British rule in Mandatory Palestine was as cynical and duplicitous as British imperialism can be, which is saying something. Joseph Berger of the early Palestinian Communist Party on the selective enforcements of the Empire in putting an end to 1929’s violent confrontations.

‘The “Pacification” of Palestine’ by Joseph Berger from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 9 No. 58. October 11, 1929.

The assuring bulletins issued in regard to the condition of the fever-spot of the British Empire, the Palestine “mandatory area”, are not quite in keeping with facts. In spite of a great concentration of troops and the “extraordinary” reprisals employed, in spite of an imperialist regime of terror. Palestine is not yet at rest, one month after the outbreak of the August revolt. There are not only outward signs of disturbance, such as the movement of Bedouin tribes, repeated collisions, and risings in more distant regions. The population itself is still far from that tranquility which the British bayonets were supposed to inspire. The rancour is too general and too deeply rooted. The endeavours of the people to secure arms continue, both on the part of the Jews and on that of the Arabs, while the nationalist agitation shows anything but signs of a “disarmament”.

In so far as the first “balance” of dead and wounded can be surveyed, the total (of Jews and Arabs together) may be put at at least 2000, in which connection the number of Arabs “netted” by the British punitive expedition has been estimated very low. The results of the bombardments from aeroplane and with machine-guns were in some cases terrible. As regard the number of ruined fortunes, the official number of Jewish fugitives, obliged by the recent events to quit their abodes, is around 9000, or 7 per cent. of the entire Jewish population of the country. The number of Arabs similarly affected is at least from 20 to 30 thousand, since the movement did not extend to districts where there were Jewish inhabitants, but spread to many purely Arab areas, such as Gaza, Nable Tul-Karem, Djennin, etc. The material damage cannot yet be estimated even approximately.

Meanwhile the British are doing their utmost to aggravate the misery of the country, to alleviate which they do not left a finger. The hunt for arms and the imposition of wholesale contributions are being followed by wholesale arrests. The British issued a law, according to which an indemnity is to be paid where a contribution has been levied on the village, a measure which caused the Zionists to demand a maxi increase of such contributions!

The number of Arabs arrested is already more than 1500 added to these there are some 150 Jews under arrest. They are placed before British judges (the native judges being considered unreliable in a matter of such vital imperialist interest) and summarily condemned. Needless to say that the “justice” practised here is imperialist class-justice. Verdicts are passed from a purely imperialist standpoint, not those being punished most who have robbed or murdered (many of the robbers, indeed, being allowed to go scot-free), but those whose activities appear to be dangerous to imperialism. The Socialist Government of His Majesty desires to impress on the people once more that pillage and murder may even be condoned, if only nothing is undertaken against the Government. Even now the British are preparing the deflection of the new revolutionary wave of revolt, that is to be expected, into the channels e mutual nationalist strife.

In regard to the Jewish population the same tactics are employed. It is not the Zionist leaders, the unscrupulous Fascist and social-Fascist agitators that are punished, but certain poor devils who were found to be in possession of a revolver, or whose house was the scene of fighting. (The newspapers of the Zionist trade unions was even permitted to publish a song which says: “Sing the praises of massacre, sing the praise of fire! With fire and blood do we wed you, earth!”) The pogromists on the one hand and the Fascist provocateurs on the other, are fully at liberty and devote themselves to the noble task of fawning on the British and securing privileges at the expense of the victims.

Everything is done to prevent the fire of national hatred from dying out. According to the declarations of MacDonald, Lord Passfield (formerly Sidney Webb) and its local representatives, the British Government has retained a “free hand” so as to be able to fire the one boiler or the other according to necessity. So that the explosion, which must inevitably ensue should not spread to the edifice of the British Government and, as troops cannot well be removed from other parts of the Empire, which are also considered insecure, the army of occupation has been reinforced by a special detachment of 100 salwarts [sic], speedily recruited in London and representing, as they say in Palestine, the first instalment of a larger number of new troops for the “pacification” of the “Holy Land.” (Possibly Lord Passfield desires to facilitate his friend Thomas’ task of solving the unemployment question, at any rate for men six feet high.)

However this may be, these troops, bayonets, areoplanes and tanks hitherto represent the only “pledge of peace” that is forthcoming. Otherwise, the reactionary forces are allowed full play. Both Zionists and Arab nationalists carry on a boycott agitation of a truly criminal nature, while the propaganda of lies and alleged atrocities continues. In this connection e Zionists rely more on the imperialist newspaper agencies, and the Mohammedans on the rumours they can spread among people. What is hypocritically said and written in the name of “peace” (e.g. by some of the Zionist papers, which would like to see the “peaceful” elimination of the Arab peasants and workers and the “peaceful” realisation of the Balfour Doctrine on the ruins of Arab Palestine) reminds one of the celebrated “peace offers” of the imperialist Powers during the war, when they declared “We are in favour of peace, but our place in the sun must be secured”. This is eyewash, the only object of which is that of deceiving public opinion, on which the Zionists depend.

These Anglophile pacifists only show their true colours when there is a question of opposing the only true “peace offer”, that made by the Communist Party of Palestine. The platform the C.P.P., which it has expounded from the very beginning and which it did not abandon for a moment during the recent disturbances, is as follows: No abstract peace under the protection of imperialist bayonets, but a Jewish-Arab union of workers for the purpose of fighting against the main enemy of peace, the British imperialists, and the establishment national independence and equality by means of a revolutionary government of workers and peasants. The very idea such a solution, which is the only possible one, is enough enrage the leaders of the Second International (and with them the so-called “Left Poale Zion”, which has proved to be a band of particularly dastardly nationalist rogues). The basest perversions of the truth and the most exaggerated “atrocities” are made to serve the purpose of decrying international Communism as the ally of the pogromists and the Communist International as an aider and abettor of the “Mufti-revolution”. For if the pacification by MacDonald’s bayonets is to be justified, the first thing must be the destruction of the Communists, whose analysis of the position, class forces, and imperialist policy in Palestine has been so emphatically and sanguinarily confirmed by the development of events.

The growth of Communist influence, furthermore, is also feared by the Aab national-reformists, those bourgeois traitors whose role the C.P. has unsparingly unmasked. They, too, e commencing anti-Communist agitation and at the same time kowtowing to the British imperialists.

It is only by the concentration of the best elements of the working class and poor peasantry around the C.P. of Palestine and by a large-scale action of aid and solidarity on the part of the international revolutionary proletariat, that, in view of the united attack of the imperialists and social-imperialists, Zionists and Arab bourgeoisie, the proletarian vanguard in that country can be enabled in opposition to the pacification by blood and steel, to which MacDonald’s mercenaries aspire, to set up the revolutionary united front of the working masses.

The New International began as the theoretical organ of the Communist League of America, formed in 1928 by supporters of The International Left Opposition in the Communist Party. The CLA merged with the American Workers Party led by AJ Muste to form the Workers Party of the U.S. in Dec 1935 before intervening in the Socialist Party, at which time this magazine was suspended. After leaving the SP, the main Trotskyist forces formed the Socialist Workers Party in 1938 and resumed publication. In the split of 1940, the State Capitalist/ Bureaucratic Collectivist faction left the Party and held on to the magazine; the SWP then produced ‘The Fourth International’ as their organ of theory.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1929/v09n58-oct-11-1929-inprecor.pdf