Summary
The Egyptian railway clerk who, as a new Arab member of the Union of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Workers’ central committee in November 1924, asked its Jewish members directly whether the union was connected with the Zionist movement and whether they were themselves Zionists — the questions that touched off the crisis ending the joint union (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 1512-1520).
Details
- Fahmi’s motives, Lockman writes, are not difficult to fathom: an Arab who joined a seemingly Zionist organization risked being attacked as a traitor to his people and their national cause, and Palestine Communist Party members had for months been encouraging precisely these questions to expose the union leadership’s Zionist affiliations (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 1514).
- The Jewish central committee members replied after consultation that the union was economic in purpose and nonpolitical, with no connection with Zionism, and that anyone who wanted to introduce politics would be expelled; to his second question they replied, “Just as we do not ask you who you are, to which party you belong, what are your political opinions, so you have no right to ask us about these things.…” Lockman calls the response “disingenuous and evasive” and says it seems to have been received as such by Fahmi (lines 1516-1518).
- A few days later Fahmi published a letter in the Arabic-language newspaper al-Nafir reiterating his questions and calling on the Arab railway workers to leave the union because it was in reality a Zionist organization; only a minority of the union’s new Arab members followed him at that point, but some number had heeded his call by the January 1925 council (lines 1518-1524; Chapter 3 note 46).
- Chapter 3 note 46 records a further account kept beside Lockman’s assessment: a Po’alei Tziyon Smol publication, Milhemet Hapo’el, suggested in May 1925 that Fahmi’s letter in al-Nafir was a forgery by the communists and that Fahmi himself denied having written it; Lockman judges this unlikely, there being no indication in the Arabic press that Fahmi denied the letter’s authenticity, and the communists themselves treated the letter as genuine in arguing against his appeal (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Chapter 3 note 46, lines 1756).
- The Jewish communists’ January 1925 article signed “a railway worker” in the PCP’s Arabic biweekly Haifa specifically rejected Fahmi’s appeal: “By withdrawing from the union we strengthen the position of the Zionists within it” (line 1544).
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Union of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Workers, Histadrut, Joint Organization, Palestine Communist Party