one; ; : tio i everywhere in the world — from West Israel, the Mid-East and peace Following is the abridged text of a Speech on the Middle East delivered Sep- tember 3 by Dr. Herbert Aptheker before &n audience of 300 at the Jewish Cultural Center, Miami Beach, Fla. By Herbert Aptheker Ts help achieve peace in the Mid-East one Must comprehend the sources of war. They are three-fold: feudalism, Zionism, im- Tialism, and these are inter-related. Let us €xamine each briefly: 1. The dominant socio-economic system in the Mid-East, until the revolutions in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Libya, and the Sudan commencing in the mid-1950’s _ and continuing to the present, was a feudal ; that system still predominates in those “Arab countries. where revolutions have not _ yet matured, as in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tocco and Tunisia. But especially since World War II; the Arab masses have become Persuaded that their misery and poverty are Social phenomena, that they can be elimi- - Nate and that their own strength is decisive MN eliminating them. is a source of conflict in the Mid-East - because the local feudalists and burgeoning bourgeoisie suppress the masses and be- Cause they sell out the resources of their own Country to metropolitan imperialist powers ~ Britain, France and especially the United ‘States — which then actively and forcibly intervene to maintain the status quo and to Suppress or subvert anti-colonial move- Ments and/or governments.’ 2. Zionism began as an ecclesiastical ti-socialist, pro-imperialist, anti-Marxist: Movement. It accepted basic postulates of hti-Semitic concepts; it made alliances With reactionary forces from the Kaiser of 19th century to the British Prime Minis- ter of World War I to President Ford of today. Commenced with the idea that Palestine is 4 land without people and that Jews are a People without land and that the obvious, or- Out ne Mlution isto turn over that land with- Wace eople to the people without land. This ion false geography and chauvinist his- Mography. * Its policies in Israel have been racist (not ily against Arabs but against darker Ples in general, including darker Jews), So, naturally, in basic alliance with reac- hary and colonialist and imperialist many to South Africa to the United saad Placing such a force, with the W nomic, financial and military support of in in the center of the Mid-East — ies that region’s masses were in the midst ~ garet anti-feudal and anti-colonial renais-_ al — Meant to exacerbate the likelihood conflict. : 3. Mid-East has been a center of im- _ Ferialist exploitation for one hundred years. tae Source for this was geographic. This — @ lies at the hub of three continents and astride several strategic bodies of water. It affords one approach for aggression against the USSR. Another'was economic, especially in terms of oil. With the end of World War I, the significance of oil and the great oil corpo- rations to the economies and governments of the capitalist powers was enhanced. Today in the United States oil, not steel, is king. Today the oil companies in the U.S. have greater assets than those of all companies in the three next largest industries; oil tycoons also control enormous reservoirs of credit. Today, oil leads in U.S. foreign investments. To preserve the geographic-naval posi- tion, to retain possession of these huge re- sources, and to guard these colossal profits, the governments of the imperialist powers will do anything and have been guilty of every crime — including inciting, supporting and waging war. Te are the sources of war in the Mid- East. What do they tell us as to the strategic means towards a lasting and just peace in that area? = : 1. The way to a lasting peace in the Mid- East is via the struggle against the im- perialist center-pin. The struggle for peace in the Mid-East cannot be conducted with Tel Aviv-Washington against the Arab peoples “but must rather be with the Arab peoples ainst imperialism. aac When the ruling circles in Israel tie Tel Aviv’s policy to Washington, they tie the fu- ture of Israel to a foul, crisis-ridden and doomed partner. The biggest threat to the existence of Israel lies in the pro-imperialist, aggressive and expansionist policy of the Is- raeli government; if that policy is not sub- stantially altered, Israel is doomed and quite possibly World War III is assured. S- - Tactically, the necessary conclusions are: 1. It is necessary that it be made per- fectly clear that the question before us is not one of Arabs versus Jews. On the contrary, the question before us is one of imperialism and colonialism and feudalism versus na- tional liberation and social progress. It is necessary to affirm clearly that what is involved here is not a matter of anti- Jewishness as the poison it is and affirming the knowledge of the age-old use of that poison as the handmaiden of the worst forms of reaction. Simultaneously, denunciation must be made of all forms of chauvinism, and certainly the chauvinism directed against the Arab peoples which in the main communications media of the U.S. has reached scandalous proportions. 3. Israel’s right to existence, as created by the United Nations, is not in question as has been affirmed repeatedly, especially by the USSR and also by the major Arab states and by the UN Resolution of 1967. The greatest threat to Israel’s existence comes from the present ruling circles in Israel it- imperialism and expansionism. _ 4. The U.S. government supports not only the reactionary government of Israel but also reactionary Arab governments. Thus, Washington has supplied Saudi Arabia with more arms than -it has Israel; thus, Washington stood ready in the Fall of 1970 to intervene militarily on the side of King Hus- sein. Demonstrating this helps expose the imperialist essence of the Mid-East question rather than its being one of Jews vs. Arabs. Tel Aviv has appropriated enormous ter- ritory from its neighbors and has pursued a policy of occupation and exploitation of that territory and Washington has done all in its power to make possible the retention of the fruits of that ravishment. 6. The so-called ‘‘preventive war” argu- ment of Israel must be fully exposed for the falsehood it is. In the age of thermonuclear weapons and the existence of the United Na- ions, such ‘‘justification’’ (which was exactly the ‘‘justification”’ of the U.S. in its atrocious war against the Vietnamese people) is absolutely impermissible. It re- turns us to the unimpeded power politics which produced World Wars I and II and will, if not halted, produce World War III. When President Nixon in November 1969 made his main policy speech, and in effect explained again why the Vietnam war was to continue, it was the Prime Minister of Israel — alone among heads of state — who wired congratulations and said: “‘The President’s speech contains much that encourages and strengthens freedom-loving small nations the world over, which are striving to main- tain their independent existence looking to that great democracy, the United States of America.” 7. Exposure and denunciation of the awful behavior of the Israeli occupiers — forced exile, destruction of homes, preven- tive arrests, clubbing of girls and women, torturing of prisoners, wholesale punish- ment of districts and entire villages, -pro- longed incarceration of political prisoners — must be vigorously conducted. Witrin Israel, war-weariness grows. The class struggle intensifies. The Communist Party of Meir Vilner and Toufik Toubi — the only genuine Communist Party of Israel — increases its membership. Its vote in- creases; its Young Communist League flourishes; and its Arab-Jewish unity is firmer than ever. That Party, too; now is invited by non-Party groups to present its case and its opposition to the policy of the government. Nationally, there are growing demands for an end to occupation and for a change in a government policy bringing something over 10% of the adult population into the army, spending well over 50% of the _ budget for war, creating inflation and a mounting national debt that is astronomical, causing mounting casualties, and providing - self, who have made of it a handmaiden of ~ 00 vista forany sortof peace and decent life. The apparent unanimity of nationalistic madness.among the Jewish population in the United States is declining also; and this will continue to decline. It is necessary that Jews in this country know that there is no such unanimity inside Israel itself. . The world-wide isolation of the present Israeli government is a fact; its only allies are Iran and South Africa, and it remains a client of Washington, not its ally. It is a pariah in the world community of nations. To depend upon disarray among the Arab peoples as bailing Israel out is to put one’s faith in a temporary phenomenon. The Arab revolution is new and deep. The fundamental movement of the one hundred million Arab peoples is in the direc- tion of meeting their immutable demands — for a decent life, for self-rule, for advanced technique, for a modern educational system, for the emancipation of women, for the building of really socialist societies. A change for the better is therefore al- together possible. And the specifics of that change are before us and already have been _ unanimously approved by the Security pou I refer to the U.N. Resolutions of To secure peace in the Middle East and the future of Israel, a reversal of the present Israeli policies is required. The Israeli gov- ernment must accept the U.N. Resolutions in their entirety and agree to proceed on their basis — this means abandoning the phony and calculatedly impossible idea of ‘‘direct negotiations” with particular Arab countries while Israeli troops occupy their territory and Tel Aviv annexes all Jerusalem and en- larges the borders of Jerusalem, and ac- tively settles the newly-gained territory and -exploits their resources. To accept the 1967 Resolution means and requires abandoning the policy of annexa- tion. It means accepting a just solution to the refugee question — again as recommended first by the U.N. in 1948 and reiterated every year since. Fundamentally it means a turn in the policy of government of Israel — a policy ‘of alliance with the Arab peoples against im- perialism and not an alliance with im- perialism against the Arab peoples. The line of reaction and aggression is the line of national catastrophe for Israel. Only a policy of amity and respect among peoples and nations will assure peace. With- out real peace the existence of the Israeli peoples will continue to be marked by insec- urity, unemployment, severe inflation, very high taxes and repression. _ Only a policy of justice, only the repudia- tion of expansion, only the ending of occupa- tion, only the recognition of the national rights of the Palestinian people, can bring security and actual peace to Israel. _ The U.N. Resolutions and reconvening of the Geneva convention — not dependence upon Kissinger — will assure the existence of Israel and peace in the Mid-East. Rejection of this path, as urged by Ford, Kissinger, and Carter, will assure disaster for Israel and war in the Mid-East. Of all the Presidential and Vice Presiden- tial candidates in this election, only the can- didates of the Communist Party — Gus Hall and Jarvis Tyner — stand unequivocally for this policy. Hence a vote for Hall and Tyner is — among many other features — a vote for peace in general, peace in the Mid-East in particular and therefore a vote for the as- sured existence of a respected and democra- tic. and progressive Israel. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 22, 1976—Page 9