Khalil Shanir

Summary

Longtime Palestine Communist Party leader who headed the vigorous Jaffa organisation of the Palestine Arab Workers Society in the war years and led its refusal to cooperate with the Histadrut while the Palestine Labor League was included (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3339, 3438-3442).

The vigorous new labour organisation in Jaffa was formally a branch of the PAWS but was in fact headed by Shanir, a longtime PCP leader; the leftists leading such branches regarded Sami Taha and the Haifa old guard as conservative, cautious and ineffective but preferred to remain within the PAWS to transform and eventually take it over (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3339).
In post-strike talks in Jaffa in 1943 Shanir and his colleagues expressed willingness to cooperate with the Histadrut only if the PLL was excluded; when Adib al-Disuqi criticised the PAWS at one meeting Shanir exploded: “Get out of here, you’re a Zionist, a pariah, you’ve sold yourself to the Jews, you’ve rented yourself out for £P18 a month!” (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3440-3442).
Shanir was among the Arab communists who still hoped for a time that it would be possible to preserve an Arab-Jewish party as the PCP disintegrated in 1943 (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3459).

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