Bulletin No40 Novembre 2023 Zionism has been waging a war against the Palestinian people for over a century.
Rather than talking about the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” , we will talk about the conflict within the framework of historic Palestine. This conflict concerns a Palestinian people historically living in this territory at the beginning of the 20th century , almost entirely Arab of mainly Muslim religion, and also of Jewish religion, Christian religion and also of no religion. It also concerns successive waves of Jews for more than a century, especially after 1917, fleeing repression, pogroms in Central Europe and Russia, the trauma of Nazi extermination during the Second World War, and since 1946 Jews from all over the world wanting to live in Israel, in a Jewish country. These population movements are to be linked to the population movements of Europeans leaving Europe for different reasons, the main one being poverty, and going to colonize the Americas mainly, but also Africa, Australia, etc.
This conflict is therefore historical and complex and it is necessary to study history in order to understand the different aspects, before having a point of view.
I - Let's go back to the end of the 19th century - beginning of the 20th century .
At this period Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire; the Palestinian population, predominantly Arab Muslim, but also Arab Jewish and Christian, lives under Ottoman domination; the society being mainly tribal.
Gilbert Meynier, in an article in the journal of studies and social criticism [1] , gives figures: last quarter of the 19th century : 600,000 Arabs including 80% Muslims, 20% Christians, less than 20,000 indigenous Jews, i.e. around 3%.
During this period, the economic situation in Europe caused a massive exodus to the Americas, mainly the USA, in search of a better life. Thus, according to “America facing the Holocaust” by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botsein TV series screened on Arte Tuesday October 17, 2023, between 1870 and 1924, the USA welcomed 25 million foreign people, including 2 million Jews from Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire.
This Jewish immigration mainly concerns Jews from the Russian Empire who live assigned in what was called the Residence Zone, the western region of the Empire, corresponding to the current territories of eastern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. At the end of the century, nearly five and a half million Jews lived there, the majority of the world's Jewish population, and 97% of this population spoke Yiddish.
Social democracy and the organization of Jewish workers:
During this period, national movements developed in Central Europe as in the Tsarist Empire, against a backdrop of rapid and wild industrial development and exodus from the countryside.
During this period, the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Russia was founded in Minsk in March 1898. The Bund, a Jewish socialist movement (General Union of Jewish Workers of Lithuania, Poland, Russia) founded in Vilnius in September 1897, was recognized as a constituent faction of RSDLP. For the next five years, the Bund was recognized as the representative of Jewish workers within the RSDLP, although many Russian socialists of Jewish origin, especially those living outside the area of Jewish settlement, joined the RSDLP directly.
But very quickly, contradictions developed between the Bund and the majority of the RSDLP; the Bund demands a federation between the RSDLP and the Bund, the latter declaring that the Jewish proletariat has constituted itself as a distinct political party [2] . This question was the first discussed at the second RSDLP congress (July 17 – August 10, 1903). The majority rejected this Bund demand for a federation of the two parties, to elect its own central committee, to determine its own policy on questions concerning the Jewish population, to have a monopoly on the representation of the Jewish proletariat. The RSDLP recognizes the possibility of autonomy in the action of certain organizations and recalls “the great precept of rapprochement and union of proletarians of all nations, of all races, of all languages” (page 545) [ 3] . Volume 6 of Lenin's works contains several articles on this question of the Bund (pages 337, 492, 502, 509, 542) which will no longer be part of the RSDLP after this second congress of 1903. Shortly after, drawing lessons from this congress, Lenin returns to “The situation of the Bund in the Party” [4] ; he takes up and precisely sets out the position of social democracy, emphasizing that "the most burning question facing Russian social democracy is that of unification": "Absolutely inconsistent, from a scientific point of view, the idea of a special Jewish people is, by its political scope, reactionary….The Jewish question cannot be posed otherwise: assimilation or particularism? And the idea of a Jewish “nationality” has a clearly reactionary character not only among consistent followers (the Zionists), but also among those who strive to reconcile it with the ideas of social democracy (the Bundists). . The idea of a Jewish nationality contradicts the interests of the Jewish proletariat by creating among them, openly or implicitly, a state of mind hostile to assimilation, the state of mind of the “ghetto” …..
After the 3rd RSDLP congress (April 12-17, 1905), Lenin launched an appeal "to Jewish workers" , (June 1905) presenting the report of this congress and while the Revolution of 1905 developed: "The Party Social Democratic Worker of Russia expressed through the organ of its II and III Congresses its unshakeable conviction that this secession of the Bund was a profound and fatal error…” [5] .
Although now outside the RSDLP, the Bund will continue to seek to influence political and ideological struggles within the RSDLP by supporting the Mensheviks opposing the Bolsheviks. During the First World War, the occupation of Poland by the German army caused the Bund to split into two independent entities, one in Poland and one in Russia. The Bund supported and was active during the February Revolution of 1917. But it will be against the outbreak of the October Revolution, joining the Menshevik positions. During the civil war unleashed by reactionary forces and pogroms instigated to divide the peoples of Russia, part of the Bund forces recognized the Soviet government and engaged in revolutionary struggle. Another part remained on the side of the road and the Bund disappeared into the Soviet Union in 1922.
In conclusion, European social democracy until the First World War, then the Communist International after the Russian Revolution, has always been clear and firm: the workers of a given country must fight in unity within the same organization against their bourgeoisie; it is the concretization of the slogan“workers not country”. This unity is not contradictory with the fact that the Party must take into account the differences and particularities of the different peoples and nations existing in the country. The Jews of the Tsarist Empire do not constitute a people, but a national minority.
The World Zionist Organization:
During this period at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century , national movements developed in Central Europe as well as in the Tsarist Empire. Among these, two tendencies are manifested within the Jewish population in the western part of the Tsarist Empire where it is concentrated, one of socialist tendency, the Bund and the Jewish members of the RSDLP, as we come to see, the other centered on religion, the Zionist Organization created in Basel on September 3, 1897 under the leadership of Theodor Herzl and advocating the return to the land of Israel. This organization officially took the name World Zionist Organization in 1960.
Gilbert Achcar, in an article from February-March 2018 published in Manière de Voir No. 157, “The duality of the Zionist project” [6] , develops the framework in which this project is developing: an economic crisis at the end of the 19th century . century accompanied by pogroms in eastern Europe and in the western part of Russia (in France, the action against Dreyfus took place in the same atmosphere); the Western bourgeoisies closing the borders to the immigration of poor Jews sensitive to socialist ideas; Jewish intellectuals and bourgeois from Central Europe seeking a way out for the Jews of Russia which does not complicate their integration in the countries where they live. Achcar writes: “Certainly state Zionism was undeniably formed in reaction to the oppression of the Jews… It is equally undeniable, however, that Zionism as he theorized it is an ideology based on an essentially reactionary and colonialist logic. ".
And Achcar reproduces extracts from Herzl's manifesto, “Der Juden staat” [7] (The State of the Jews) published in 1896: “the “assimilated” [these are Jews integrated into European countries] “will get more more advantages from the departure of Jews faithful to their origins than Christian citizens themselves... At present, many Christian citizens, those who are called anti-Semites, can speak out against the immigration of foreign Jews . Jewish citizens cannot, although they are affected more severely, because they have to endure competition from individuals who find themselves in similar economic conditions, but who contribute to introducing anti-Semitism or to developing existing one. Already. It is a secret pain of assimilated people who treat themselves through “charitable” works. They created emigration associations for Jews who emigrated. Some of these mutual aid associations do not exist for persecuted Jews but against them. The poorest must go as quickly and as far away as possible…. ". Herzl criticizes the actions of the Rothschild family, the French and English branches financing, since the end of the 19th century , the purchase of land in Palestine to allow the immigration of Jews from Russia because these actions are not aimed at settling of a Jewish state in Palestine.
This manifesto of Herzl is rarely reproduced because it crudely expresses the reasons and the objective of this colonization of Palestine in order to prevent the poor Jews of Russia from coming to "civilized" Europe, making it difficult to integration of the Jews already present.
At the beginning of the 20th century , the Zionist movement took shape. At the Second Zionist Congress, in 1899, the Jewish Colonial Trust was created as the first financing body of the Zionist Organization. From this Jewish Colonial Trust emanated a subsidiary, in 1902, intended to establish itself directly in Palestine: this was the Anglo-Palestine Bank. The primary purpose of this bank was to ensure imports and transactions, particularly land purchases. At the time, Palestine still under Ottoman rule saw some of its plots of arable land bought back with funds from the Zionist movement. It is in this type of activity that the prosperity of the Anglo-Palestine Bank develops, boosted by the opening of branches throughout the territory. Colonization during this period was slow; but the land purchase contracts from Palestinian and Ottoman feudal lords stipulate that the land must be empty of occupants, in order to allow occupation by these new Jewish settlers. These expulsions obviously provoke revolts among the Palestinian population.
This Zionist project seemed, at the time, vague and unrealistic. It is fought, including by European Jews. Throughout this period, until the First World War, the Bund opposed Zionism, claiming that emigration to Palestine was only an escape. The Bund “considers Zionism as a reaction of the bourgeois class against anti-Semitism and the abnormal situation of the Jewish people . ” The Bund was then anti-Zionist. This opposition of perspective between the Bund and the Zionist Organization takes place in Europe... The end of the First World War will bring radical change.
For a summary presentation of the birth of the Zionist movement until the creation of the State of Israel, we refer to an article by Rémy Laurens: From Théodor Herzl to the birth of Israel. [8] , published in Manière de Voir , Histories of Israel, No. 98, April-May 2008.
Conclusion :
Until the beginning of the 20th century , the emigration movement of Jews from Central Europe and Russia was almost exclusively towards the USA and very little towards Palestine despite the action of the Zionist Organization. Jews from Arab countries are not concerned by this question of immigration to Palestine; they live in different regions of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1914, the total population of Palestine was estimated at 655,000 inhabitants, including 60,000 Jews, or around 9% (Henri Laurens, The Palestine Question, 5 volumes, Fayard, Paris, the most complete sum on this question), while it was 3% at the end of the 19th century according to Meynier.
On the eve of the First World War, Zionism declared war on the Palestinian people by establishing itself as a settlement and replacement movement, which involved the expulsion of Palestinians to other Arab countries. This war, at this time, is of a low level. The purchase of land is done with the money of European bourgeoisie, mainly Jews draping themselves in a philanthropic attitude, with the complicity of Palestinian and Ottoman feudal lords and landowners. We will see that this war led by Zionism passes to a much higher level at the end of the First World War, the defeat and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the essentially British and French aggressions in the Middle East.
To conclude, the ideological and political bases of Zionism as defined by Herzl are clear: Zionism is not a colonialism of exploitation and/or settlement; Zionism is a colonialism of replacement, of expulsion of the present populations in order to achieve a unity of population by Jews.
II- From the First World War to the end of the Second World War:
The causes of the First World War have been widely discussed on the basis of a general crisis of capitalism and a redistribution of the world in favor of the winners… and against the losers. The interests of the people have obviously not been taken into consideration by the various governments.
Even before the end of the First World War, Great Britain, France, the USA, the Tsarist Empire and Italy discussed very harshly the sharing of the non-Turkish territories of the Middle East of the Ottoman Empire. A series of conferences at the end of this war, the San Remo conference of April 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres of August 10, 1920 (which was not ratified), the resolution of the League of Nations (SDN) resulted in a carving up of the Ottoman Empire: France monopolizes the mandate of Syria-Lebanon, Great Britain takes the lion's share with the mandate over Mesopotamia (which will become Iraq) and the mandate over Palestine. The latter includes current Palestine plus the left bank of the Jordan, Transjordan with an extension to the east to link with Iraq and Hejaz, that is to say the oil fields. Hejaz is autonomous and Egypt obtains its independence… under British control. Very quickly, Great Britain, wanting to strengthen and secure its hold on the region by securing the services of a feudal lord, detached Transjordan from the mandate over Palestine to place at the head of this region established as the Hashemite Emirate of Transjordan , still under mandate, an Arab prince King Abdallah bin-al-Hussein. For greater security, Great Britain places a British officer, Colonel Peake Pasha, at the head of an embryonic army, “the Arab Legion”. Transjordan is mainly populated by Palestinians, peasants and Bedouins. Tribes and families are split in two.
This mandatory system under which Palestine is placed is a concentration of the most reactionary conceptions, without respecting or asking the opinion of the peoples concerned. An example of the colonialist conceptions still dominant at the beginning of the 20th century , after the slaughter of war! Thus article 22 of the League of Nations pact, included in the preamble to the Treaty of Versailles of June 28, 1919 (ratified on January 10, 1920):
“The following principles apply to colonies and territories which, as a result of war, have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which previously governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet capable of governing themselves in the particularly difficult conditions of the modern world. The well-being and development of these peoples form a sacred mission of civilization and it is appropriate to incorporate into this pact guarantees for the accomplishment of this mission...".
This partition of the non-Turkish territories of the Ottoman Empire reproduces the process of ending the systematic partition of Africa at the Berlin Conference from November 1884 to February 1885.
Let's return to Palestine.
During the war, Haim Weizmann, leading the British branch of the Zionist organization, convinced British leaders of the interest of a Jewish settlement in Palestine, a future solid support - a base - for British interests in the region. Furthermore, he assured the British leaders that with this commitment, the British armies in the war against the Ottoman armies would have the support of the Jewish militias.
This is the famous and disastrous Balfour Declaration: it is an open letter that British Prime Minister Lloyd George published through his Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild on November 2, 1917:
"His Majesty's Government view favorably the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use all its efforts to facilitate the achievement of this objective, it being clearly understood that nothing will be done which may prejudice either the rights civic and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities existing in Palestine, nor to the rights and political status which the Jews enjoy in any other country .
The Zionist Organization succeeded in transforming this unilateral British declaration into a document of international law in July 1922, thanks to the ratification by the League of Nations of the British mandate over Palestine, which included the Jewish National Home.
An in-depth study by Henry Laurens on the San Remo Conference was published by Orient XXI on May 15, 2020 [9] , “San Remo Conference. A legal basis for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine? ".
Thus, at the beginning of the 1920s, all the possibilities for developing Jewish settlement in Palestine were there. This settlement is carried out with money from the Western Jewish diaspora and the complicity of Palestinian feudal lords and tribal leaders who sell land empty of their occupants.
The development of the economic crisis in Europe and the USA is causing a resurgence of anti-Semitism in these countries. Thus, for example, in the USA, measures are taken to limit and control Jewish immigration from Central Europe while fascist regimes and dictatorships developing virulent anti-Semitism are developing in these countries. Some examples: the proclaimed anti-Semitism of some of the elites such as the industrialist Henry Ford, a tension among the “white” population in the face of immigration, particularly that coming from Eastern Europe, the establishment of quotas, the Johnson-Reed law of May 26, 1924. While 120,000 Jews from Eastern Europe had emigrated to the USA in 1921, in 1926, only 10,000 were authorized. Between 1933 and 1945, the United States took in 225,000 Jews due to restrictive laws and despite stories of the repression and extermination of Jews in Eastern Europe.
During these twenty years, from 1920 to 1940, Great Britain favored the immigration of Jews leaving the young USSR during the civil war, but especially Jews from Germany and Central Europe fleeing the anti-Jewish and repressive policies of these countries. .
The result from a demographic point of view is given by Henry Laurens: if in 1922 the Jewish population represented 13% of the total population, this proportion already rose to 18% in 1931. From 1932, with the victory of Nazism in Germany and the intensification of Jewish persecutions in Austria and Czechoslovakia, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased very sharply, to the order of 247,000 migrants, while the Jewish population in 1931 was estimated at 175,000; or 28% of the total population. This strong arrival in Palestine is only partly a choice to settle in Palestine. The main reason is the flight from repression and the closing of doors to Western European countries.
This Jewish immigration under the British mandate was organized systematically and this time, so to speak, within a legal framework between the British authority and the Zionist Organization which installed in Palestine the outline of an executive, the Jewish Agency . Land purchases are codified. From now on, in sales contracts, it is stipulated that “the land must be empty of its inhabitants” . The lessee undertakes to have all work relating to the cultivation of the land carried out by Jewish labor only. This rejection extended to the cities with the establishment of “ workers’ colonialism” with the slogan: work must be exclusively Jewish (under the hypocritical argument that “we do not want to exploit the Arabs) . In 1920, the Jewish workers' center, the Hisdadrouth (General Organization of Hebrew Workers in the Land of Israel) was founded; Excluded from this congress was an internationalist minority which wanted to found a common trade union organization for Jews and Arabs, a minority which was the ancestor of the Palestinian Communist Party, a party outlawed by the British mandatory power following the Jaffa riots of 1921. Gilbert Meynier reports that this aggressive policy of the Jewish Agency met with the disapproval of the historic Sephardic Jewish community of Palestine, which signed a joint anti-Zionist declaration with the Muslim High Council of Jerusalem [10] .
The waves of Jewish immigration provoked from the start, and regularly, revolts of the Palestinian population rejected and dispossessed of land: Jaffa riots of 1921, 1929, and especially of 1936-1939. This last revolt of the Arabs of Palestine against Great Britain, the mandatory power, and against the influx of Jewish immigrants was very violent. The Palestinians united in an Arab supreme committee, headed by Mufti Amin al-Husseini, enthroned Mufti of Jerusalem by the British, and a member of one of Jerusalem's main families and landowner. The repression by the British army with the participation of armed Jewish militias was violent. Palestinian groups seeking refuge in Transjordan were turned back by the Arab Legion, although the population sympathized with the Palestinian revolt.
After the failure of this revolt, Amin al-Husseini took refuge in Beirut then in Baghdad. Applying the reasoning "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" , in April 1941, Arab feudalists sensitive to German propaganda provoked a coup d'état in Baghdad with the participation of the Mufti and the support of Germany. In May 1941, Great Britain regained power in Iraq, also occupied Syria, and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem took refuge in Berlin where he waited for the end of the war... Such was the leader of Palestine, installed by the English and supposed to defend the interests of the Palestinian people. This explains, in part, the difficulties of the Palestinian people in providing themselves with a leadership representing their interests...
A popular guerrilla of this revolt, Ezzedine al Qassam carried the hope of the Palestinians. In his memory, his name was given to the armed wing of Hamas: the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades. (GM).
During the Second World War, the Zionists participated in the armed struggle alongside the British army, and thus developed an organization of effective armed groups that we would later find during the War of 48. The Arab leaders of Palestine like other countries in the region were divided between the fight for their national interests and sympathies for Hitler's Germany, the enemy of the British mandatory power.
The Palestinian Communist Party, the Communist(b)R Party and the International Communist Movement:
Palestinian Communist Party
In Palestine, in 1920, the Communist Party of Palestine was founded. In 1923, it merged with the Palestinian Communist Party which was recognized in 1924 as the official section of the Comintern. The PCP's position is clear in favor of the Arab nationalist movement and criticizes Zionism as " an emanation of the Jewish bourgeoisie allied with British imperialism" . It thus took up a resolution of the First Congress of the Communist International in 1920, recalling a principled position of social democracy and condemning Zionism as a reactionary movement, an instrument of British imperialism in Palestine. PCP members are predominantly Jewish and recruiting Palestinian Arab activists is an objective.
The Palestinian Communist Party maintained until 1943 the objective of ceasing Jewish immigration and prohibiting Jewish land purchases. However, he refused to adopt the perspective of the departure of immigrants already settled and set himself the task of organizing Arab and Jewish workers in the fight against imperialism, considering that the interests of Jewish workers were in no way in contradiction. with those of Arab workers. The Party believed that the only way to guarantee the free development of the Jewish minority in the country was to fight against imperialism and Zionism and to ensure that in the coming revolutionary insurrection, Jewish workers would participate in the struggle for national independence.
A pamphlet published by the Party in October 1935, [11] entitled "A Declaration of the CPP: For the Alliance of All Arabs and Their Friends Against All Imperialists" asserted that the immediate objective should be "the destruction of Zionism”, … “the immediate cessation of immigration and the disarmament of all Zionists”. According to this text, the Jewish community in Palestine played a “fascist role” , and Jewish workers constituted a “labor aristocracy”. The Party nevertheless called on “Jewish workers and peasants” to join its fight. Therefore, the Party rejected any idea of joint activity with Zionist groups, whatever their tendency. It should be noted, however, that this attitude was changed after the attack by National Socialist Germany against the USSR; the Party then declared itself ready to recognize certain “national organizations” of the Jewish community. For a study of the line, practice and struggles of the Palestinian Communist Party, refer to the cited book by Berger-Barzilay.
The PCP participated in social struggles throughout this period 1920-1940, as well as in international struggles. Thus, for example, Arab and Jewish members of the Party joined the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, a leader of this Party, Najati Sidqi being responsible for organizing information campaigns aimed at Moroccans enlisted in the Francoist ranks. But continual struggles persisted in the party regarding the position regarding Jewish immigration, the Jewish population now present in Palestine, social struggles and the struggle for Palestinian independence. The PCP was never able to have a leading role in the struggle for independence and the situation during the Second World War led to divisions and splits , [12] especially in 1943.
International Communist Movement and PC(b)R:
Let us recall that from the end of the 19th century , the European social democratic movement and the RSDLP considered that the Jews in different countries constituted, not a people, but a national minority with its religion, its traditions and its language, Yiddish. . The Bolsheviks advocated equality in law, assimilation and unity in social struggle.
In 1921 and with the consolidation of the October Revolution, Karl Radek, on behalf of the Comintern, asserted: "from the advent of the international Soviet Republic, the Jewish masses of each country will move on to productive work and will no longer be obliged to 'emigrate... The Palestine program is a residue of old chauvinistic conceptions' . This will be the constant line in the USSR and the economic development organized by successive five-year plans will allow Jews like other peoples of the USSR to experience a better life. In the USSR, Jews constitute a national minority and therefore a Jewish nationality is recognized. At the same time, Soviet power led a constant ideological struggle against Great Russian nationalism inherited from the Tsarist empire.
On February 20, 1924, the Bureau of the Red International (ISR) launched an appeal to the “Arab Workers of Palestine” : “…Your country has become, in fact, the colony of British imperialism. The domination of your indigenous exploiters has been aggravated by the heavy yoke of foreign capital. The Sheikhs and the Effendis, the English imperialists and the Zionist capitalists entered into a close alliance for the exploitation of the Arab workers…. Stand up to defend your interests! Put an end to the endless exploitation imposed on your country!... Arab proletarians! The workers group aspires to a fighting alliance between you and the Jewish revolutionary workers so that the fight against the capitalists and the rich settlers is carried out on a united front...Arab workers! You must oppose the close alliance of Anglo-Zionist capital with the Sheikhs and Effendis, the Fraternal Union of Revolutionary Workers of Palestine [13] .
The position of principle being affirmed, the Soviet power noted that a part of the Jewish population wished to live in a framework allowing the preservation of ancient traditions. Also, taking into account that change and replacement of old ideas with new ideas takes time, this is a long process that can be placed and guided within the framework of a contradiction within of the people from the moment when central power was in communist hands, the Soviet leadership decided at the end of the 1920s to facilitate the installation of Jews who wished to do so in an autonomous Republic; it will be the Republic of Birobidzhan located in a sparsely populated region in the eastern part of Siberia. Thus, “Jewish proletarians have their homeland, the USSR, and a national state which belongs to them” (statement by Soviet President Mikhail Kalinin). This experiment had to be done... For various reasons, this Republic of Birobidjan did not meet with great success, bringing together at most a few tens of thousands of Jews. But this experience must be compared with the different policies carried out against the Jews in European countries, ranging from repression to extermination.
The victory of Nazism in Germany in the early 1930s, the frantic campaign against the Jews in this country and its extension to other European countries led the Soviet party, like the European communist parties, to launch, while maintaining the denunciation of Zionism, campaigns in support of persecuted Jews and movements for the organization of a mass movement against anti-Semitism coupled with the fight against fascism and the fascist leagues.
Laurent Rucker, having been able to consult the archives opened after the implosion of the USSR, reports in an academic work [14] , that on the eve of the German aggression against the USSR, the Soviet ambassador in London, Ivan Maïski , contacted the representative of the Zionist Agency. He presents this contact and this declaration by Maiski as “an about-face”: “In the 1920s, we could only consider Zionism as an agency of imperialism. Now, however, the whole situation has changed... If Soviet Russia wants to take an interest in the future of the Middle East, it is obvious that the advanced and progressive Jews of Palestine represent more promise for us than the backward, clique-controlled Arabs feudal”.
There is nothing flip-flopping here unless one is thinking metaphysically or seeking to insinuate malicious calculations on the part of the Bolsheviks. The situation in 1941 was very critical for the USSR and for the future of the revolution. The broadest front must be sought and built against Nazism and its allies. The USSR is doing everything to force the bourgeois forces, which refused union against Nazi Germany in 1939, to unite and lead the struggle. This objective will be achieved by the constitution of what will be called the “allied camp” , mainly made up of the USA, Great Britain and the USSR.
In the same spirit, at the end of 1942, the USSR favored the creation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (CAJ) which mobilized Jews around the world in favor of the USSR, and exerted pressure on the US government in favor of the opening of a second front in Europe. The CAJ prepared a Black Book on the extermination of Jews in the occupied USSR. Between Hitler's invasion of June 22, 1941 and the departure of the last German soldier in 1944, nearly two million Jews were exterminated.
Conclusion :
During this period 1920-1945, the Zionist movement asserted itself, organized itself with a view to imposing itself in Palestine and developed its presence through the immigration of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe sponsored by the Agency. Zionist. The extermination of six million Jews by Hitler's Germany created a movement which would manifest itself at the end of the war in favor of the creation of a state for the Jews in Palestine, a movement which would seek to erase the responsibility of European governments . This process is to the detriment of the Palestinian population who were dispossessed of their land with the complicity of the British mandatory power and the Arab feudal lords who owned the land sold without their occupants; they are deprived of the work on these lands allowing them to live. Throughout this period, the Palestinian people did not have a political leadership to guide them in the struggle. On the contrary, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, a reactionary politician who made a pact with Hitler's Germany, managed his position and his role in a strategy of collaboration/opposition with the British mandatory power.
Note that at this period, Jews living in Arab countries or protectorates did not participate in this movement of immigration of European Jews to Palestine and continued to live without problem in their country.
Zionism, colonialism of replacement, of expulsion of the populations [15] present in order to achieve a unity of population by Jews, continued its march forward during the period 1920-1945, a march which led to the war of 1948.
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To consult the main documents relating to this period, it is useful to consult a comprehensive 308-page UN report published in 1990:
“ Origin and Evolution of the Palestinian Problem 1977-1988; Study prepared for and under the direction of the Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People” :https://www.un.org/unispal/wp-content/uploads/2000/12/89-20684f.pdf
As well as the two books by Ilan Pappe: “A land for two peoples – History of modern Palestine, Fayard 2004”, “The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Fayard, 2006”.
[1] Gilbert Meynier, review of studies and social criticism, “Israeli colonialism or the origins of the Palestinian question”, 2005/1
[2] Lenin, works, Edition Moscow 1966, volume 6, page 337, February 1903
[3] V. Lenin, works, volume 6, January 1902-August 1903, Social Editions, Paris; Progress Editions, Moscow, 1966
[4] V. Lenin, works, volume 7, September 1903-December 1904, Social Editions, Paris; Progress Editions, Moscow, 1966
[5] V. Lenin, works, volume 8, January-July 1905, Social Editions, Paris; Progress Editions, Moscow, 1973
[7] Theodor Herzl , Der Judenstaat, Wentworth Press, 2018
[9] https://orientxxi.info/magazine/conference-de-san-remo-une-base-legale-a-la-creation-d-un-etat-juif-en , 3875
[10] Gilbert Meynier, in a 2005 article, “on the colonial origins of the Palestinian question” (https://investigaction.net/aux-origines-coloniales-de-la-question-palestinene/ .
[11] Yosef Berger-Barzilay, member of the Party secretariat, in a text from 1926. Musa Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948 , London, Ithaka Press, 1979, p. 89
[13] The Red Trade Union International , 37‑38, February 1924. A. Bouziam; Wolf Auerbach, “Contemporary Palestine and its workers' movement” , L'Internationale syndicale rouge , 37-38, February 1924. Documents reproduced in : Bulletin international , 55-58, July-October 1982, Paris, Librairie international.)
[14] Stalin, Israel and the Jews”, PUF 2001
[15] All documents relating to the different stages of this replacement colonization are available and searchable. But as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe forced to live in Britain says: " The dehistoricization of what is happening in Palestine helps Israel continue its genocidal policies in Gaza:https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilan_Papp%C3%A9
