’ LONDON — The much-touted demonstrations in Po-
land on August 31 were a disappointment to Western
‘Media and governments. Only half-hearted attempts
have been made to refute the assertion by the Polish
OVernment’s press spokesman, Jerzy Urban, that ‘‘Au-
st 31 was the funeral march of the extremists.”
_As the lurid propaganda dust has settled, a number of
gnificant facts have become visible on the Polish scene.
Aost important of these is that virtually no workers left
heir factories or other work-places to join the demonst-
ations. Not a single strike could be claimed by the
panizers of the ‘‘protest.’’ Although Solidarity is sup-
sed to be a trade union and workers were called upon
turn out, at least to celebrate the second anniversary
fSolidarity’s founding, Polish workers in their millions
Ored the call.

isolated Extremists

- Numerous reports have begun to seep into the West-
€m press, even prior to August 31, to indicate that there
Was validity in Polish government statements that appe-
als for demonstrations were the work of increasingly
isolated extremists. One of these reports, published in
the British Financial Times, described a situation of
dedicated worker cooperation with government pro-
duction appeals. In the Slask mine, it found individual
Miner productivity up to 2.7 tonnes (metric tons) for an
ight hour shift, compared with 2.4 tonnes a year ago.
The National daily:production average for coal had risen
In that period from 595,000 tonnes to 630,000 tonnes.
Said the Financial Times:

‘At the Slask mine, however, both management and
Coalface workers put more emphasis on political consid-
erations. ‘We’re working harder because the country
Needs our effort and our economy rests on coal,’ say the
Tank and file miners, who like to point out that they have

always had a strong sense of solidarity, with a small ‘s.’”’

Another report was published in the London Sunday
| Times on August 29, from Gdansk: Here, the personal
|| Confessor of Lech Walesa, Father Henry Jankowski of
St. Brigid’s church, was quoted as speaking out against
the ‘‘extremists.’’ The Sunday Times said:
‘Underground Solidarity sources say the church
helped a group of shipyard workers draft a conciliatory
discussion document issued at the start of the month in

the name of the Lenin Shipyard Solidarity Factory
Commission. The statement called for Solidarity to be
restored as a pure trade union cleansed of political dissi-
dents but with Walesa at the head. At the same time it
pledged support for socialism and Poland’s international
alliances. Though critical of martial law, it appealed to
union members not to demonstrate and to ‘perform their
duties honestly and thoroughly.*”’

Young Non-Workers

Demonstrations were reported in Gdansk, but, they
were described by western newsman as groups of young
non-workers. The shipyard workers were reported as
seen going into work as usual, shift by shift.

The fact that two of the main underground Solidarity
extremists — Zbigniew Romaszewaki, in Warsaw, and
Stanislaw Jarosz, in Gdansk, — were arrested in the
course of the day, while two underground radio trans-
mitters were uncovered and seized, was further evi-
dence of disintegration.

Western correspondents who, in the past, have been
giving exultant accounts of a solid and expanding Sol-
idarity movement, are now speculating on the hard days
ahead for those trying to conduct an underground strug-
gle against the socialist state.

One important fact is the admitted growing isolation of
the group of anti-socialist advisers of Solidarity, known
as KOR. Immediately after August 31, four leading KOR
members, who had already been under detention, were
formally arrested and charged with plotting to overthrow
the state. They may be tried after an investigation. One
of them, Jacek Kuron, had sent an instruction from his
place of detention, calling for the winning over of sol-
diers and policemen and for a general strike which could
‘‘take the form of a simultaneous attack against all ruling
and information centres in the country.”

Solidarity extremists lose hold

The British Guardian correspondent, Hella Pick, has
reported from Warsaw about the reaction to the formal
arrest of Kuron and his associates:

‘‘The martial law authorities claim that Mr. Kuron and
his friends were a big influence on radicalizing Solidarity
last year, and encouraging the independent union leader-
ship into policies that could only be interpreted as direct
political opposition to the system. Even KOR’s friends
do not seriously disagree with this analysis. Surprisingly,
perhaps, even some of the sharper critics of the present
regime here are saying that KOR increasingly became
the evil genius behind Solidarity. There is far less sym-
pathetic outpouring for the arrests than might have been
expected.”

The attempts to stage pro-Solidarity rallies on August
31 in West European cities, in coordination with those
being set up in Poland, were an even more dismal failure.
The groups that assembled in London, Paris, Cologne,
Stockholm and elsewhere comprised no more than 200
to 400 in number, almost all right-wing Polish exiles. The
call for participation by trade unionists, failed to
materialize. In Britain, the Trades Union Congress de-
clined to support the protest, and, the call for street
demonstrations by the International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions was virtually ignored.

But Tons
pws TO

HAVE EXTRA DEEP
CST Te Kane Ht
MINK coat

‘ann

_ The mass slaughter of Palestinian civil-
Jans in refugee camps located in West
irut evoked a wave of outraged protest
world over, including Israel. The
question on everyone’s lips is: who is re-
Sponsible for this barbaric crime? What
People want to know is who set this
Murderous carnage in motion, and who
Stands behind them.
* * *

A wide spectrum of public opinion

Alfred Dewhurst

'| Marxism-Leninism Today

‘Butchery in Beirut — fruit of Camp David

imperialist net. It thus betrays the cause
of the Palestine Arab people and consoli-
dates the positions, both political and
military, of U.S. imperialism in the Mid-
dle East.

At that time this column (December
4/78) branded the Camp David Accord as
a ‘‘giant fraud” for it deliberately ignored
the real issues standing in the way of
securing a stable peace in the Middle
East. Instead, the Carter-Begin-Sadat

€xists which holds the view that a faction
of the Lebanese Christian Falange (fas-
Cist) Party carried out the actual slaugh-
_ter under the protection of Israeli troops.
he implication here is clear enough.
Namely, that the Israeli military was an
accessory before the fact, with the bles-
Sing of Israeli Prime Minister Begin. The
argument supporting this view holds that
Ving occupied Beirut, the Israeli
Vvernment is responsible. For, that
deadly carnage could not have taken
Place without the compliance of the oc-
Cupying authorities. The fact that the
Begin government rejected for as long as
itcould all proposals for an official inquiry
into the Beirut massacres serves to vali-
date this view.

We think this line of reasoning. is
Sound. But it needs filling out. For in-
Stance, who stands behind Begin and the
Israeli government? Who made it possi-

le for the tiny state of Israel with its
_ | @Pproximate Jewish population of three
| | Million, to thumb its nose at some 80-mil-
_ | lion Arabs in the Middle East? Who, but
aggressively expansionist U.S. imperial-
Ism, operating on a state level through
_ | the-U.S. Government.

The whole world knows that Israel is a
client state of American imperialism in
the Middle East. In a very real sense it
serves as an American base in that oil
rich, and militarily strategic region. This
is Begin’s ace in the hole. He under-
stands very well that while the U.S. ad-
ministration, to save face before world
public opinion, may sometimes be com-
pelled to scold him publicly for his most
atrocious breaches of international law
and codes, such demonstrated dis-
pleasure will only be accompanied by a
light tap on the wrist. In addition, such
U:S. reaction serves the myth of Begin’s
boast that ‘Israel kneels but to God’.
(See Time Magazine, August 16/82)

Menachem Begin has his own plans for
Israeli imperialist expansion in the Mid-
dle East. A life-time champion of Israeli
right-wing reaction and its aggressive
expansionism at the expense of the Arab
people of Palestine and Israel’s Arab
neighbor states, Begin has elevated
terrorism against other Middle East
peoples to the level of state policy. The
death and destruction rained on the civi-
lian population of Beirut and other
Lebanese cities and towns, through sat-
uration bombing and shelling and the

Beirut massacres, cannot be anything
but mass terrorism waged by the state of
Israel against another people.

* o* *

It should not be forgotten that Begin,
a terrorist of the highest order, was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the
part he played, along with former Presi-
dent Sadat of Egypt, in foisting the swin-
dle of the 1978 Camp David Peace Ac-
cord onto the people of the Middle East.
This Accord was set up by the U.S. State
Department (notorious for working both
sides of the street). It was consummated
by the Carter administration, and touted
by the world capitalist media as Carter’s
finest hour.

The Camp David ‘‘peace’’ talks were
designed as a by-pass of the Geneva Con-
ference on the Middle East co-chaired by
the Soviet Union and the United States,
and including the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) as the legitimate rep-
resentative of the Palestine Arab people.
The aim of the Camp David charade was
to achieve a separate peace dictated by
the USA between Israel and Egypt, split-
ting the Arab camp and decoying Arab
states, one by one, into the U.S.

talks went out of their way to obscure the
real issues. We pointed out that peace
will not be secured in that region until the
basic cause of mistrust, strife and vio-
lence is tackled, resolved and removed.
It can now be said that the barbaric mas-
sacres in West Beirut are, in good part,
the bloody fruit of the Camp David fraud.

* oe cd

We said then, and we repeat it now,
that a durable peace can only be secured
in the Middle East by Israel’s withdrawal
from all territory seized in the 1967 war;
recognition of the national rights of the
Arab people of Palestine, including the
right to national self-determination and
the establishment of their own state; and
the right to independent existence and
security for all states and peoples in the
Middle East, including Israel. :

To get started on this path demands
the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli
armed forces out of Beirut and all of
Lebanon, the convening of a peace con-
ference under the auspices of the United
Nations, with the full participation of all
concerned parties and states, especially
the PLO as the legitimate representative
of the Palestine Arab people.

‘

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 8, 1982—Page 5