Summary
The Histadrut’s Arabic-language weekly, first published in March 1937 under editor Michael Assaf with Eliyahu Agassi assigned to work with him — officially the organ of the Palestine Labor League, in fact a pro-Zionist propaganda paper distributed mostly free, whose impact Lockman judges likely minimal and which the Histadrut kept publishing until 1960 (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3015-3058).
Details
- Neither the Histadrut nor any other Zionist institution had put out a regular Arabic publication since Ittihad al-‘Ummal ceased in 1928; launching one took from 1935 to 1937, largely over funding, and MAPAI leaders including Moshe Shertok and Berl Katznelson doubted its value (lines 3009-3014).
- At a Histadrut executive committee meeting in autumn 1936 Ya’akov Hazan asked, “I cannot believe that among the 10,000 members of MAPAI there aren’t three editors for an Arabic newspaper”; Eliyahu Golomb admitted the nominee, Michael Assaf, could not write an article in Arabic and that “there aren’t among us even ten comrades who know Arabic” (lines 3015-3018).
- Its first issue opened: “Every discerning and unbiased person must acknowledge the Jewish people’s dedication to their eternal and sole homeland whose virtues the centuries had extinguished” (line 3024) — a formulation Lockman reads as no break with labour-Zionist discourse: Palestine as the “eternal and sole homeland” of “the Jewish people”, against “the Arabs who dwell in it” (lines 3024-3030).
- It denounced the revolt, refuted the Arab press, carried international, Jewish and labour news, PLL and Histadrut activity accounts and literature in translation (stories by Yehuda Burla, Maxim Gorky and others), and from 1940 Hebrew lessons; its press run of 2,000 copies was distributed almost entirely free, including by mail to government schools (lines 3044-3052).
- Almost all the Arab schoolteachers to whom it was mailed returned it, spurning the free subscription; with Jewish Agency and other subsidies it continued to 1948 and beyond, until the Histadrut closed it down in 1960 (lines 3056-3058).
- The lion’s share of the Histadrut Arab Department’s budget went to Haqiqat al-Amr in the revolt years, its publication seen as useful for general Zionist propaganda (lines 3062-3066).
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Histadrut, Palestine Labor League, Michael Assaf, Eliyahu Agassi, Ittihad al-‘Ummal