Read from today’s perspective, this missive from the Daily Worker editorial page during the ‘Arab Revolt’ of 1929 is extraordinary in its relevance.

‘Palestine and the Slogans Which the New Imperialist World War Will Be Waged’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 152. September 2, 1929.

The class war in Palestine proceeds between the expropriated and exploited Arabs on the one side and, on the other side, British imperialism supported by and using the instrument of Zionism. Unconditionally this signifies the flaming of colonial revolt at the foundations of the British colonial empire.

If the present crisis of British imperialism were to lead directly into the second world cataclysm in such a way that the capitalist ruling class may be able to call the Palestine events the “cause” of the world war, what would be the slogans with which the capitalist governments of the United States, Great Britain, etc., would attempt to lead the masses into the struggle as willing cannon-fodder?

In the first imperialist world war it was the slogan of “war for democracy,” “war to end war.”

What would be the nature of the slogans for the second imperialist world war if it should follow right now upon the heels of the Palestine events?

Already we are able to see a whole consistent series of slogans ready at hand-of a “fresh” sort calculated best to deceive even workers whose eyes were opened to the now shop-worn lies of the “war to make the world safe for democracy.” This new set of possible slogans is easy to pick out in the speeches of several orators at the big New York mass meeting last Thursday night. For instance:

Stop pogroms!

Protect a weak minority from aggression!

Defend the Jewish victims of age-long persecution! Compel the heartless British imperialists to do their duty!

Down with the incompetence of the British government of Palestine!

Or (another variation): The British government is now under the great and good “socialist” or “labor” premier, the representative of the workers; uphold this “pacifist” statesman against the war-making Arabs!

Or still another: Demand that the United States defend its most humble citizens against racial persecution! (Hoover in his message to the mass meeting used the terms: “Protection of the lives of American citizens” and “protection” of the “homeland” of the Jews.)

And: “Peace and order in the Holy Land!”

Defend men and women “devoted to the service of God!” Yet every one of the above slogans would be a reactionary lie in the present case of the Palestine affair–a counter-revolutionary, imperialist slogan (in effect) no better in this case than the worst that Woodrow Wilson used.

A little reflection would bring any class-conscious worker to see that any support of the Zionist movement against the native Arab population of Palestine is nothing more than support of imperialism in a war of subjugation against colonial subjects. For two thousand years this so-called “Holy Land” has not been populated by Jews. For the better part of a thousand years it has been the native homeland of the present Arabian people. A part of imperialist England’s plans of conquest during and after the world war consisted of the seizure of this country and the subjugation of the Arabs to British rule. A typical policy of British imperialism led to introducing into the heart of the country an alien population as an agency for holding the country for British exploitation and military use. The reactionary fetishism of Jewish Zionism furnished the best means of cementing such an alien population there.

The country is not the “homeland” of the Jews; it is the homeland of the Arabs. There is no more basis for the Zionist “homeland” claims than there would be for the present Anglo-Saxon American population to claim the right to invade and seize those parts of Europe which their “racial” predecessors inhabited two thousand years ago.

At that the present imported Jewish inhabitants do not rule Palestine and do not want to rule Palestine under the circumstances. On the contrary, they demand that the British government shall rule Palestine (as it does) with bayonets and machine-guns over the Arabian inhabitants who outnumber the Jews by as much as nine to one, and that the wealthy Jewish invaders be allowed to cooperate with the British rulers in the exploitation of the laboring native population under the dictatorship of British government representatives. The slightest idea of a republic is abhorrent to them, because the population which they are exploiting and expropriating of their land is a majority of nine to one against them.

There are no pogroms being made in Palestine by the Arabs.

When the expropriated Arabs rebel against the rape of their country, the fascist Zionists know how to shriek of “pogroms.” But what is a pogrom? Certainly a pogrom means an organized slaughter of a suppressed and persecuted people, instigated by agents of the ruling and exploiting class. Exactly the opposite is the case here when the robbed Arabs rebel against the British rulers and their Zionist agents. The wealthy Zionists are the exploiters of Arabian laborers. They aid the British rulers in ruling over the Arabs who are the suppressed and exploited people. Only those whose minds are hopelessly saturated with the “black-hundred” propaganda of imperialism can call the desperate resistance of the exploited slaves a “pogrom.” They could as well talk of lynchings” of the “poor helpless” white people in Alabama or Mississippi by the “fanatical mobs” of Negro lynchers. Nothing could be more reactionary than such dishonesty, such a distortion of all reality, such a standing of history on its head.

But is there any doubt that both British and American imperialism could find a choice lot of slogans for the coming deceit of the workers if a world-war situation were to follow after the present Palestine events?

But the reactionary nationalist Zionism is not the liberator of Jewish workers or of any workers; it is the bootlick of British and American imperialism! Only the revolutionary movement of the working class and the class-conscious Jewish workers in their ranks–supporting the Arabian and all other revolts of exploited slaves of capitalist imperialism–will bring emancipation to the oppressed classes and peoples of the world.

Against the counter-revolutionary slogans of British and American Imperialism (echoed by their Zionist agents) the revolutionary workers, Jew and all others, raise the slogan: “An Independent Arabian republic in Palestine, as a part of a federation of Soviet Republics of Arabistan with autonomy for national minorities!”

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-n152-NY-sep-02-1929-DW-LOC.pdf