History of Arab-Jewish Relations in Palestine, Workers of the World, Unite here ♦ Israel-Contradictions Sharpen Among Soldiers, Workers, Masses here ♦ Anti-Zionism is Anti-Fascism, not Antisemitism here ♦
Hundreds Attend Standing Together Movement Community Meeting, Jerusalem, November 2023.
History of Arab-Jewish Relations in Palestine: Workers of the World, Unite! Reject all Nationalisms!
“Arab and Jewish workers are brothers,” they chanted in Tel Aviv on September 24, 1945. Thirteen hundred civilian laborers shut down British military camps in a seven-day strike. It was organized jointly by the communist-led Arab Workers Congress and the Zionist-led Histadrut (Jewish Labor Federation).
The Hebrew-language daily Ha’aretz reported: “Masses crowded both sides of the streets to watch this extraordinary sight of Jewish and Arab workers marching through the heart of Tel Aviv.”
We have much to learn from this history as the Israeli rulers continue their genocidal attacks on Gaza. And as they arrest and silence Israeli Jews and Arabs who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian masses.
A Hidden History
Most Jewish migrants to Palestine before 1925 were poor and working-class folk from eastern Europe. They fled discrimination and violent pogroms (mass racist attacks). They hoped to build a new society where they could live without fear. Their Zionist vision did not acknowledge that the land was already the home of Palestinians—Muslims, Christians, Jews, and others.
Many were “proletarian Zionists.” Their goal was the socialist settlement of Palestine and the future Jewish dictatorship of the proletariat there. The founders of the Palestine Communist Party (PKP) split with that position. They rejected Zionism as an instrument of oppression against Indigenous Arabs. It was a tool of the Jewish bourgeoisie, allied with British imperialism.
The PKP was almost entirely Jewish. It explained to Jewish workers that the Zionist bosses exploited their situation. Zionism turned them into a reserve army to dominate Arab workers.
The PKP, following the Comintern, recruited a few Palestinian Arabs. Twelve went to Moscow for political education in the late 1920s, but only four returned to become party leaders. One died fighting for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War.
By 1934, the PKP, largely due to struggle in the Comintern (Communist International), had decisively rejected Zionism in practice as well as in theory. Its leader was an Arab worker. But the “United Front Against Fascism” policy led it to uncritically support Arab nationalism, even as it organized Arab workers on the job.
Unity in Class Struggle
Arab-Jewish worker solidarity was important from 1920 on. This, despite the opposition of both the Zionists and the Palestinian rulers.
Notably, in the port city of Haifa. In 1920, Palestinians, Jews, and Arabs from Syria and Egypt established the first trade union in Palestine in the yards and workshops of the railway, telegraph, and postal services.
A united strike of Jewish and Arab truck drivers paralyzed Palestine in 1931. Between 1938 and 1943 there were an average of two joint strikes a year. These were mainly in the railways, city governments, and British army camps. In 1947, a joint strike of the Jewish and Arab unions of government clerks shut down government services. Strikes of postal workers and telegraph operators followed.
Imperialist Roots of Today’s Crisis
In 1920, the League of Nations “mandated” that British imperialism set up a “Jewish homeland.” British rulers used the Zionists to strengthen their global empire. Jewish migration to Palestine increased dramatically after Hitler came to power in Germany.
The 1936-1939 Arab revolt grew out of an Arab general strike, reflecting growing tensions. The Palestinian elite turned it into an armed nationalist insurgency against British imperialism, Zionist institutions, and Jewish settlers in general.
Britain’s rulers violently crushed the revolt. It issued a White Paper, limiting Jewish immigration and giving other concessions to Arab nationalism. Zionist leaders called for resistance, but soon allied themselves with Britain to fight Nazi Germany.
After World War II, Zionist paramilitaries resumed their struggle for a “Jewish state” by any means necessary. They bombed bridges, railways, and ships, fought British forces, and enabled Jewish immigration. They also attacked Palestinian infrastructure, politicians, and terrorized Palestinian towns and villages. This encouraged a revived Arab nationalist movement for Palestine’s independence as an undivided “Arab state.”
Amidst all this came the joint 1945 strike of workers at British military camps in Tel Aviv. This was part of an unprecedented level of joint struggle of Arab and Jewish workers on the job. Arabs and Jews in Palestine couldn’t know what was ahead. Yet they fought for unity.
What they needed then, and what we need now, is to direct that unity to fight for communism. Twentieth-century communists vacillated between a policy of “Workers of the World Unite” and a policy of all-class unity in national liberation struggles against imperialists. That doomed them to splits, infighting, limited outlooks, and failure.
We see the results of this now in Israel/Palestine. A fascist state where Jews fear both their rulers and their neighbors. And a genocide of the original inhabitants of the occupied land. “We cannot raise our children in a world like this,” said a Jewish woman in a demonstration of Jewish and Arab women for peace in Jericho, West Bank on October 4.
Rejecting old mistaken policies allows us to fight for something totally new. We are building ICWP in Israel/Palestine and around the world. We are one international party. We reject every form of nationalism. The history of the struggles of our class shows that we can win.
Israel: Contradictions Sharpen Among Soldiers, Workers, Broader Masses
December 3— “Israel is a powder keg,” said a comrade. Fascist Ben Gvir, Minister of National Security, is arming his supporters with lethal weapons. Recently, two Hamas members gunned down three armed Israeli civilians. When the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) arrived, they thought that one Israeli civilian belonged to Hamas. IDF executed him.
“People are fuming,” said an anti-fascist Jewish Israeli friend. Cracks are opening wide in the working class as well as among soldiers. The horrors of genocide have fueled mass hatred against Netanyahu. Even before the war, he was increasingly isolated and more dangerous as mass marches rejected his expansionist, authoritarian, and religious-extremist policies.
It would be wrong to look at Netanyahu as the only fascist force. Many people are seeing this. Anti-fascist Israeli workers, soldiers, and others have the potential to overturn this fascist government and the capitalists it represents by building a mass party for communism.
A friend from Israel sent a message that reveals the possibility of doing communist military work. They are influenced by the Standing Together Movement (STM).
“We talked this morning with the trainees of the Pre-Military Preparatory School at Mikva Israel. About the neglect of South Tel Aviv neighborhoods, about the processes of dispossession and deportation of the old residents by the real estate sharks. And about the struggle of the Standing Together movement.”
STM mobilizes Palestinian and Jewish Israelis to fight for “peace, equality, and social and climate justice.” It recognizes that “the minority who benefit from the status quo of occupation and economic inequality seek to keep us divided” but “we — the majority — have far more in common than that which sets us apart.” STM criticizes the Israeli Left (dominated by NGOs) and the leftist political parties for failing to mobilize the masses.
“We stand together against the deportation of the asylum seekers and in favor of South Tel Aviv,” our friend continued, “and about the need to fight the government so that it implements the dispersion and absorption plan.”
In September, the Netanyahu government ordered a plan to deport all African migrants from Israel. South Tel Aviv has historically been the home of many working-class migrants and refugees. In recent years, gentrification has threatened to force them out. The “dispersion and absorption plan” is a pro-immigrant policy.
Stand Together opposes “rule by wealth.” But, as a broad coalition, it does not directly attack capitalism. Some members want to form a true anti-liberal left based on Socialist principles.
We have some Red Flag readers in Israel. We hope to convince and help them to form an ICWP communist collective.
It is no easy task, given the viciously fascist repression inside Israel as well as in Gaza and the West Bank. But it’s the key to creating communists in Israel who will fight side by side with Palestinian comrades in Gaza and the West Bank.
Only communism can create a society that welcomes all workers everywhere. That ends occupation, exploitation, and oppression. The society that masses yearn for.
Anti-Zionism is Anti-Fascism, Not Antisemitism!
US imperialists and their Israeli capitalist partners divide the masses by saying that if you criticize Zionism or the Israeli government, you are antisemitic (racist against Jews). This lie is meant to weaken the fight against the fascist Israeli government and its imperialist backers.
Zionist ideology says that since Jews suffered so much in the Nazi holocaust, they can only be safe in their “own” country. But Jewish workers, like all workers, have no country. Every country belongs to the capitalists!
Zionism says that Jews alone have suffered a holocaust. They ignore the many holocausts that capitalism-imperialism has created. Capitalism massacred Native Americans to establish the United States. It killed untold numbers of Africans who were kidnapped from their homes and forced into slavery in the Americas. Belgium’s King Leopold killed 18 million workers in the Congo. Turkish rulers slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians. Multitudes of Palestinians expelled and killed since 1948. Over 40 million civilians killed by US imperialism since World War II. The list goes on and on.
Nationalism blinds us to the truth that all workers have been, and still are, victims of capitalist and imperialist plunder, exploitation, murder, and genocide.
But we are also capitalism’s gravediggers. No group of workers is alone. We are all class brothers and sisters. We will win communism because we are the many; we have the same interest. And we now have the correct political line: mobilize the masses for communism, nothing less.
The old Communist movement thought some nationalism was “progressive.” They were wrong. Nationalism is the opposite of internationalism. There is no progressive nationalism. Join and build one ICWP worldwide to get rid of capitalism and imperialism, all nationalism including Zionism, racism, national borders, and genocide. No more holocausts!
