Great Britain to its Asiatic possessions. Palestine is also a very important link in the chain of military bases of British imperialism surrounding the Soviet Union. Its raw materials, most important of which are its chemical salts (kali) have been seized by British capital, which thrusts into its own hands the large chemical salt concessions on the shores of the Dead Sea, the country-wide electrification concessions, and concessions for the more important enlargement of the Haifa harbor. Haifa is to be the terminal of the oil pipe line from Mosul. It will not only be a commercial harbor, but one of the most important navy stations for British imperialism with the best refueling commodities for its navy. The firm establishment and further extension of British rule in Palestine can take place only at the expense of the toiling masses of Palestine.

(3) British imperialism has attempted to cover up its aggression against the Arab masses in Palestine by using the Zionist movement as a fig leaf. Under the pretense of the establishment of a “national Jewish state,” it has used the Zionist movement as a battering ram against the Arab masses. The colonization of the Jewish immigrants supplies the excuse for the expropriation of the land of the Arabs. A pretended protection of the political rights of the Jewish insignificant minority supplies the excuse for the suppression of the political rights of the overwhelming Arab masses.

The “sales” of land of the big Arab land owners to the Zionist societies, robs the native fallaheens of their land. Briberies of all sorts and corruption of government officials, as well as bribing of the elders in the Arab villages, are all roads leading to the same aim—the expropriation of land from the poor Arab peasants and the handing over of it to the Zionist colonizing companies. The Zionist labor leaders take a very active part in this seizure of land. The poverty stricken Jewish workers are incited by all possible means against the poor Arab peasant in an attempt to provoke the seizure of the latter’s land. Numerous bloody clashes have resulted from this policy. And upon the ruins of the small Arab peasant holdings there arise huge plantations upon which a few parasitic capitalists exploit hundreds of Jewish workers and thousands of Arab workers, the latter mostly recruited from the expropriated peasantry.

Zionism has deceived the toiling Jewish masses with its reactionary utopia of a social and national paradise in Palestine. This swindle is perpetrated by the Paoli Zionists as well as the Zionists. During the war the Jewish workers were utilized by British imperialism as cannon fodder by promising, through the mouth of Lord Balfour, to the Jewish masses the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine. British imperialism embraces Zionism for its own imperialist aim. But the promised paradise remained a chimera. No Jewish national state has been established. No political independence even in the slightest degree is granted to Palestine. The privileges granted by British imperialism to Jewish settlers are merely offered as a lure to prospective Jewish immigrants so that they may be used by British imperialism as a lever against the Arab workers.

This policy and plan of British imperialism is supported by the reformists and social democratic Jewish parties and the reformist trade unions affiliated with the Amsterdam International. They play the role of tools of British imperialism. These reformists and social democratic Jewish organizations fight openly against the political independence of Arabia and against the independence of Palestine. The Zionists thus become shock troops for British imperialism in Palestine. They intervene openly in the interest of imperialism. For years the Amsterdam trade union center in Palestine, the “Hastadruth,” have refused membership to Arab workers. In the present crisis they openly show their treacherous role. They play this role not only at the expense of the Arab working masses, but also at the expense of the Jewish workers. The present economic crisis in Palestine, with its accompanying unemployment, is disillusioning these Jewish workers and causing a movement for emigration. This emigration movement of Jewish workers is the dreary and pitiful reality into which the false promises of the Zionists and British imperialism have lured these workers. But the Jewish reformists in Palestine are true to form. The growing sufferings of the Jewish masses do not induce them to change their policy and fight for the interests of these masses, but on the contrary, is driving them closer and closer toward British imperialism.

The most dangerous enemy in the camp of the reformists are the “left” opportunists, the Paoli Zionists. These “lefts” even employ the Communist slogan of a Soviet Republic and the proletarian dictatorship as a means of deception. They demand a “Jewish Soviet Republic of Palestine,” thereby giving a seemingly revolutionary formulation to the imperialist aim of Great Britain—the suppression of the Arabs. They demand a “dictatorship of the Jewish proletariat” in the Arab country, thus demanding not a dictatorship of, but over the proletariat, since the overwhelming masses of workers are recruited from the Arab population. This slogan of a “Jewish Soviet Republic” is the most dastardly conceived service rendered to British imperialism. It is a clear example of how the opportunists can prostitute Communist slogans in the service of imperialism.

(4) The present uprising in Palestine is no religious war and no face war. The seemingly religious and race character is a result of the crafty and provocative policy of Great Britain. This policy was always and everywhere designed to set one nation, one religion, one group against the other, so that the military power of British imperialism in each instance appears not as the oppressor but as the arbiter between contending forces. The events in Palestine made this clear very quickly. The action of the Arabs transformed itself rapidly into a national revolutionary uprising against British imperialism. That this uprising manifested itself in its first stages in an attack against the Jewish nationalist colonists is the result of the role played by these colonists as agents of British imperialism. British imperialism appears to the Arab peasant in the immediate form of the Jewish colonists who rob him of his land.

The role of the Jewish colonists as more or less passive agents and instruments of British imperialism, is augmented by the activities of Jewish fascists who play the active role of provocateurs against the Arab masses.

(5) The recent events in Palestine illustrate the social imperialist role of the British Labor Party. The Tenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International correctly stated that:

“All the policies of the Labor Party, particularly in the last years, have shown that MacDonald’s government will follow the road of the German social democracy in power…it will strangle the national revolutionary movement in the colonial countries…”

The MacDonald government has played this role in its relation to India during its last period of power, and is now repeating it on a higher, more efficient and more oppressive scale. The first reaction of the MacDonald government to the events in Palestine was the sending of 18 war ships, of 100 airplanes, and masses of troops to Palestine. British imperialism has nothing and the workers of the world have everything to fear from the labor government in Great Britain. The “labor” government is preparing to duplicate the brutal massacre made by French imperialism in Damascus in 1925. Under the leadership of the so-called labor government, the military forces of British imperialism will try to drown in blood every attempt to resist the oppression and exploitation by British capital of the peoples of the colonies in general and of the workers in particular.

(6) American imperialism is attempting to utilize for its own purpose the situation in Palestine and the difficulties of British imperialism arising out of it. It is planning to provoke a situation which will permit it to intervene in its own imperialist interests. It is inciting British imperialism to organize blood-baths. Later it will be able to intervene under the pretense of insufficient protection by Great Britain of its own nationalists; and it will carry through this intervention after the bloody deeds of British imperialism against the Arabs have made the Arabs receptive to the interference of America. The American government will then be ready to claim its own protectorate over Palestine in one form or another. This may be done in the form of demand for an international commission for settling the question, like the Stimson memorandum regarding the Chinese Eastern Railroad. Or, it may, as indicated before, appear in the role of a protector of humanity and of oppressed peoples against the fiendish Britishers. American imperialism, too, is utilizing the Jewish nationalist organizations in the United States as its instruments. The whole Jewish press in America is inciting to bloody attacks against the Arabs. The Jewish bourgeoisie is already volunteering its help to smash the revolutionary movement of the Arabs. The American Jewish nationalist organizations are only too eager to play for American imperialism the role that the official Zionist movement has heretofore played in relation to British imperialism. These organizations are intimately connected with the American bourgeoisie and have nothing in common with the interests of the toiling Jewish masses. They play upon the Jewish national and religious prejudices to win the support of these masses, but they are agents of the bourgeoisie in a struggle against the economic and political interests of these same Jewish masses.

(7) Only the Communist International and its sections can mobilize the working masses for the protection of their own interests. The Communist Party of Palestine is the only Party which, in its program of unity of all the toiling masses, Arab as well as Jewish, can lead the fight for their emancipation. This fight must be directed against imperialism and cannot be carried on under the banner of British imperialism as the Zionists attempt to. The national interests must be replaced by class interests. The national interests have always at the decisive moment betrayed the class interests of the toilers. While the class movement of the proletariat has always protected the national interests, as exemplified in the policy of the U.S.S.R. toward the different nationals within its boundaries alone. Nationalist principles are an excuse for petty and big bourgeois Zionism to betray the interests of the Jewish working masses. Nationalist ties to are no hindrance the Arabian bourgeoisie and big land owners betraying the Arabian toiling masses to British imperialism.

The Communist Party of Palestine is fighting for a united front of the Arab and Jewish toiling masses against imperialism. It seeks to transform the uprising of the Arabs into a general fight of all Arabian toilers supported by the Jewish workers against the imperialist regime and for its overthrow.

The slogans of the Communists concerning the struggle in Palestine are:

The land back to the Arabs. Confiscation of all land robbed by British imperialism. Expropriation of all Arabian feudal lords and such Jewish colonists whose land was taken from the Arabs and who exploit labor. This land should be returned to the Arabs, safeguarding all rights of the small toiling Jewish peasants.

(8) The Communist Party of the United States has practical tasks to perform in this situation. The provocative policy of American imperialism must be combatted in the most energetic way. American imperialism must be shown up as responsible in the preparation of the bloody massacre against the revolutionary Arabs. The American Zionist movement must be unmasked as a reactionary force for American imperialism.

(9) Under these conditions the opportunist errors of the “Morning Freiheit” are very grave. The editors of the Freiheit forgot the basic principle of Marxism: the class struggle. They became blind to their duty of analyzing the class forces of the clash in Palestine, and instead parrotted the anti-working class phrases of bourgeois Zionism and British and American imperialism. Instead of seeing the role of British imperialism they unblushingly write “Arab pogroms of Jews turned themselves into fights between the Jewish self-defense and the Arabian invaders. When the Freiheit stated “Protest against the British government which permitted pogroms of innocent people,” it spoke the language of American imperialism. This is even more strikingly illustrated in the complaint “Against the striking workers in Palestine and against the Communists the British imperialists do show their fist, but to resist a hundred Arabs they lack strength.”

(10) The slogans of our Party must be:

Support with all means the revolutionary movement in Palestine directed against imperialism, and its Zionist and Paoli Zionist lackeys.

For an independent Arabian republic with full rights for all national minorities including the toiling Jewish masses.

Return the land robbed from the Arabs!

For a Federation of the Soviet Republics of the Arabistan!

For the united front of Jewish and Arabian toiling masses against world imperialism!

Against the provocation of the American bourgeoisie and the American imperialist policy in Palestine!

Long live the state of proletarian dictatorship, the Soviet Union, the only true emancipator of all nationalities!

Merciless fight against the Zionists and all Jewish opportunist bourgeois nationalists who are tools of British, American or other capitalism and enemies of the Arabian and Jewish toilers.

Against the social reformists, the Second International, the New York “Vorwarts,” and the socialist party, agents of American imperialism and world imperialism!

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist

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