Summary
Lebanese socialist writer (1893–1969), AUB graduate and head of the Soviet-Lebanese Friendship Society, whose November 1948 book on the Palestinian tragedy Manna singles out for frankly naming Russia’s role in the Nakba (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.50).
Details
- Hanna visited Moscow in 1947 and wrote I Have Returned from Moscow; his political affiliation was with the Soviet side, which gives his book special importance in understanding the causes and roots of the Nakba (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.50).
- He argues the foremost and genuine responsibility lies with the defeated Arabs — regimes, leaders and people — who searched for excuses instead of facing responsibility and making the reforms needed to transcend the catastrophe, including on the status of Arab women (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.50).
- He mentions the Russians alongside the British and the Americans as external factors: “And Russia, the third major power, is also responsible. Despite its hostility to Anglo-American policy, and its constant quarrel with it, Russia endorsed partition, and the establishment of a Zionist state next to the Arab state, in the hope that one of them would allow it a foothold into the Middle East.” Manna calls this frank November 1948 statement historically significant and unique, in contrast to the justifications the communists adopted later (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.50).