Ilyas Asad

Summary

The Arab railway worker who at the Union of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Workers’ council meeting in March 1924 demanded the word “Jewish” be removed from the union’s membership card and its ties with the Histadrut severed as the condition of Arab-Jewish unity, and who then became a leader of the Palestine Arab Workers Society (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 1456-1462, 1570).

Asad, one of six Arab railway workers’ representatives attending the March 1924 council as active participants, told the council he strove for ties because connected workers would help one another “without regard to religion or nationality”; many Arab workers did not want to join nationalist organizations, and they had seen the words “Federation of Jewish Workers” on the union membership card and could not understand what purpose this served: “I ask all the comrades to remove the word “Jewish,” and I am sure that if they agree there will be a strong bond between us and all the Arabs will join” (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 1456-1458; Chapter 3 note 27).
The other Arab delegates echoed his demand that the union sever its Histadrut ties and become fully independent and international; David Ben-Gurion, present for the Histadrut, answered with a defence of separate national autonomy within joint work on common matters (lines 1460-1468).
In the leadership of the Palestinian Arab Workers’ Society formed in 1925, Asad was among those drawn from the group that had long been involved in negotiations with the Jewish unionists (line 1570).

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