Palestine’s Foes Try to Drag Red Herring
Over the Trail of Justice and Logic

In other words, if Jewish Palestine is delivered to their mercy, then will they give in return? No, then they will agree to accept American dollars through ERP! In time of war, anyway, they will side with the winning party, as they did during World War II, when they crossed the fence less than thirty days before the fall of Berlin.

The U. S. S. R. is accused of trying to use the situation in Palestine for its own ends. The truth is that Russia, being reluctant to make war with atom-armed America, by her attitude in the Palestinian question, tried to free America of the fear that she is plotting against American interests in the Middle East. Had Russia opposed partition, she might have won the friendship of the Arab states with their oil, and voices charging that she did so as a political maneuver would have been justified.

By going along with the United States on the program of partition, Russia showed that she did not intend to use the Palestinian problem to antagonize the United States.

Having voted for partition, Russia is accused of plotting in the Middle East against America; having voted against partition Russia would certainly have left herself open to the same accusation. How should she have voted in order not to provoke suspicion?

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Immediately before Mr. Austin, the American delegate to the Security Council, announced the reversal of the American stand on Palestine, the Lebanese delegate, Mr. Chamoun, in a speech, declared that the plan adopted by the United Nations would lead to penetration of Communism into the Middle East.

For a time a subversive propaganda campaign on the Goebbels motif of “Communists and Jews” was going on behind the scenes. In view of the acuteness of the present international situation, this u n d e r c o v e r propaganda against Jewish Palestine, which came into the open in Chamoun’s speech, requires an exposition.

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The Arabs and their supporters try to exploit the international situation by attempting to show that Palestinian Jewry is Communistic. The history of the Zionist movement utterly refutes this. The fact is that IN NO COUNTRY OF EUROPE IS THE COMMUNIST ELEMENT SO WEAK AS IT IS IN PALESTINE. Actually it is almost non-existent, for according to the World Almanac, 1948, there is only one Communist against 800 non-Communists as compared with France or Italy where the ratio is roughly one Communist against two non-Communists.

There is in Palestine a well-organized labor movement, but it vigorously opposed the Third (Communist) International, at least as strongly as did the Labor Party in England.

It is also a fact that for the 30 years since the Russian revolution, Zionism has been outlawed in Russia, and Zionists were and still are banished to Siberia. During the Arab disturbances of 1920, 1921, 1929, and 1936-38, the Soviets carried an anti-Zionist propaganda. This could not make the Palestinian Jews the Soviets’ friends.

But, again according to the World Almanac, Communism is rather widespread in Syria and Lebanon and in many pleasant homes there hang pictures of Stalin, sometimes next to those of Hitler and the Mufti. For every Communist in Palestine there are tens of Communists in Lebanon, and Syria, though with a tint of fascism. The ideology of dictatorship has an appeal for an Arab, not for a Jew.

The work of spreading the lie that thousands of Communists are infiltrating from the Balkan countries is carried on, not only by the Arabs, but by the British propaganda as well. Actually all these immigrants were selected by Zionist organizations in the lands of their departure.

Thus, this propaganda is as clumsy as the report put out by British official circles charging the Zionist organization with kidnapping Jewish children from t h e i r parents, to counteract world indignation at the sending of the refugees of the Ship Exodus 1947, who had already stepped on the soil of Palestine, to vacant camps in Germany.

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The Palestinian problem should rather be used to build peace. Just as from one crystal new crystals grow; so the proper solution of the Palestinian problem, based on an agreement between the major powers, would lead to the proper solution of other problems in dispute and world peace would follow.

But also with the war chances growing daily, Jewish Palestine as a stronghold of democracy and as the only productive country in the Middle East, should not be destroyed. Strategically, Palestine played a major role in the Middle East in World War II; the victory at El Alamein would not have been won had it not been for the Palestine “hinterland” with its production, its system of private enterprise in the spirit of free competition, and the enthusiasm of the Jewish people for real democracy.

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On March 27, three Senators, Chavez of New Mexico (D), Magnuson of Washington (D), and Chapper of Kansas (R), wrote to Secretary Marshall: “Irrespective of our views in the matter, the fact remains that the Jewish nation exists in Palestine. This nation has some 200,000 able bodied men and women who are mobilized to defend their country. Unless we endeavor to establish friendly relations and have an alliance with them, we will force them to seek protection from Communist Russia against the forces poised to attack them.”

They stressed also that Jews, as allies, are a better choice than the Arabs.

It would be disastrous for mankind if America’s ill-conceived policy in the Middle East should sacrifice justice to power politics, especially power politics based on the false premise that the Arab states are an effective military ally.

As far as the oil of the Middle East is concerned, it is already trivial to repeat that this oil and installations for its exportation will be of no service to the United States in case of war, but may be of service to her potential enemy.