This manifesto from the Communist International’s League Against Imperialism is a response to the ‘Arab Revolt’ in Palestine of 1929.

‘Against British Imperialism in Palestine’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 175. September 28, 1929.

Manifesto of the League Against Imperialism.

(1) A bloody conflict on a hitherto unprecedented scale has broken out between the Arab inhabitants and the immigrant Zionist population artificially imported into Palestine under the notorious Balfour Declaration. This general revolt of the Arabs against the Zionists is in reality a revolt against the economic and political serfdom to which they have been reduced by British imperialism in Palestine.

(2) It is in virtue of the anti-imperialist character of the struggle that the Arabs off Palestine are receiving the moral and material support of the Arabs of Egypt, Syria and Transjordania as well as of the masses of the Indian people engaged in a revolutionary struggle for liberation from the yoke of British imperialism.

(3) The Arab population of Palestine rightly regards the Zionist movement as the main instrument of British imperialist exploitation in their country. With the help of Zionist capitalist and fascist organizations, the Arabs are being systematically expropriated and impoverished, and the landless peasants condemned to unemployment or reduced to the position of coolies. On the “philanthropic” pretext of providing a home for the poor, down-trodden Jews of the world, the Zionist capitalists are taking possession of Arab lands while poor Jewish workers are being imported to work for them and for British naval, military and strategic enterprises in Palestine.

(4) There has therefore naturally arisen a sharp economic conflict between the Arabs and the Zionist immigrants, leading to bloody riots, in which the latter are armed by the British imperialists and receive their special protection. Imperialist intrigue has succeeded, as it has in India, in giving these economic and anti-imperialist fights the character of religious and cultural riots. It has thus placed the leadership of the movement on both sides in the hands of reactionaries and prevented the workers and peasants of the two races from uniting for the overthrow of their common enemies, the British imperialists and their Zionist agents.

(5) In the performance of their function as the lackeys of imperialism, the Zionists have received the whole-hearted support of the social democratic parties of the Second International, and more especially of members of the British Labor Party. The reformist leaders of the Jewish workers’ organizations in Palestine have systematically played upon the racial sentiment of the latter and used them as tools of British imperialist policy. The Zionists and the social democrats have been the most bitter enemies of the Arab national revolutionary movement. They have prevented the united front of the Jewish and Arab workers and peasants for the overthrow of British imperialism and the establishment of a free Palestine. They have on the contrary taken active steps to demand the conversion of the British mandate in Palestine into open and flagrant annexation to the British empire.

(6) As a prelude to this annexation, the present deliberately provoked conflicts between the Arabs and the Zionist fascists are being dexterously utilized by the British Government in order to strengthen the permanent military and naval garrison in Palestine. The regiments that have been hurried to that country to maintain “law and order” and to “protect the Jews” in obedient response to the demand made by nationalist Jews in Europe and America, are intended to be retained, while the fascist Zionist organizations will be armed as volunteer corps against the possibility of a united revolutionary movement.

(7) The League Against Imperialism and for National Independence gives its whole-hearted support to the workers and peasants of Palestine as of all other Arabian countries, in the struggle for the overthrow of imperialist exploitation and the establishment of real national independence. The League points out the danger of the broad masses being misled into religious and racial strife by imperialist intrigue, which only strengthens the hands of the enemies of liberty.

The League Against Imperialism appeals to all its affiliated and associated organizations to extend their active help to the masses in the Arabian countries in their struggle for freedom and to carry, on an uncompromising fight against imperialism and against the Zionist and social democratic agents of imperialism.

Down with British imperialist exploitation in Palestine!

Long live the united revolutionary struggle of the Jewish and Arab workers and peasants!

Down with Zionism!

Long live the federation of independent Arabian countries!

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.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n175-NY-sep-28-1929-DW-LOC.pdf