The Israeli Victory:
Setback for Antiwar Movement
@ Cuban Position in the Mideast Crisis
Kremlin Sees ‘“Trotskyism’ in China
Youth Problem Hits Italian Communists
Lessons of Greek Coup d Etat
Documents: Remarks Concerning the Left in Israel
New York, N. Y. 10010. HPs
THE ISRAELI VICTORY -- A SETBACK FOR THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT
BREZHNEV Peaceful
The swift outcome of the confronta-~ tion in the Middle East -- a military victory for Israel -- is being pictured in the West as a gain for "peace," if only a temporary one.
It was, however, a setback for the colonial revolution and by that token a blow to the forces standing in the way of the U.S. imperialist course toward another world war.
The Middle East crisis, following hard on the heels of Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam to such a pitch as to give rise to forebodings on all sides that perhaps the opening stage of World War III had already begun, divided international public opinion into two broad camps. On the one side stood the Israeli government, powerfully backed by U.S. inperialism, deftly abetted by Harold Wilson and cheered on by such notorious figures as Nguyen Cao Ky and Chiang Kai-shek.
On the other side stood the masses of colonial people beginning with North Africa and ranging through India and China around the world to Cuba. .
The colonial peoples hoped for an Arab victory. It was their pressure that induced even pro-imperialist regimes, such as King Hussein of Jordan, Hassan II of Morocco and Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia to line up against the Israeli government.
The Jewish communities outside of Israel were swept by chauvinism. They offered the new generation of antiwar fighters, who have only read about war hysteria, a good example of this reactionary psychological phenomenon.
Even participants in the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam were caught up in the fever. The International War Crimes Tribunal did not escape unscathed, no one less than Jean-Paul Sartre joining the Israeli side.
Martin luther King, who recently went quite far in denouncing the U.S. role in Vietnam, signed an advertisement in the June 4 New York Times virtually calling on the Johnson administration to intervene militarily in the Middle East.
In New York, where there is a large Jewish community, more than $20 million was raised in a few days and comparable amounts were pouring in from other areas. The degree of chauvinism could also be judged from the comments of the liberal columnist Pete Hamill, who has written very good material on the Vietnamese situation.
In his column in the New York Post of June 9, for instance, Hamill said that Nasser "seems to be running for most likely politician since Mussolini to end his career hanging upside down in a gas station."
By way of comparison, a Chiang Kai-shek rag, the China Daily News, described Nasser as "a lunatic" with "megalomaniacal aspirations..." (Quoted in the May 28 Free China Weekly.)
The most important shift by far, however, was the one taken by the Kremlin.
Brezhnev-Kosygin led the Arabs, particularly Nasser, to believe that they would support them in the confrontation with Israel and its imperialist backers. However after the single military round in which the Israeli government pulled its combination "Pearl Harbor" and "blitzkrieg” -- as it has been freely and favorably described in the New York press -the Kremlin capitulated to the U.S. after secret talks in the corridors of the
2 ZZ
BREZHNEV
Peaceful
BREZHNEV
Peaceful
United Nations.
The June 9 Wall Street Journal described the gloating in the Johnson administration as follows:
"Euphoria envelops the White House as the Soviet chickens out of the Arab war.
"LBJ was in direct contact with Kremlin bosses while Israel blitzed their Mideast clients; after initial stickiness, he found Moscow cooperative. More Russian bombast is expected, for face-saving. But the White House judges the Soviet will soon revive an atmosphere of broad East- West detente, maybe even try again to drag Vietnamese Reds into peace talks.
"Russians grouch privately there was no excuse for Nasser's letting his planes get wiped out on the airfields. They conclude they wasted billions trying to build Arab military muscle. The Arab nations turn equally bitter at the USSR's failure to enter the fray against Israel.
"Washington watches to see if recent minor reshuffling of the Soviets' committee-style leadership will now shake major figures."
Peter Grose, writing in the June 9 New York Times from his post in Moscow, hints further on the behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Kremlin and the White House. When the question of a ceasefire came up in the United Nations, the Soviet delegation insisted that it be accompanied by a demand for the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
"Mr. Fedorenko's private talks with Arthur J. Goldberg, the United States delegate, that morning," writes Grose, "had apparently convinced him that the additional Soviet demand would not be acceptable to the United States."
Or, reading between the lines, the U.S. wanted a cease-fire after the Israeli armies had pulled their "Pearl Harbor," thus putting them in better position to retain their conquests.
"So the Politburo faced the problem of either insisting on the announced Soviet position and running the risk that delay would allow further Israeli advances or accepting the unconditional cease-fire. They chose the latter, only to discover that the Arab states then rejected the resolution and the Israelis seized further military objectives yesterday....
"The Arabs presumably think the Russians let them down..."
Philippe Ben, the UN correspondent of the Paris daily Le Monde, noted that
JOHNSON
Coexistence?
after categorically opposing the U.S.
cease-fire resolution on June 5, Fedo-
renko, after consulting lengthily with
Moscow the following day, made a complete
about-face.
The Le Monde correspondent be-
lieves that Fedorenko at least consulted
with the Arab representatives. However,
he notes, when they took the floor, they
gave the impression that "their cause had
been sacrificed." He cites as an example
the statement of Adnan Pachachi, the Iraqi
minister of foreign affairs: "This is an
unconditional capitulation to Israel."
Philippe Ben believes that the So-
viet leaders came to the conclusion they
had made a "grave error" in supporting
Nasser. "Their about-face, still more radi-
cal than the one made by Mr. Khrushchev
October 1962 during the Cuban crisis, is
typical of the attitude which the Kremlin
adopts to cut down the costs when experi-
ence proves that it has bet on the wrong
horse."
In an editorial June 8, Le Monde,
in noting the hopes which the Arab states
JOHNSON
Coexistence?
JOHNSON
Coexistence?
had placed in the Soviet Union, asked, "But is she going to take risks in behalf of Nasser, which up to now she has refused to take in favor of the Communist Ho Chi Minh?"
Nasser hinted obliquely at a betrayal in his speech of June 9 announcing his "resignation." Johnson, he said, handed the UAR ambassador a message May 26 “asking us for restraint and not to be the first to open fire. Otherwise we would face serious consequences."
"The same night," continued Nasser, "the Soviet ambassador asked to see me urgently at 3:30 A.M. and told me that the Soviet government strongly requested we should not be the first to open fire."
"On the morning of last Monday, June 5, the enemy struck."
The betrayal committed by the Kren-~ lin does not, of course, excuse the role of Nasser in leading the Arab people into the military trap set by the Israeli government and the Pentagon strategists. The major axis of Soviet foreign policy since early in Stalin's career has boiled down to seeking an understanding with American imperialism. This simple fact is no doubt much clearer today among the Arab peoples than it was on the eve of the Israeli blitzkrieg.
Nevertheless it was reasonable to also hold open the possibility that the Kremlin would seek to strengthen Soviet defenses by playing a positive role in the Middle East crisis; i.e., a role in support of the Arab peoples.
This situation related directly to the Vietnam war. A strong stand in the Middle East could relieve the pressure of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam and even compel the White House to reconsider its dangerous course in Vietnam.
In other words, the Middle East situation could have been converted into the counterthrust which observers on all sides have considered to be long overdue in the sheer interests of Soviet defense.
Consequently throughout the colonial world where pressure has been mounting to bring more effective aid to bear on the side of the beleaguered Vietnamese freedom fighters and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Middle East crisis appeared in a double light -- as a grave new danger but also as an opportunity to embroil imperialism in new difficulties.
This is an added reason for the bitterness in the Arab countries and elsewhere over the treacherous course followed by the Kremlin.
Flushed with their easy military
victory: which is ascribable to long
planning and years of stockpiling mili-
tary goods in Israel, as well as careful
teamwork between the Pentagon and the
Israeli generals, the Washington strate-
gists will undoubtedly display fresh ar-
rogance and a still more truculent atti-
tude.
The worst war hawks, their ranks
now swelled by the addition of newly con-
verted doves, may well take another cal-
culating look at the present Soviet
leadership. Is it reasonable to expect
that the USSR will ever have a weaker
leadership? The Kremlin now resembles
nothing so much as the soft underbelly
of the bureaucracy, and one that displays
a most attractive yellow color.
If a "Pearl Harbor," followed by a
"blitzkrieg," were pulled on China, for
instance, might not that country prove as
vulnerable as Egypt at the hands of the
well-oiled Israeli war machine?
Isn't there an analogy, if not
more, in the relationship between the
Israelis and the Arab states and the U.S.
war machine and the Soviet bloc as a
whole? If China were attacked through a
"preemptive strike" would not the Kremlin
simply stand aside, "saving face" by en-
gaging in "bombast"?
In a certain sense, the White House
has succeeded in utilizing the Middle East
crisis as another probing operation for
further escalation of the war in Vietnam.
The Kremlin responded to the test by roll-
ing over at the first really critical mo-
ment and playing dead.
Antiwar fighters the world over
must consider this result with the gravest
attention. For it means that they must
step up their own independent efforts.
In this they will find new common
ground with the freedom fighters in the
colonial sector whose first reaction to
the Israeli military victory was to turn
sharply to the problem of how to get rid
of corroded regimes like the one headed
by Nasser and to replace them with revo-
lutionary governments.
The gravity of the defeat in the
Middle East must not be underestimated.
It follows not only Johnson's latest esca-
lation of the war in Vietnam but the coup
d'état in Greece.
On the other hand, the crisis may
well have set in motion forces of great
depth and power which could quickly open
a new chapter in the Arab revolution.
One of the first consequences would be
the toppling of a series of regimes; and
the Kosygin-Brezhnev team would not be
long in feeling the repercussions.
CUBANS DENOUNCE UN BLOW AGAINST ARAB CAUSE
(When the Soviet delegation at the United Nations capitulated to Washington and voted for a cease-fire resolution that did not demand the immediate withdrawal of Israeli armies that had invaded neighboring countries, the Cuban government issued a statement characterizing such a cease-fire as tantamount to imposing surrender on the victim in face of imperialist aggression.
[A translation of the statement, which was issued June 7, follows.]
*x* * *
Analysis of all the news, data and facts related to the initiation and development of the dramatic events in the Middle East proves beyond doubt that the United Arab Republic and the other Arab peoples were victims of a treacherous surprise assault by the armed forces of Israel, which, instigated and supported by imperialisn, perpetrated this aggression that threatens the freedom and integrity of the Arab nations.
The Arab nations today constitute fresh victims of the global strategy of world imperialism. These events, which have aroused indignation among peoples everywhere, are but part of a series of unending aggressive moves by the imperialists carried out in various parts of the world.
It is the same policy and strategy of global piracy and crime that is being inflicted on the peoples of Vietnam and Laos; it is the same hypocritical and criminal policy that resulted in the military intervention in Santo Domingo, in provocations against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and in the use of the "green berets" as military adjuncts and props of the dictatorial, military "gorilla" governments of the Americas in an effort to halt the advance of the liberation movement in our continent.
The Central Committee of our party, in a declaration May 18, 1967, warned the world against the dangers that this inperialist policy represented for all the peoples. No country can feel secure because Yankee imperialism can tomorrow launch new aggressions in Korea, in Campodia, Syria, the UAR, Algeria or Cuba, to mention only a few examples.
The prediction made by the Central Committee of our party has been proved right in the Middle East today. For this reason, the Cuban Revolutionary Government, fully aware of the principles formulated in this declaration of our party, reiterates its strongest solidarity with the Arab nations facing imperialist aggression today, and condemns this aggression.
The Cuban Revolutionary Government states its support of the UAR delegation's rejection of the Security Council's agreement to limit itself to ordering a ceasefire without condemning the aggressor and holding responsible the imperialism that armed and instigated it. This is tantamount, as stated by the UAR delegation, to imposing surrender in face of imperialist aggression.
The Cuban government will support the government of the UAR in any attitude of resistance that it may adopt in face of the shameful and bungling agreement of the United Nations Security Council.
[The government of the United Arab Republic subsequently felt forced to accept the cease-fire.
It is very painful for the peoples of the world to observe the government of the United States demonstrating joy over what it no doubt considers to be a political, diplomatic and military victory for imperialism.
NGUYEN CAO KY HATILS