The Time Has Come

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We cannot stand silently by as we watch young gin in South Africa. The Afrikaaner population and men and old, women and children murdered daily in those of Briish descent have lived in South Africa cold blood — shot at point blank range, savagely fot many generations. ~ Yet, very tew people, let beaten unto death with heavy staves, their heads, alone those purporting to be advocates of sellWe cannot permit a ruthless state to poison peo- two states — a European white state with guaranupon for ourselves. Were we subjected to a brutal state is a mockery of sell-determination - whether occupation, daily humillation, military rule, mass im- in South Africa, colonial Rhodesia and Algeria - or The rebellion of the Palestinian people has been a justice requires dismantling the apartheid state and long time coming. Twenty years of occupation are replacing it with a democratic secular Palestine, but one dimension of their tragedy. They were driv- where Jews and Arabs, Christians and Moslems, live en from their original homes, villages and land by together with equal rights and opportunities camps, subjected in a far-flung Diaspora to renewed treasury. Since 1948, $92 billion of U.S. tax money slaughter, saturation bombing and unending perse- - $6 billion in 1987 alone - have linanced Israel, a cution. state built on expulsion, dispossession and subjuThe tyranny suffered in the West Bank and Gaza gation. The American people have no interest in is but the little continuation of how all of Palestine subsidizing the world's fourth largest military power was colonized. Between the time of the partition of or the torment of the Palestinian people. End all ald When the state of Israel was declared, there were aliya, the Beach Camp, Balata and Dheisheh. It is 475 Palestinian cities, towns and villages. Of these, echoed in those Israeli Jews who resist the oppresIf, in any country, people had to prove they did not nation and injustice, will forge lasting peace only in a have generations of maternal Jewish descent in or- democratic and secular society where elementary der to enjoy elementary rights, no one would mistake righte are accorded to all. Prof. Shawkat J. Dallal, and me. But our letter to the Times was not published. The editorial page director told us that if we reduced the letter in half there was a good likelihood that it would be published. We did that, but they still haven't published it.

Instead, the Times published a further attack by the director of the Jewish National Fund, who challenged us on two fundamental issues. First, the JNF stated they only control 17 percent of the land of Israel-and not 93 percent of the land, as is stated in our ad. The second issue of challenge was that the right to land does not depend on generations of maternal Jewish descent.

We again responded to these charges in a letter to The New York Times, but again they refused to allow us to respond. We are outraged that they have not given us the right to reply—which is a normal practice of journalism.

S.A.: How did you respond to the Jewish National Fund?

Schoenman: We quoted from the text of the U.S. State Department's report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs for 1985, '86, and '87, in which it is stated that "93 percent of the land in Israel is held by the state and by quasi-public organizations in reserve for the Jewish people alone."

In addition, we quoted from the regulations of the Israeli Land Administration, which is an agency of the Jewish National Fund. These regulations stipulate that the lands that are under their control are reserved for the Jewish people.

The Jewish National Fund is attempting to hide behind the fact that the Israeli Land Administration has jurisdiction over the land—not the Fund per se. But the Land Administration is officially acknowledged as an agency of the Fund.

We also pointed out that the Israeli Supreme Court has stated that Israel is the sovereign state of the Jews. The legal definition of who is a Jew is dependent on the determination by the orthodox rabbinate. This body has stipulated that either an orthodox-supervised conversion or four generations of maternal Jewish descent are the prerequisite to enjoy legal rights.

S.A.: Have there been any other responses to the ad in the major media?

Schoenman: A Harvard law professor named Alan Dershovitz, who is best known for his defense of Klaus von Bulow, wrote an absolutely scurrilous column in The Washington Times and 400 other newspapers titled, "Destroying Israel: Immoral, Against U.S. Interests."

In this column Dershovitz asserts that the signers of the text of our ad are all terrorists or supporters of 12 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1988 hands and limbs smashed.

ple with toxic gas and bury young men alive, We shall never accept an entire people denied the African state. elementary democratic and human rights we insist prisonment and institutionalized torture, we too aparthaid Israel. would rise up in revolt.

sustained massacre, condemned to miserable Palestine in 1947 and the formation of Israel, Zionist now! militia seized 75% of the land and drove out 800,000 Palestinians through a series of massacres.

385 were razed to the ground disappearing from sion of others. the map. The 90 remaining were denuded of land, confiscated without compensation.

Today, the Jewish National Fund administers 93% of the land of israel. To live on land, lease it, sharecrop of work on it, one must establish four genera- minion. tions of maternal Jewish descent.

the quintessentially racist character of such a state.

Israel is an apartheid state, founded on pillage and predicated on exclusivity. Rights fiow from ethnic and religious identity.

How is this to end?

There are over five million setilers of European oridetermination for Blacks in South Africa, propose teed securily abutting a demilitarized, subordinate A dependent Bantustan alongside an apartheid In Israel, no less than in South Africa, minimum Apartheid Israel cannot exist without the U.S The response to lour decades of outrageous tyranny exists - in the stone throwing children of JabTheirs is the struggie, slingshots in hand, of David against Goliath.

Theirs is the passion for a life without oppression.

Theirs is the vision of a country shorn of racist doPalestinians and Jews, free at last from discrimiExtend your hand to the heroic people of Palestine.

Support the campaign to end all ald to apartheid Israel.

Join the worldwide call for a democratic and secular Palestine.

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(continued from previous page) abused me but I responded with the history of the Zionist movement and with the facts. He couldn't cope with the data or with the fact that somebody was ready to confront his slanders.

After the half-hour discussion, Pollis and the following talk-show host were besieged with telephone calls. For two hours, people from all over Ohio were telephoning in. Virtually every phone call was in support of what I was saying.

Pollis followed this discussion with broadcasts in which he said on the air that seven of the signers of the text of our ad, including myself, hi ad been convicted of painting swastikas on synagog ues. This amusing It important speak the is important to truth about the colonial nature of Zionism and the example of the hysteria of the Zionist defenders, of course, enters the realm of actionable libel.

Another rather extraordinary and sad example of slander and unprincipled behavior is that of David Finkel, the editor of Against the Current and a member of the Political Committee of the radical organization called Solidarity.

David Finkel took it upon himself to write a private five-page diatribe to about 50 signers of our ad, behind the backs of the campaign organizers, in which he accuses us of willfully deceiving the signers of the ad.

In a cover letter to one of our signers, he further states that our campaign and text "was worth tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to Zionist organizations." He goes on to say that "Ralph [Schoenman] knew this would be the result; he doesn't care."

This resort to slander is right out of the Stalinist tradition.

S.A.: What do you suppose motivated this attack?

Schoenman: Finkel's politics. They are unambiguously for support to a Zionist state. He wrote, for example, "Some solidarity activists like myself prefer to see the P.L.O. explicitly and unambiguously recognize the existence of an Israeli-Jewish nation and assert the Palestinians desire to coexist with it on the basis of mutual recognition."

Finkel is referring explicitly to the state of Israel. Of course, the equation of a settler state with a people is at the heart of the Zionists' attempt to preclude characterization of the Israeli state as racist and unjust. The state is not co-extensive with the people, nor does it become a wit less oppressive if it commands less territory or fewer inhabitants.

Socialists have never been commanded to become lawyers for oppressive states. Socialists have always called for the replacement of such states. There is no reason why there should be an indecent exceptionalism when it comes to Israel.

But what is more significant and disturbing than the political issues involved is the fact that Finkel has resorted to such willful lies and slander in order to defend his views. In his letter, for instance, he states that the signers were duped and did not know or understand what they were signing.

Finkel states outright that the 50 Palestinian scholars; 60 Jewish academics and writers; numerous members of parliaments and senates; and distinguished figures such as Linus Pauling, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, Jessica Mitford, Kay Boyle, Alice Walker, Rabbi Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, Jim Guyette, Muhammad Hallaj, Fouzi El-Asmar, and Paolo Freire have been deliberately deceived.

This is an example of contempt for people whose opinions differ from his own-as if people of this distinction can be used for texts they don't understand.

S.A.: A front-page opinion-piece article in the April 13 issue of The Guardian newspaper attacks the ad as an "ultraleft mistake" which "veers far from the concrete political tasks at this stage in the struggle in favor of idealistic and voluntarist impulses."

Specifically, the author of the article lambasts the ad for failing to call for an independent state on the West Bank and Gaza and for failing to call for a United Nations international peace conference. What would your response be to this writer?

Schoenman: Let's apply this same logic to South Africa. Is it "ultraleft" or "idealistic" to say that the apartheid state is incompatible with the self-determination of the South African people? The Bantustans that are existing adjacent to South Africa are the best example of what is in store for the Palestinian people if a rumpor mini-state were ever to come into existence.

No part of the spectrum of the Zionist movement is in favor of any form of self-determination for the Palestinian people that has meaning of any kind. At best they Palestinian woman after her talk about a demilitarized, economically dependent territory in which the Israeli settlements will not be dismantled and Israeli inspection posts will continue to be in place.

No Zionist is prepared to allow or sanction an independent Palestinian state which has the right to pursue its own economic, political, and foreign policies. Moreover, the absolute pre-condition for being granted even some form of limited autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza is the recognition of the legitimacy of Israel and the guaranteeing of its secure borders.

For Palestinians to be put in a position of legitimizing the Israeli colonial-settler state, which is built upon the dispossession of their lands and rights, is to invalidate their entire national movement. It would also permit the Zionists to say, retroactively, that the conflict in the region over the past 20 years was due to the intransigence of the Palestinians in not acknowledging the legitimacy of an Israeli state.

At one time the entire Palestinian resistance movement considered it a betrayal of their struggle to acknowledge the legitimacy of the colonial-settler state. It is a measure of the retreat of the political orientation of the P.L.O. that this policy, once scorned, is now viewed as the politics of practicality.

S.A.: You just returned from a tour in the Midwest sponsored by Socialist Action. What was the response to your tour?

Schoenman: It was a big success. In Saint Paul, Minn., I debated the chairman of the history department of Macalester College before 120 students. The meeting was attended by many Palestinian and Arab students.

It was instructive to me to find that when the issues are aired at all, virtually every Palestinian Arab student responds immediately to the call for a democratic and secular Palestine-even people who have been active in organizations like the General Union of Palestinian Students, which has been advocating a two-state soldiers.

solution. They have no expectations that the Zionist state will permit them any rights.

I also found this to be the case in Cincinnati and Detroit, where 1 was able to have deeper political discussions with Palestinian Arab students.

The large turnout in these three cities was indicative of the fact that there is a growing consciousness of the oppressive nature of the Israeli state.

In my opinion, never has it been as important as it is today to speak the truth about the colonial nature of Zionism and the genocidal ways in which Palestine was colonized.

This is the moment when we have the chance to reach out to the American people and to say that they have no interest in subsidizing this oppressive state. This is the moment when we should be discussing the plight of the Palestinian people and a decent future for the Jews of Israel in revolutionary terms, and not in the unprincipled language of the acceptance of the Israeli state.

One of the encouraging things that took place at the meetings during the Midwest tour is the support for our call for an end to all aid to Israel and the emotion with which people responded to the simple vision of a democratic and secular society in which rights are not based on discrimination or race.

S.A.: What can our readers do to help?

Schoenman: I would urge people to distribute copies of the text of the ad to as many people as they know and to send money to place the ad in more newspapers.

I would also encourage Socialist Action readers to read my pamphlet, "The Hidden History of Zionism," because I think it is important that those who support this effort be well-equipped with a documented record of the real history of Zionism and the practices of the Israeli state.

This is necessary to build a broad-based educational campaign to reach the American public with the message that all aid to Israel should be stopped and that a democratic and secular Palestine is the only way forward.

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For over 100 years, on May 1, workers around the world have marched through the streets to celebrate labor's past victories, commemorate proletarian The time will soon come when American workers, who proclaimed the first May Day in 1886, will once more take to the streets on Labor's Day of Solidarity.

Subscribe to Socialist Action and don't miss an issue Send to: 3435 Army St., Rm. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

14 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1988 Cecil Frank Glass-an internationally known Marxist, Trotskyist, scholar, teacher, orator, activist, and highly skilled journalist-died March 21, 1988, in Los Angeles from pneumonia and other medical complications. He would have been 87 years old on March 25.

One of the key founding members of the Fourth International, Glass is better known under his pen names of Frank Graves, Li Fu-jen, and John Liang.

Glass was born on March 25, 1901, in Birmingham, England. When he was 10 years old, his family moved to Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1919, he joined the "Industrial Socialist League" of South Africa. In 1921, at the age of 20, he was the youngest member of the founding congress of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), Third International, in Cape Town.

Early in his CPSA membership, Glass chanced upon a pamphlet which led to his first knowlege of Trotskyist Left Opposition writings on the policies of the Third International. These ideas, his initiation into debates on political discusssions within the Soviet Union, was a revelation to Glass-and never forgotten. He soon won the confidence and political support of other CPSA members.

When Glass and his supporters raised questions in party meetings on Third International policies, they were warned not to question party doctrines. When they persisted, they not only received no answers to their questions but were expelled from the CPSA.

Chinese Revolution Glass held a steadfast Trotskyist position ever since, culminating in his playing a key role in the formation of and as a member of the Provisional Central Committee of the Communist League of China (Trotskyists) in the mid-1930s, as well as his becoming a founding participant in the Fourth International.

He came to China in 1930, the first of several residences there. During a lengthy 1 months for $6. 6 months for $3.

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trip up the Yangtze River, he held protracted talks with the late American journalist Harold R. Isaacs. They witnessed at first hand the continuing Kuomintang reign of terror against suspected "communists" in Wuhan, where brutal executions were held almost daily in the public square.

Glass was the inspiration, though this is not widely known, for the writing of Isaac's classic book "The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution," originally published in England in 1938, which is a documented analysis of the fatal policies imposed upon martyrs, and prepare for struggles to come. [] Send me more information about Socialist Action. [ ] I'd like to join Socialist Action Chinese communists by Stalinists in Moscow and their representatives in China. These policies led to the defeat of the 19251927 uprising in China.

Glass read the original manuscript of "The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution," and many of his suggestions, especially in the first chapter, were incorporated by Isaacs. The introduction was by Leon Trotsky, who highly recommended the book.

Years later, a second edition was published in the United States, but by this time Isaacs had left the Trotskyist Photo: Courtesy of Ada Farrel movement. This edition omitted Trotsky's introduction and contained some major text Changes.

On his return to Shanghai from his Yangtze trip with Isaacs, Glass worked briefly for the Soviet TASS news agency, but quit "because of the meaningless content of TASS news." He then served as a correspondent for the Anglo-Asiatic Telegraph Agency and traveled widely in China.

Subsequently, he was employed by the English-language dailies The Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury, The China Press, and The Shanghai Times, respectively American, Chinese, and British-owned.

Well-known in Shanghai as a brilliant, skilled, and acerb writer, he was also editor of The China Weekly Review, an influential journal published in Shanghai by the American J.B. Powell.

His work with Trotsky Glass made a brief visit to New York in 1937. Before returning to China, he spent about a month in Coyoacán, Mexico, to visit Trotsky in the "Blue House" on Avenida Londres, edited some of Trotsky's articles, and served briefly as a guard.

When Trotsky was writing the program that was adopted by the founding conference of the Fourth International in 1938, he asked Glass to write the section on China, which he did. Frank was looked upon by virtually everyone in the Trotskyist movement as an outstanding authority on China, and his help was frequently sought by those who needed his opinions and Far Eastern expertise.

Glass managed to flee from Shanghai a few days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) and the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. After a circuitous and dangerous route taken by freighter, he returned to New York City. He was then divorced from his first wife, Fanny Glass, and he established a home with Grace Simons.

Soon thereafter, he was appointed editor of The Militant, at that time the chief Trotskyist publication in the United States and circulated worldwide. He held this post for several years, sharing the work with Harold Isaacs and others. At about this time, he was elected a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party, a position he held for many years.

But Glass was not a U.S. citizen, and government authorities constantly harassed him with threats of deportation. As a result, he was prevented from public appearances and activity on behalf of the Socialist Workers Party.

Eventually, Frank and his wife moved to Los Angeles, where they lived until their deaths. For 20 years, Frank was the Associate Publisher of Laging Una, an English-language newspaper for Southern California Filipinos.

Glass made a major contribution to the building of a revolutionary socialist party in China and in the United States. Those who knew him and his work will be forever grateful to him.

In a discussion a few days before his death, Glass told a friend that "the fainthearted among us who proclaim Marxism is dead don't understand Marxism. Marx set no timetable. Unless the enemies of social progress destroy the world, Marxism, socialism, communism will triumph. It is inevitable."

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genocidal ways in which Palestine was colonized.

Cecil Frank Glass: 1901 - 1988 A key founding member of the Fourth International—a socialist till the end

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