LETTERS To the Editor
LETTERS To the Editor Marie Syrian and Bertram D. Wolfe Debate Political Issues of Zionism FromMARIE SYRKIN Associate Editor, Jewish Frontier To the Editor: In • letter printed in your iitue...
...Italy preceded Germany because economic chaos reached her sooner even in victory...
...But neither the fight for admission here, nor for reconquest of equal rights in Europe, nor alternative refuges, .will satisfy Miss Zyrkin, since she snd political Zionists generally are convinced that the Jews must have a land in which they RULE...
...Moreover, an exposed little Jewish salient (1/23, according to Miss Syrkin) in a surrounding Arab world would be a place of new dangers...
...I enjoyed particularly Alfred Kazin's incisive remarks on Bernard de Voto'a and Milton Hindus's thoughtful review of the Heart of Europe...
...Following the last war, both defeated Germany and victorious Italy went fascist after periods of economic chaos...
...It can live and let live...
...reactionaries...
...there in a scrambling for paval bases and a jockeying for airfields...
...He further announces that there is something "defestist" in transporting Jews to Palestine when the majority of them can only be accommodated by the rewinning of equal citizenship in their native lands...
...Such a police force that would begin its career by dispossessing a majority of its home or its democratic rights would be a sorry beginning indeed of a world in which minorities would be safe...
...Wolfe, who have so Una a regard for the sensibilities of all peoples, should not develop a curious obtuseness where the need of the Jews is concerned...
...No, It is one of the most difficult of tasks but the most necessary and for democrats the only solution of the minority problem that is acceptable...
...Hindus raised an important problem concerning the evaluation of such writers as Celine and Hamsum who are fine novelists but politics...
...Wolfe deplores the fact that though the fate of the Jew as of all minority peoples is linked to democracy and self-determination, "their main political activity ia based upon the denial of the right of self-determination to the Arab majority in Palestine...
...Wolfe makes a number of statements which sre of concern to every Zionist...
...History has shown that for the Jews "majority status" in at least one land is no metaphysical luxury...
...These are fundamental objectives in the Zionist program with which, as a reader of the daily press, Mr...
...That would be a cruel jest on history...
...I thought Mr...
...How will the Jews dispossess the Arabs of their rights T By denying them a vote in proportion to their numbers T By compelling them to accept Jewish immigrants until they have become a minority in their own land...
...He concludes with the suggestion that the "political figures" who are exercised about giving the»Jew "a national home with political dominance in Palestine" should devote themselves to seeking to gain the admission of refugees into the United States and other lands...
...It is difficult to understand how any one even superficially acquainted with .the activities of the groups seeking to rescue the Jews of Europe could have permitted himself Mr...
...The fascist trend on their pert must be obvious even to the blind...
...The current war boom is temporarily hiding from the run of Americans the fact that our pre-war economic system is doomed and no longer able to carry its load in peacetime...
...They believe that there should be one spot on earth where Jews are relieved of the disability of being a ubiquitous minority, one place where they are as of right and not as of sufferance, on* place where they don't have to secure permission to be saved from slaughter...
...Wone understands what is ilue a "majority...
...There are alternative refuges to Palestine—Steinberg's plsn for Australia is an example...
...However, if any Arab in Palestine whose civil, economic and political rights are assured, requires the added satisfaction of "majority status," it is a feeling he can gratify readily in any of the neighboring Arab lands which cry out for settlers...
...Undoubtedly organised economic powers know what is coming and are preparing for it...
...Unfortunately, we all know with what success rescue efforts have been crowned...
...But there is a new terror...
...If this country is so enveloped, only s national miracle can prevent fascism here...
...Not only Arab lands have "majorities," and it ia not the simplest of tasks to persuade the prejudiced, the indifferent, or the ignorant, of the moral obligation to admit the persecuted...
...Palestine is that place...
...Proiiei Now Loader Llferary Issne To the Editor: From JOYCE SAREN The recent New Leader special literary was a corker...
...Economic chaos is rapidly bearing down upon us...
...Washington...
...Moreover, it will not put the Jews on the side of injustice to any people, nor on the wrong side of the necessary, world-wide and indivisible struggle for democracy...
...Tennessee Williams's poem was an authentic bit of folklore...
...What Jewish toil snd self-sacrifice accomplished in that barren waste hardly needs re-telling...
...Zionists have long ago discovered the disadvantages of being a minority always, and everywhere...
...The charge 'that Arab* have been uprooted or injured is no longer made...
...Any of nor allies...
...Is poet-war America liable to be enveloped in economic chaos...
...This possibility should be admitted...
...To date, I for one can see no indications of such a miracle...
...Jnpan or Germany...
...Russia, defeated in World War I, went totalitarian (certainly a near relative of fascism) likewise after s period, shorter but more severe, of economic chaoa...
...From BEKTKAM 0. MTOLK T» the Editor: I really have nothing to say in reply to Marie Syrkin'a letter that I did not aay in my previous communication...
...There is the crux of ycur problem...
...If Leo M. Cherne ia anywhere near correct in his prediction of a major postwar depression with our unemployed liable to reach 19 million, we are in for it...
...We hope to crash them ia this war...
...It is a matter of life and death in the most literal aense...
...As to the New Deal, it sprang from a mixture of liberal and fascist principles...
...Wolfe's jibe...
...Wolfe, who can reconcile himself so resdily to the notion of the Jews as a perpetual minority in every part of the globe, always dependent on the good grace of some "majority" is disturbed at the notion that peaceful Jewish colonization and immigration may result in some Arabe becoming a minority in one small notch of all the huge, sparsely settled Arab lands...
...Wolfe should be familiar...
...Since the Balfour Declaration, the Arabs of Palestine have multiplied and prospered far beyond the Arabs of the adjacent Arab states...
...Who is nor fatare enemy to be...
...America can be saved from fascism, but only if the people can be awakened in sufficient time for them to call loudly and insistently for an equitable and efficient readjustment and rearrangement of our economic structure in s manner to fully utilize our vast technology for the production and distribution of abundance for all our people...
...However, it we slide into a depression, without a heroic attempt by the people organized and following powerful liberal leadership, then the present fascist trend will gain in strength and momentum until one day, fait accompli, and democracy in America will be no more in our time...
...She is unjust to suggest that there are "jibes," "obtuseness" or "indifference" where there is honest difference and no less concern...
...The same World War which gaVe the Jews the Balfour Declaration liberated the Arabs from Turkish oppression and set up a series of independent Arab States...
...Even after the victory of the democ. racies, dare we say to the agonized remnant of European Jewry that they must stay in the lands of their torture, that they can not have the psychic relief, of escape to a new environment where they can create a new life for themselves and for their people—if they so desire it...
...The liberals, like Mr...
...And the Jew will always remain a minority in the other lands he inhabits...
...Miss Syrkin's dream would thus prepare the Palestine Jews not for a better but a worse fate than that of minorities in other lands...
...By an international police force...
...The nation-wide promotion of race hatreds and public name-calling now actively under way is, I believe, the beginning of the "red herring" calculated to get the people absorbed in fighting among themselves and so divert their attention to make easier the seizure of complete power at a psychologically ripe time...
...That is why the internal conflicts between "New Dealers" were both bitter and continuous...
...Thst of the Jews is the oldest and most desperate...
...It seems to me that all of your commentators so far have failed tu point out one very pertinent fact...
...So the Garvey movement, while it flourished, tended to divert the indigation snd passion of many deeply stirred Negroes from a struggle for equal rights here in America...
...however, in the course of his communicstion Mr...
...Nor would a political domination of Jews over the Arab majority in Palestine help Jews here or in Europe, while the principle of violating the rights of the majority and the basic principles of democracy would hurt Jewa (and non-Jews) everywhere...
...When the liborals were completely routed, the reactionaries celebrated their victory by announcing the death of the—to them—tainted agency...
...It la symptomatic of the times that with the present war not yet won, we are talking of huge post-war iibm...
...Even those who had no remote thought of ever going "back to Africa,",of ten permitted their feelings to And vent in that escape dream rather than accumulating behind the necessary, long and arduous struggle in America So, too, many * non-Jewish Americans find support of Zionism an easy out for their conscience and their acceptance of our barriers to refugees...
...Will these alternative schemes to make the Jews rulers of Palestine be enforced by a Jewish army ? By the support of British armies...
...Several of them have skirted such fact without clarifying or emphaaizing it Fascism can arise alike in either a nation that has been victorious or that has suffered defeat, but it arises only from economic chaos...
...The United Nations will hsve to effect the solution of many "minority" problems after the peace...
...Nevertheless, Mr...
...Wolfe Is bringing coals to New Castle when he urges the necessity of Jews regaining the rights to which they have been despoiled, or when he proposes havens in the United States or other lands...
...The real struggle in the case of Negroes and of Jews is an infinitely harder one than the Liberia-Palestine dream suggests, but it is a struggle which must be fought snd won, and a struggle which will make for an infinitely better world for Jews, Negroes, for $11 minorities, even all majorities, everywhere...
...Of the vast underpopulated territories available to the Arabs, only 1/23 —Palestine—was reserved for the Jewish people...
...D. C...
...Some may become a minority if the hundreds of tbousanda fleeing from murder find refuge in the Jewish homeland...
...Prolso* Article* on «c FetnTO Militarism From ANTHONY H1LTER To ms Editor: Two recent aacceosive issues ef The New Leader with articles by Daniel Bell and William Henry ChamberKn no the latere American militarism deserve cheers...
...By uprooting them and forcing them to go to soma other Arab land...
...LETTERS To the Editor Marie Syrian and Bertram D. Wolfe Debate Political Issues of Zionism FromMARIE SYRKIN Associate Editor, Jewish Frontier To the Editor: In • letter printed in your iitue of April 22nd, Mr...
...Bertram D. Wolfe protests the unauthorized use of his name by the Emergency Committee to Save the Jews...
...I have no desire to enter this aspect of the controversy...
...It can close doors and open doors...
...Wolfe does not exclude Palestine as a possible haven, but he believes that the "permission and refuge in Palestine must be won from the Arabs, who are the majority of its inhabitant...
...Mr...
...A Palestinian Arab is as naturally indigenous to Syria or to Transjdrdanta as he is to the small area which we call Palestine, but which Arabs, before the Balfour Declaration, always referred to as South Syria...
...Personally, I do not see that the existence of Liberia, a land where Negroes rule, helps in the slightest the Jim-Crowed Negroes of the southern United States...
...Up to date, little Palestine has absorbed more refugees than any other country, not because of the political machinations of Zionists, but because even with the diminishing quotas allowed by Great Britain, it waa the only country with the moral status of a haven...
...Warns of Post War Economic Collapse from JOHN HOSHOR Tmthe Editor: I have read with a great deal of interest your symposium on the subject "Is America Going Fascist...
...She is wrong in her assertion that political Zionism does net divert attention and feeling from the light for admission bore and restoration of rights in Europe...
...That is why they are Zionists...
...Organised Zionist bodies have been the prime movers of the attempt to secure the admission of refugees into the United States and other countries...
...And in the present moment, are we to say to the Jews in the Balkans whose sole possibility of escape is Palestine, that they must resign themselves to being slaughtered, unless they can get the "permission" of the Arab "majority" to live...
...Nor do I believe that the Arabs, dispossessed of their rights in Palestine, would And solace in knowing that there are other lands in which Arabs rule...
...She thinks it is "not the simplest of tasks to persuade the prejudiced, the indifferent, or the ignorant, of the moral obligation to admit the persecuted...
...I have the deepest sympathy with Miss Syrkin's bruised feeling—what sensitive man does not?—but I cannot accept the channels in which she gives them expression...
Vol. 27 • May 1944 • No. 22
