While the events of 1929 and 1936 are well-known, 1933 also saw bloody repression of anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist demonstrations in Mandatory Palestine.

‘The Arab Upsurge in Palestine’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 10 No. 260. October 30, 1933.

THE Arab masses of Palestine, groaning under British imperialist oppression, have once again taken the revolutionary path of sharp open struggle against their British oppressors and their capitalist-landlord Zionist agents.

Particularly at this period, when Fascism in other countries has taken a violently anti-Semitic character, it is important to make clear the revolutionary significance of the Arah upsurge in Palestine, which already has its repercussions as far east as Bagdad, and the relation of the Jewish masses to these events.

Around Baufour’s swindling slogan of “Palestine, the national home of the Jewish race,” the British imperialists have with macchiavellian cunning employed the national feeling of Jews in all lands to consolidate British power in Palestine, and to make it a British colony and a strategic base against the Soviet Union.

The capitalist Zionists are the willing tools of the British imperialists for the oppression not only of the Arab masses, but equally of the masses of Jewish workers and peasants in Palestine.

The struggle of the Arab masses is in every sense a revolutionary struggle against British imperialism, and against their own native Arab exploiters themselves serving the interests of British imperialism. It is of the greatest revolutionary significance, as the forerunner of the coming revolution of the masses of India, Egypt, and the other colonies and semi-colonies of the British empire.

Even the dispatches in the capitalist press make this clear, when they report that the leaders of the Arab upsurge declare themselves to be struggling not against the Jewish people, but against British imperialism and its agents, who use the Jewish immigration as a wedge of imperialist oppression.

WHY have the British instantly mobilized their armed forces, and especially their air forces, and armed and deputized the British residents of Palestine to resist the Arab demonstrators?

It is of course to protect their exploitation of the rich resources of Palestine. But it is also for a much more significant purpose.

The British know well the profound influence which any anti-British action in Palestine will have upon the innumerable millions who lie groaning under the British heel in immense areas of Asia and Africa.

The geographical situation of Palestine, lying between Africa and Asia, the gateway to the East, makes it a strategic key to all the British aims in the East.

A modern naval harbor has been built at Haifa. A railway line connects Haifa with Bagdad; an immense and highly developed network of airlines connects London, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, and India. Modern roads run from Palestine to the oil centers of Mosul. All these connections converge on Iraq, Persia, and the northwest frontier of India, which are the bases for Great Britain’s coming war on the Soviet Union, and for further colonial plunder.

THE British and the national-chauvinist Jewish capitalists of all lands will exert every effort to mobilize the Jewish masses against an “Arab pogrom.” They will utilize the pogroms of the Nazis to whip up Jewish sentiment in the interests of British imperialism and its Zionist-capitalist agents and lackeys.

The Jewish masses must not be deceived. The anti-Arab actions of the imperialist-Zionists are directed equally against the interests of the Jewish working class and poor farmers of Palestine, who would have no difficulty living in amity with the Arabs if they could achieve national self-determination and break the British stranglehold.

The revolutionary working class must welcome the struggles of the Arabs of Palestine as a blow against British imperialism, as a blow in defense of the Soviet Union, as a signal for the inevitable coming revolutionary upsurge of the hundreds of millions of Great Britain’s colonial slaves.

The Jewish exploited masses have, everything to gain by joining and supporting this struggle, for the exploiters of the Arabs are also the exploiters and oppressors of the Jewish tollers.

Only the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism will bring freedom for the toiling masses of all nations. This is shown by the freedom won by the Jewish people after the proletarian revolution in Russia.

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.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v10-n260-oct-30-1933-DW-LOC.pdf