Turning Anger into Hope here ♦ Palestine 1936 here ♦
Turning Anti-War Anger into Hope for a Communist Future
“It’s class struggle,” said a friend after seeing Palestine 36. “The haves versus the have-nots.”
That was true of the 1936-39 Palestinian revolution. This moving film depicts the Palestinian masses as fighters, not just victims. It shows that the class struggle is not always simple. It’s worth seeing and discussing.
The revolution began among urban workers and landless peasants. They were responding to worsening economic conditions. Worsening, largely because of British imperialism’s decision to empower Zionist capitalists who employed only Jewish workers. Usually the British relied instead on indigenous rulers to suppress the masses.
A six-month general strike began in April 1936. Civil disobedience and armed struggle spread in the countryside. This was not a religious conflict but a nationalist revolt against British imperialism. The film’s story line is mostly fictional, but it represents history accurately. The three main British villains are all real historical figures.
An early scene contrasts the outlooks of the peasant youth Yusef and his employer, a wealthy landlord living in Jerusalem. It shows how Palestinian feudal-clerical landlords and the urban bourgeoisie thought they had more control than they really did. How they conspired to control the direction of the struggle and limit the uprising. How they collaborated with the British and the Zionists to betray the masses.
The British rulers reacted to the Palestinian general strike by forming a commission headed by Lord William Peel. Its 1937 report proposed partitioning Palestine between Zionists and Arabs. It recommended the “transfer of populations” (ethnic cleansing) as the British would later do in dividing India and Pakistan.
The film shows how this dashed the hopes of Palestinian “leaders.” It provoked mass Palestinian outrage and emboldened Zionist terrorism.
The movie does an excellent job of showing life in Jerusalem and the Palestinian countryside. It immerses you in how people lived: cooking, riding a bus, drinking tea. You almost don’t notice where they integrated archival footage (upscaled and colorized).
“It was very tasteful – not orientalist stereotyped generic stuff,” commented a friend.
The film shows Muslim women playing key roles. It portrays peasants respectfully, as people with a political understanding. For example, a child introduces his donkey as “Balfour.” The Balfour Declaration was British imperialism’s formal endorsement of the Zionist project.
Some have criticized Palestine 36 for focusing on indigenous Palestinians instead of European Jewish immigrants. This is a racist stance.
“If they had showed more about the Jewish militias and such, the Jews would have come out looking even worse,” an activist commented. “They shied away from depicting the brutality of Jewish settler militias to walk the razor’s edge of centering Palestinians and depicting the villainy of British imperialism. All while dodging illegitimate accusations of antisemitic bias.”
“It’s hard to critique from the left. It’s hard to imagine even making a movie like this in these times,” he continued.
That’s true. It’s the only film shot in Palestine since October 7, 2023.
But does Palestine 36 leave viewers more angry than sad? More hopeful than despairing? People are leaving the theater in tears. Yet the final scene shows the masses in motion. Key characters who were on the sidelines join them.
“It left me feeling angry,” said a comrade. “But seeing that the struggle didn’t end there. And it still hasn’t ended.”
We must continue that struggle, but now for communism.
Red Flag readers might wonder why the Palestine Communist Party (PCP) is missing from the film. The answer is that its practice and political errors marginalized it in real life.
During the 1920s, the Comintern pressured the PCP to “Arabize” its primarily European-Jewish membership and leadership. The PCP consistently opposed Zionism. It tried to win Jewish workers away from the Zionist union leadership of the Histradut. But by fighting harder for reforms instead of fighting harder against Zionism. These efforts had only limited success.
By 1936, the Comintern had adopted a “United Front” line. In Palestine, this led communists to promote “the revolutionary struggle for liberation from colonialism and Zionism.” Instead of organizing urban and rural workers to fight directly for communism (or even for socialism).
The PCP platform called for “nationalization” of production in the hands of “the people.” But the PCP didn’t challenge feudal or bourgeois Palestinian misleaders. It was too isolated to play a significant role. It was already splintering as some of its members made their peace with Zionism.
Read Genocide in Palestine Demands Communist Revolution here
Read more about Zionism here