Letters on Zionism Part 2: Socialism on Occupied Land
Socialism on occupied and stolen land, on land that still shrieks with the blood and sweat of the disenfranchised and the expelled… It is a perversion of socialism; it is a deformity of socialism!
The following is the second installment of translations of Yiddish anti-Zionist letters by Bundist author Jacob Pat. You can read the first installment and the translator’s introduction here.
Socialism on Occupied Land (July 21, 1933)
Dear Comrade!
In my last letter, I promised to write more on the “Jewish state.” I plan to do this now, but I must draw your attention to another matter related to my last letter on the Poalei Zion, the Labor Zionists.
You undoubtedly remember what I wrote about them, namely, that the Poalei Zionists are the best Zionists and the best builders of the “Jewish state.” Their socialism is makeshift, or as a comrade once called it, socialism is like their appendix. It merely lies around, without purpose, aimless.
Just this week, we learned of how the Poalei Zion demonstrated against the bourgeois Zionist Moshe Smilansky, the only one who had dared to oppose how the Zionists stole Wadi al-Hawarith [a Palestinian village purchased from absentee landlords by the Jewish National Fund in 1929] from the Arabs, driving out from the land even the Arabs whose forefathers’ sweat and blood were still in the soil. The Poalei Zionists, the “socialists,” stormed against Smilansky. They charged that—even if this was true—he had better be silent and not tarnish their “national,” i.e., Zionist, interests.
These “socialists” believe not only that it was necessary to steal Wadi Al-Hawarith, but that all Arabs must be driven out of Palestine. And these are the “socialists” that speak of working alongside the Arabs!
I am not shocked by this behavior from Davar [largest Labor Zionist organ in Palestine]; I knew that it had to be this way. Without areas like Wadi Al-Hawarith, there can be no Zionist colonization. And the good Zionists that they are, Poalei Zion argues that we must steal Wadi Al-Hawarith, we must expel the Arabs, not tolerating their return even for a moment, and to that end we must have exclusively Jewish workers.
I am certain that you will consider this matter fully and will learn from this example about the worth of Zionist “socialism.”
Dear Comrade! If you remove from socialism its great justice, if you remove its great sense of humanity, its brightness—you remove its soul.
Socialism on occupied and stolen land, on land that still shrieks with the blood and sweat of the disenfranchised and the expelled… It is a perversion of socialism; it is a deformity of socialism!
Since Davar published on Wadi Al-Hawarith just this week, I found it necessary to include it in my letter to you. I shall now discuss at length the idea of a “Jewish state.”
I once told you that the “Jewish state” is a fata morgana and an empty dream. They will not build anything like the indigenous villages of Palestine. The Jews of Palestine are destined to be a tribe among the Arabs, a Jewish minority among an Arab majority.
I don’t need many words to explain this to you. Today, barely 4-5% of Palestine is in the hands of Jews. Among a population of millions, Jews are barely two hundred thousand. According to the greatest Zionist hopes, a total of 6-8 thousand Jews are eligible to immigrate every year. The Jewish population will continue to rise and decline, and the Arab population will naturally grow only larger, an estimated 17-18 thousand a year. Even if 15,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine every year—a number nowhere near reality—and even if the Arabs remained at a constant number, it would take 90 years for the Jewish population to equal theirs!
Moshe Stavsky, writing in Haaretz on the 23rd of June:
“As we leave Petah Tikva and the colonies in Sharon, Magdiel, and Ramatayim, they still gaze at us from afar while we wander in this Arab desert. Our hearts are full of grief. How barren our piece of this land is! At first, this beautiful natural vista tugged on our hearts, its alleys of date palms, farm plots in the hills … who knows if Jewish hands once tended this land long ago? We are leaving the road for the field. The road is being repaired, and between the dust clouds I can see what’s happening there. There is not a single Jew among the workers and the foremen…”
This is the condition now in Palestine. “Our piece of land is so small,” they say, “we are surrounded by an Arab desert.” Of course, anything Arab is a “desert” for the Zionists. They are lamenting the condition of being a Jewish minority in an Arab majority.
One cannot build a state without a majority of the population. I’m sure you understand that already. And as long as a Jewish majority in Palestine is an unattainable dream, the state will remain nothing more than that.
Theodor Herzl, in his diary, wrote that on the day that Jews receive a mandate over Palestine, they will number more than a million. If this number can’t be reached, then Herzl’s Judenstaat cannot exist. The Jews will need to rival the numbers of the Arabs within the first year, he wrote, or else it will be too late. In Herzl’s diary, a million Jews immigrating in one year seemed plausible; indeed, anything can be plausible inside the pages of a diary! However, a state is not built out of diaries but out of land, and the land is used by the Arabs and controlled by the British. Zionism is almost 50 years old now. After 5 aliyahs, we are still confronted with the same difficult relationships between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations as we have in Poland. Palestine, which is as large as the Grodno governorate, has no less a chance of becoming a “Jewish state” than the Grodno governorate itself, which has a small Jewish majority.
Almost every year, England does some charity for the Jews and gives them some certificates to immigrate, along with fanfare and parades. Jews then come to Palestine, traveling on the paper bridge of immigration certificates. Soon, they believe, a Jewish state will be built! The Arabs cause an uproar, or a pogrom, and if needed, the English powers-that-be will ensure that this uproar is significant. At this point, England promises the Zionists, “Our heart is good, we are doing this out of sound wisdom, and really it is in your interest anyways… we must stop issuing immigration certificates to Jews.” Now, the Arabs are pleased that England is listening to their demands that Jews should not be allowed to build a state in Palestine. Months pass, sometimes years, and the Jews begin to cry out and demand to the English, “What is the matter? Where is your wisdom? Where is Balfour? Where is our Declaration? Where are our certificates?”
Eventually, England hears the Jewish cries, and softens towards the Jews, giving them a few certificates; MacDonald writes a letter to Weizmann, and the call of salvation once again goes out among the Jews of exile: “A state is being built…”
The Arabs realize what is going on, and cause another uproar, demanding and threatening: “We Arabs are 30 million; we are the waves of the Arab sea…” Lewis French then comes with his report and shows that there is no more available land in Palestine and that the Arabs need more money. The Jews renew their shouting, saying, “Are you serious, England? We, Jews of the world, all 17 million of us, a nation of the world, of the world press and the Bible…to be treated this way!”
And so continue the Zionist complaints, their Chad Gadyo, where this entire time, England is using the commotion to take oil from Mosul. England doesn’t need a “Jewish majority” or an “Arab kingdom.” It only needs this condition of war in Palestine between the Arabs and the Jews. England lets other hands rake the coals; England needs to have disenfranchised Arabs and wounded Jews for whom they can perform favors, save them, protect and keep them … such an art of colonialism is already hundreds of years old. The British Pharaoh's sorcerers have been pulling this trick for many generations. This is how they dominate nations and oceans.
You must have read about the matter of the French report, received by the Zionist press as demanding “Palestine for the Arabs.” How much did Zionist newspapers write and trumpet that the English were going to offer loans to build up Palestine? Now we learn that the loans are intended for Arab colonization, and a percent of them will be paid by the Jews. This is the position of England to the Zionist congress.
Moment, one of the largest Zionist papers in Warsaw, wrote on the French report with the conclusion: “Once again, this report follows the accepted formula that the Arab must be protected from the stronger Jewish population, from those Jewish capitalists and intellectuals who seek to push him out of his land.”
I would tell them to not be too despairing; the French attitude towards the Arabs will continue for some time among the English, but a little later will come another English Zionist policy to the benefit of the Jews, and vice versa. The wheel is spun, and the balance is equal, neither one way nor the other. The Zionist’s fate is one of limbo between the gates of Heaven and Hell—neither here nor there, neither this nor that. This is likewise the condition of their Jewish state.
There might not be any “Jewish state” in the “Land of Israel,” but there is a Jewish state underway. A dream exists among the diaspora of a “Jewish state” in Zion. And since dreaming counts for little, they have begun to make this dream more real and tangible. As believers grew weary of looking to God in his seventh heaven—looking and looking but never finding him—they demanded to hang icons of Him in their huts. With these they found a reflection of God, almost just like him. Since there is no “Jewish state,” Zionists hand their believers an icon of its likeness, a so-called “emerging” Jewish state.
I was just recently in a Jewish shtetl in our home of Poland. It was a regular Sunday. There happened to be a Zionist parade in that shtetl. The Revisionist youth marched over the city, chanting and ordering each other in Hebrew. They were former hooligans turned hut-infantry led by worn-out and retired soldiers. There were two older men in their thirties or forties at the front—former officers or lieutenants—and their army behind them. The drumbeat pounded tara-taratara-taratara. They were stomping, however, into the stones of the bridge like real soldiers—exactly like real soldiers. A good number of petit-bourgeois Jews were marching between the soldiers. One of them had quite the stomach on him but was nonetheless wearing his brownshirt uniform, ordering the soldiers in Hebrew.
Behind the older soldiers marched the younger ones. Approximately 60-70 boys and girls, all dressed in brown. They modeled themselves precisely off non-Jewish militaries, even using their vocabulary. I hear Hebrew words recited to the tune of Russian military songs. It rings throughout the street. Perhaps you’ve heard those Russian songs from the mouths of soldiers—but this time, they sing of Jews in the Land of Israel: “Wherever Betar goes, [we] will follow.”
Jews came out of their homes and watched “our military” with “our officers” from their porches and balconies, beaming with pride. Children ran and sang along. The sight of it all disgusted me but also made me chuckle.
Just thirty years ago, if I am not mistaken, Y. L. Peretz wrote a martyr song. I was reminded of it today, and it is shocking how much the “emerging” Jewish state finds itself in the same condition. Peretz wrote:
God, give us our land already,
Great like a yawn,
Not these officers,
Over by the border.
God, give us our land already,
Wipe away our tears,
Give us our own police,
Our own military…
God, give us our land,
How long must we wait?
Give us our own Czar,
Our own Siberia!
Read these old satirical lines well, dear comrade, and you will see how fresh they still are, how they characterize this “emerging” Jewish state in Palestine.
Compare this “Jewish state” to the new state on our horizon—the state of workers and freedom.
There will come a state of international workers. Socialist states, free and united, will come to the world, but they won’t come by themselves. War must be waged for them; battles must be fought. The first task is to expel these empty dreams, these fata morganas, these desolate spirits from ourselves.
Eyshe Beirich is a Yiddish scholar, translator, and teacher living in New York City. He is a PhD student in Yiddish and German literature, and his writing in Yiddish and English has appeared in Jewish Currents, In geveb: a Journal for Yiddish Studies, the Yiddish Forverts, Yiddish Branzhe, Afn Shvel, among others.
