A Shameful Apology for One of America’s Most Shameful Apologists for Communism

Feb. 18 2021

Born Itzhok Granich on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Michael Gold (1893-1967) lived a life that in many ways typified a certain slice of the American Jewish experience: his parents were impoverished immigrants from Romania; he began working to support his family at the age of twelve, while simultaneously taking night classes to further his education; he later became a passionate Communist, taking up a career as a writer and journalist and traveling in the same circles as many other prominent Jewish intellectuals. Gold’s greatest claim to fame was his much-praised autobiographical novel Jews Without Money, published in 1930. But, writes Harvey Klehr, a new biography of “American Communism’s foremost literary hatchet man” by Patrick Chura leaves much to be desired:

Chura, a professor of English at the University of Akron, [claims that] Gold’s life and work supposedly offer lessons for today on how to defeat “racism, anti-Semitism, fascism, and xenophobia.” Such praise is not warranted, not for Gold and not for the [Kremlin-backed] Communist Party of the U.S.A (CPUSA).

In the second half of the [1930s], many of those who had jumped on the Communist bandwagon in 1932 jumped off. Some became Trotskyists and launched Partisan Review to challenge the simplistic and politicized aesthetics of Gold and his allies. . . . But the greatest number were disillusioned by the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, unable to stomach an alliance between Communism and fascism. Gold was not terribly bothered.

Chura elides Gold’s support for the Communist alliance with fascism [in 1939]. This is of a piece with his biography as a whole, which features some bizarre notes of praise for his subject. Chura . . . twice remarks that the CPUSA was “staunchly antiwar” until Hitler’s invasion of the USSR and the attack on Pearl Harbor “drove immediate changes in its position and rhetoric.” But in point of fact, Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with altering Gold’s or the CPUSA’s views. It was only after the Nazis attacked the USSR that all good Communists immediately abandoned their alliances with fascism and became ardent interventionists and supporters of an American arms buildup.

Not even Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 revelations about Josef Stalin’s crimes could shake Gold’s faith in the Soviet Union. He told a lecture audience that “we should have known” about the murderous attack on Jewish culture and intellectuals taking place in the Soviet Union, but “our leaders” had not asked or kept in close touch. He urged his listeners not to be disillusioned, because the Soviet Communist Party bore no responsibility for what had happened. Besides, Jewish culture was on the rebound in the USSR.

Read more at Commentary

More about: American Jewish History, Communism, Lower East Side

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023