The Chicago Star

There are those of us who have long argued that the filth which is called fascism and the disease which is known as anti-Semitism, are part of one and the same thing—the cancerous blight on civilization, otherwise known as the trust and monopoly. But arguments are merely arguments, and a multitude of graves underline the old homily that one learns best from life itself, and little enough elsewhere.

I quote from the New York Times of May 3, 1947: I quote only two short paragraphs, but they constitute an historical document for, mark you, each of the words that follow drip with blood. Read them carefully. Print them in your minds. They are variations upon a theme first composed by Judas Iscariot, a long long time ago.

STATE OF THE NATION
Who speaks for the Jews?
Howard Fast

Form has changed, not substance:

"THE United States joined Britain yesterday in defeating a proposal that the United Nations General Assembly let the Jewish Agency for Palestine state its views at a plenary session. The vote in the General Assembly, which met in Flushing Meadow, Queens, was 8 to 3.

"The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland were in the minority. Brazil, Ecuador and Honduras abstained from voting. In addition to the United States and Britain, nations voting against the proposal were: China, France, Canada, Egypt, India and Sweden."

There it is for the record. Three nations spoke up for the Jewish People, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The rest were quiet or spoke on Hitler's side. What a shameful and fearful lesson that is! But not a new lesson. The opiate of the American Jew has long been that beguiling phrase, coined by Sinclair Lewis—“It can't happen here.” To the Negroes—yes. To the Communists yes. But not the Jews. Even though the House Un-American Activities Committee, that spearhead of American fascism, has consistently indulged in the vilest type of anti-Semitism, hundreds of thousands of Jews considered it the expression of extremists. The "big-boys" would take care of them. The little haberdasher liked the Jews inside dope. The toothbrush mustache liked the Jews too; some of his best friends were Jews.

So they said, our trustful American Jews, "Wait until the Palestine issue comes to a head." And it came to a head, and the head burst, and the pus was filled with little swastikas.

IT MIGHT have been foreseen. There was a time when Jews were dying in countless numbers. Hitler's Nazis had made up their minds to destroy the Jews of Europe, and the only check was the pace at which the incinerators could burn. All over Europe was the stink of burning flesh and the sound of souls in anguish, but everywhere except in one place the gates were barred. That one place was the Soviet.

It was the Soviet Union that opened her frontiers to a million Jews, received them, fed them, gave them medical attention, and cared for them. No other nation, not America, not Britain, not Canada—no other nation but the Soviet Union.

THIS is a documented fact; this is history, and this is the answer to those who lie so well and so evilly. And on this May 3rd past, we saw the other side of the coin. We saw the gates barred again in the calmest and most coldly deliberate betrayal of recent times.

The lesson for Jews everywhere, in Palestine as well as here is both implicit and specific. Implicitly, the Jew dies with democracy's death. With the fresh-born democracy of the 18th century, he came out of the ghetto; with 20th century fascism, he goes to the abattoirs. Specifically, imperialism is his enemy. Imperialism does not have to hesitate between human lives and oil. Life is meaningless to this bloated beast, this final mask of savagery.