History of the Palestine Communist Party - PKP

Yaakov Zilber was born in Berlin in 1916, and from an early age was interested in the political left. During Hachshara he studied Marxism and in Palestine found that members of kibbutzim were turning more and more to the left. He mentions the trials in Russia, the murder of Sergey Kirov, the break-up of the German socialist party SPD and the rise of the more leftist socialist workers' party which later joined the "two and a half international", the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty (interpreted as Russian unwillingness to face the German army), etc. In 1940 Yaakov in Israel got a translation of a speech by Walter Ulbricht prepared by a German Jewish agricultural researcher who later became head of Rakach (the Israel Communist party). After 1943 Dr. Shura Epstein of Koenigsberg was involved in preparing political information. Yaakov joined the communist party in 1940. Soon after the war against Russia, he left the kibbutz for Hadera, by orders from the party which which wanted active members there. Yaakov became secretary of the local branch. He describes his work and his duties, and how the party slowly became legalized by the British administration. In this connection he mentions the development of the communist party in India. In Israel the party's main aim was to do everything possible to help win the war against the Nazis, and it encouraged enlistment in the British army. There was no real democracy within the communist party in Israel, but this changed towards the 8th Convention, when the party started to plan and act more independently. They were far away from Moscow and acted in the underground. They drew their conclusions from communist papers - the German "Rundschau" of the "Rote Fahne" and "Pravda". What would be the future of the Jews was then an important subject under discussion, including the right of self-identification Yaakov then describes the thinking within the Communist party in England. ; During the cold war, an association to help the USSR was created in Palestine, headed by Mapai leader David Remes. Communists within the Arab population of Palestine were ashamed of their brethren who put all their hopes on Hitler that he would make an end of British imperialism and free the Arabs. In 1941 the communist party in Palestine was legalized and a party newspaper "Kol Ha'Am" was created. There was a general concensus that only Russia was fighting Nazism. The Palestinian Communist party (PKP) did not join the Zionist movement, even after Andrei Gromyko's speech which some interpreted as acceptance of Zionism. But it did intend the Jewish yishuv to become an independent entity, stating that making it a territorial federative autonomy, and later the UN plans, could not work. At the convention of communist parties within the British Empire (where the Palestinian party and the Arab League for national freedom were represented), it was agreed that the Jewish population of Palestine was to have not only civil rights but also national rights. ; The party in Palestine split up in 1943, the Jewish part, which represented the majority, being led by Mikunis. In 1945 the party had about 200 members. Yaakov describes the League for National Freedom, which functioned in Haifa and mentions the names of some of the more prominent members. In 1948, Mikunis' party joined the League. Yaakov then goes back to to the 7th Convention of the Comintern in 1935, where he places the roots of disagreement among party members. After the war the party viewed positively the fight of the Jewish underground organizations, Hagana, Etzel and Lechi, against the British and considered partition of Palestine, fore-runner of the UN decision in 1947.