Two articles from Joseph Berger. The British Labour Party’s despicable role in Palestine began with its first Prime Minister. After fomenting the violence by playing Zionist and Arab nationalist aspirations against each other, Ramsay MacDonald’s second Labor-led government oversaw the violent suppression and repressive aftermath of 1929’s ‘Arab Revolt.’ While also falling largely on the Arab peasant population, it was the mostly-Jewish, vehemently anti-Zionist and anti-Imperialist young Communist Party of Palestine that faced the specific brunt of persecution, with hunger strikes and deaths the result.

‘MacDonald’s Imperialist Law in Palestine’ by Joseph Berger from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 9 Nos. 63 & 64. November 8 & 15, 1929.

MacDonald’s Gallows and Knout in Palestine. November 8, 1929.

“… From here you will be taken back to prison and then to the place where you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. The High Commissioner will decide where you shall be buried. And God have mercy on your soul.” Such is the sentence passed in the name of the humane-socialist-pacifist-democrat-progressive MacDonald Government upon three poor Arab peasants, who were accused of taking part in the disturbances at Saffed. It is the first sentence of a great number, for only a small portion of the trials have so far been concluded and already the assurance is given–in view of the rising tide of Arab enragement that no protest will prevent British “justice” from erecting in Palestine as many gallows as possible.

But there is something peculiar about this “justice”. Instead of the numerous armoured cars, aircraft squadrons and dreadnoughts, which are maintaining order in the country, the judged are the people, whom the whole of public opinion in Palestine regard as solely to blame for the bloodshed. The accusers are the British officers, who during the pogrom told the Jews they would be at hand “two minutes after they had been slaughtered.” And the witnesses are people whom the Zionist Fascists have persuaded that the poor fellahin in the dock are solely responsible for the whole disaster. As a matter of fact, it is a question of brutal, imperialist vengeance: MacDonald’s emissaries who hide their own guilt and their own disgraceful acts behind a forest of gallows with poor Arab peasants hanging on them.

In view of the beginning of the bloody settlement slowly dawning on the Arab masses who their real enemy is. They are beginning to understand how dastardly their leaders lied to them when they told them: “El Dola Maana” (the government is with us) and incited them against the Jews. Gradually they are beginning to see through the game that has been played on them, and in similar measure the hatred of the masses against imperialism is intensified. The leaders, who have long wished that the movement would die down, cannot help but take some step or other under the pressure of the masses; it is true they tried to water down with semi-religious slogans the grandiose general strike, in which a hundred thousand participated in on October 16th; it is true that they took great care that the masses should not make a direct attack upon imperialism on that momentous day; it is true that in regard to the imperialistic parliamentary commission they displayed a pitiable irresolution,–it is clear that the mass movement is taking on a distinctly anti-imperialistic character. What the conservative Baldwin regime was not able to accomplish in five years has been achieved in scarcely two months by MacDonald’s gallows and knout.

It is no wonder that the excitement is continually growing, that in various corners of the country protest strikes and demonstrations are breaking out spontaneously. No wonder that every Arab peasant, every worker is trying to sell whatever he has in order to buy arms. No wonder that the national movement is spreading to wider and wider circles and extending to neighboring countries.

No wonder that the slogans issued at the beginning by the Communist Party are now being echoed louder and louder. The Arab executive committee, in which the bourgeois-feudal majority in favour of co-operation with the commission, is inundated with telegrams demanding the boycott of the commission. The treachery of the executive committee, its transition from the policy of non-co-operation to co-operation with the government (a treachery, which the Communist Party was the first to discover and stigmatise) is now being gradually recognised and critisised even by enthusiastic supporters of the committee. The workers also understand now how necessary it is to organize for a political fight (not only for an economic fight), and the activity of the workers on their own initiative is increasing day by day.

As regards the peasantry, for whom the C.P. issued the logan: Take the land away from the big landowners and rich Zionists; do not pay any contributions; fight to the last against imperialism–the embitterment among them against the government is growing, and the attempts of the leaders to divert them with religious-national agitation is already meeting with some resistance.

It should also be mentioned that a number of directives, which up to the present have been used exclusively by the Communist Party, are also being used by the Zionist workers. For instance, the leading writer of the trade-union paper “Davar” must now admit that Zionism has only strengthened Arab reaction, but has brought nothing but suffering to the Arabs, peaants and students; Other leading Zionists demand under the pressure of the “transmutation of values” among the Jewish masses concessions to the Arab parliamentary demand, suport of the movement for freedom in other Arab countries, renunciation of the Balfour declaration, etc.

It will be seen that the preliminary conditions for a regrouping of the relations of social forces, for the leading role of the workers and of the C.P. in the approaching stage of the anti-imperialist fight are to hand. But this is, however, understood only too well by the colonial hangmen of MacDonald. Particularly because the actual state of affairs clearly confirms the Communistic prognosis, because the radicalisation of the masses threatens in consequence of the events of the insurrection to develop more rapidly than ever, the Communist Party must first of all be wiped out! MacDonald’s police are working in concert with the local section of the II. International; this body (reinforced by the ruffians from the so-called Left Poale-Zion Party) is attending to the social agitation, the economic boycott of the Communists, their exclusion from the trade unions. The police and justice “then complete” the work with mass arrests and mass deportations.

Never before has the persecution of the revolutionary Labour movement in Palestine been so intense. Never has the effort to destroy completely the movement, which represents the interests of the working Jewish and Arab masses been so plain as during the MacDonald-Henderson-Passfield epoch.

Again, the prison regime in Palestine, with its methods of inquisition, maltreatment and floggings reminiscent of the Middle Ages, has not changed one iota under MacDonald. Indeed, the brutalities practised on the political prisoners have, on the contrary, become worse than ever and have forced more than forty workers, interned in various prisons (chiefly in Jerusalem, Akko and Haifa) to go on hunger strike. Although the demands made Are the most elementary: political regime, acceleration of trials they are still cynically refused.

Gallows, the knout, prison, torture of workers, murder and bloodshed are the methods of the British “Labour” Government, that bright ornament of the II. International, which is compelling the Palestine working masses to fight against it. to take part in a fight which is bound to gain sympathy and support from the proletarian masses of Great Britain itself and of other capitalist countries.

MacDonald’s Prison Law in Palestine. November 15, 1929.

The death sentences in Haifa, the maltreatment of children in Nablus, the mass arrests, mass trials, police persecutions and the military Terror are–so it appears,–only the modest prelude of the terrorist, reactionary regime, which the socialist of His Majesty intends to introduce in Palestine.

While the imperial commission appointed by him is trying to gull the public with an appearance of impartiality (whereby they are fully assisted by the treacherous national leaders of the Jews and Arabs), the MacDonald Government itself is proceeding to eradicate every revolutionary movement in the country and every new advance and before all, to render impossible for the future any movement for freedom. On October 25th there was decreed for Palestine a law which is an absolute prison law directed against the revolutionary Labour movement. This law is to take the place of the Ottoman laws concerning high treason, insurrection, etc., which have obtained up to the present. It is, however, much more cruel and mean than the law of the Sultan.

Whereas in the former laws it was chiefly national and religious agitation that the Turkish Government threatened to punish in the present law the penalties are almost eliminated in that direction. There was only one of the bloodiest Jewish progroms of recent history and a not less terrible slaughter of Arabs every door has been left open for a repetition of such a blood-letting. But all the lightning of his legislation is directed by the Labour Colonial Minister against the anti-imperialists; anti-imperialistic propaganda (“preparation for revolution against the mandatory power in word or writing”)–life-long imprisonment;–inciting to civil war–the same penalty; agitation among the troops or police–imprisonment for life. And then “lesser” offences, offences against the “social order”: membership of an illegal party or organisation which is not registered (the registration of the Red Aid, for instance, in fact even of workers cultural clubs, has been refused!) one to three years; agitation for the class struggle (!!) three years; distribution of revolutionary proclamations–five years; insulting the British flag–three years; contributing to an “illegal organization–six months (for instance, to the Red Aid Neither Pilsudski nor Horthy would need to be ashamed of this law;) but the fact, nevertheless, is that neither the Lloyd George nor the Baldwin Government–in spite of repeated demands from the Palestine police–dared to issue the prison law. This honour was reserved for the “great man” of Social Democracy.

The law is mentioned openly in the press as the anti-Communist law, and as such it is naturally hailed with joy by the “humane”, “pacifist” and “idealistic” Zionists. It is also coming into force immediately; mass raids by the police are recommenced for the purpose of putting all those suspected of Communism under lock and key at once. Behind the prison walls, however, the conditions are such that a few weeks, not to speak of months and years, suffice to make imprisonment “lifelong”, i.e. completely to ruin the prisoners physically and morally.

The mass hunger-strike of political prisoners, which has broken out within the last few days, throws a vivid light on the conditions in MacDonald’s prison infernos. The only answer which the prison administration could make to the request of the workers for humane treatment, political regime, abolition of disciplinary reprisals, was the carrying out of corporal punishment–the abolition of which was promised by the conservative Colonial Minister–on several political prisoners! Others were beaten until they bled by the brutal warders and put in chains after eight days of the hunger-strike, the prison officials deprived them even of water in order to hasten their death.

MacDonald’s barbarity of the Middle Ages, a reactionism more reactionary than that of the Die-Hards, is only equalled by the attitude of the local sections of the Social Fascists. For five days the chief Social-Democratic newspaper published reports of the hunger-strike, which had already been mentioned by the bourgeois press and even by the Fascist paper. When finally–under the pressure of the indignation of the workers against this treachery in regard to the fight for the political regime, for which the Social Democrats took the responsibility a year ago–an article appeared but was shortly followed a telegram of provocation against the Communists, designed to incite the workers once more. The Left Wing Poale Zion was even more interested than the police in throttling the hunger strike, for they openly opposed every support of the strikers and spread the most poisonous calumnies against them.

After all this, there can be no doubt that the whole reaction, of course with MacDonald at its head, wishes to organise a wave of such persecutions of the workers and the revolutionary national movement in the country, designed to wipe out the movement as such and destroy its members. Precisely because the revolutionary wave is on the rise, because the radicalisation of the masses is progressing, the sympathy for Communism is growing in spite of the agitation against it, MacDonald’s anti-Communistic offensive will lead to very stubborn fights. The support of the revolutionary workers in England and the pressure brought to bear by them upon the lackeys of the bloodiest imperialism may thereby prove to be the deciding factor.

nternational Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1929/v09n63-nov-08-1929-inprecor.pdf

PDF of issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1929/v09n64-nov-15-1929-inprecor.pdf