The activity of Jewish anti-Zionist communists during the era of British rule in Palestine (1917-1948) is one over looked dimension that contributed to the formation of Palestine’s Arab national identity. The Palestine Communist Party (PCP), founded by Jewish anti-Zionist immigrants to Palestine in 1924, sought to mobilize support of the Arab peasantry and urban workforce against both Zionism and British colonialism. By the early 1930’s, this group began disseminating its anti-colonial and anti-Zionist messages by distributing leaflets at the largest Islamic celebration in Jerusalem, the annual al-Nabi Musa (Prophet Moses) festival. Significantly, their rhetoric also condemned Palestine’s Arab elite national leadership for colluding with British colonialism. This paper will focus on the hostile response communist activity and rhetoric elicited from Palestine’s Arab elite and Arab professionals, such as journalists. Following Zachary Lockman’s approach of studying Arab and Jewish history in Palestine through a “relational paradigm” that identifies how Arabs and Jews “shaped one another in complex ways and at many levels,” (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, 1996, p. 9), we argue that this Arab response, appearing in Arabic newspapers, such as Filastin and al-Jami`a al-`Arabiyya, reinforced an Arab and Islamic identity that discounted any possibility of cooperation with Jews, even those endorsing anti-Zionist and anti-colonial ideas. Despite the appeal of the Jewish communists’ class-based rhetoric, highlighting issues of great concern to the Arab peasantry and workers attending the festival, such as indebtedness, landlessness, and British colonialism, this rhetoric, however, clashed with the national and political ideals the Arab elite and middle-strata of young professionals propagated, of founding, though political means, a modern, Arab Palestine, incorporated into the larger world-capitalist economy, in which they remained as the country’s political leaders. The Arab elite and journalists discredited these class-based messages by accentuating their Islamic and Arab identity in contradistinction to the European, Jewish identity of the communists. In addition, communist calls to end British rule and forge a society based on class solidarity of Arab and Jewish peasants and workers were met by Arab cries emphasizing a conservative political agenda in support of maintaining diplomacy with the British. The interaction of Jewish anti-Zionist communists and Arabs at the 1930’s al-Nabi Musa ceremonies resulted in the Arab elite and professionals intensifying their Arab and Islamic identity as they sought to defuse the anti-colonial, class-based rhetoric of the communists.

The conventional narrative about the Nakba (Catastrophe) of the Palestinians in 1948 and the establishment of the State of Israel rests on the widespread perception of total Palestinian rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan of Palestine. In fact, not all Palestinians rejected partition. One political group accepted partition as a solution to the national problem in Palestine, and opposed the bloodshed between Jews and Arabs. This group, the National Liberation League (Usbat al-Taharur al-Watani) was an organization founded by Arab communists who broke away from the Palestinian Communist Party (PCP) in 1943. It existed as a separate Arab movement until 1948, when most of its members joined Jewish communists to form the Israeli Communist Party (MAKI) in 1948. The National Liberation League (NLL) is the focus of this proposed paper. The short-lived history of this organization, and the dilemmas, internal contradictions and ambivalences that characterized its work, can shed light on set of larger questions that are central to the history of Jews and Arabs in mandatory Palestine. In this paper I will focus on one issue, namely the ongoing tension and debates within the NLL regarding the question of national liberation and anti colonial, i.e. anti-British and anti-Zionist, struggles. The acceptance of the partition plan positions the NLL in a very unique place in the context of Palestinian Arab society and the enhanced national struggle of the 1940’s. Throughout its existence it offered a different socio-political discourse and program than the one offered by the Palestinian nationalist leadership, and also criticized the leadership for its political conduct, factionalism and policies. Viewing itself as an avant-garde movement, it sought to carry out an anti-imperialist (anti-British and anti-Zionist) struggle, as well as an anti-capitalist one, and called for the establishment of a democratic state in Palestine. This all changed dramatically in 1947, with the acceptance of the partition plan, and the NLL's recognition of the idea of a Jewish national state and the recognition of Jewish national rights. In the proposed paper I will track this change in policy, while also examining it in light of the changing Soviet policies towards the conflict in Palestine and nationalist struggles in general.

My paper looks at the participation of Jews in the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). Communism, I argue, enabled Jews to demonstrate not only their commitment to the international ideals of communism, but also their devotion to the community in which they lived, at a time when certain Iraqi nationalists saw Iraqi Jewish identity as synonymous with disloyalty to the nation-state. During the 1940s, Jews entered the ranks of the ICP in larger numbers, convinced of its vision of equality and social justice. They contributed to the ICP as cell members, union leaders, and party secretaries. An urban educated community, they likewise played a major role in the party’s translation and educational efforts. Iraq from 1945 to 1952 was characterized by sociopolitical turmoil, as strikes, demonstrations, and constant critiques of the state’s pro-British affiliations and unjust social policies loomed large in the public sphere. Iraqi Jews, like their Muslim and Christian compatriots, looked for political options that would provide an appropriate answer to these challenges, and found one in communism. The collaborative activities of Iraqis of various faiths and ethnicities within the ICP conveyed the notion that Iraqis, regardless of their religious beliefs, could share the same sociopolitical agenda. Jewish communists thus worked with Muslims and Christians in cells, unions, schools, and prisons; hosted fellow Muslim and Christian communists in their homes, and took refuge in homes of non-Jews. In fact, in a country that is divided today by sectarian violence, the ICP of the 1940s could be seen as a model of a nonsectarian organization. Jewish Iraqi communists frequently used the term "Arab-Jew" to suggest that Iraqi Jews, as Arabic-speaking Iraqis, should remain in Iraq and fight alongside their Iraqi brethren to end sectarianism and exploitation. Communist ideology thus enabled Iraqi-Jews to critique the Iraqi state and its ultranationalist elites, while remaining loyal to the Iraqi people. Jewish Iraqi communists produced a rigorous critique of Zionism in the publications of The League for Combating Zionism, an organ which called for the termination of the mandate in Palestine and the creation of a free and democratic Palestinian state. The League (established 1945) argued that the Jewish religion could not form the basis for a national community, and that Zionism did a great disservice to world Jewry by promoting the colonization of Palestine and by ruining the relations between Jews and Muslims in the Arab world.

The proposed paper will focus on politics and society in Egypt, generally, and on Jews and Egyptian communism, particularly. It will show that since the emergence of organized communism in the post World War I period, Jews played an active and productive role in the Communist movements in Egypt. The paper will narrate the history of Egyptian communism with special reference to the Jewish participants in the last four decades of the monarchy and shortly thereafter. At the same time, however, it does not belittle or disregard the role played by other activists in Egypt. The participation of Jews in Egypt’s communist movement has received remarkably little scholarly attention. The propsed paper, based on a broader study, will endeavor to fill the lacuna in the existing literature. By drawing on sources, which were hitherto inaccessible (much of the source material is gleaned from archives in Egypt, Russia, Amsterdam (the IICH), the United Kingdom, the United States and Israel), the proposed paper will provide the following new findings: First, stressing continuity, it challenges the prevailing belief among scholars that the Egyptian communist party went through two major phases – the internationalist in the 1920s and the nationalist of the 1940s. Second, it will argue that – contrary to the prevailing belief in the literature – the Comintern was not involved in the expulsion of Joseph Rosenthal, the founding father of organised communism, from the ECP (12/1922). Moreover, his expulsion had nothing to do with the fact that he was Jewish. Also, Egyptian communists of Jewish origin were active in nearly every communist faction, and are to be held accountable for the fact that the Egyptian communist movement remained divided most of the time. Third, the communist movement swam against the national current on key issues (especially with regard to Palestine, Sudan, relations to the Soviet Union and neutralism) and paid a heavy price for it, although their positions were later – at least, in part – adopted by the Egyptian government. Fourth, through prominent communist theoretical forums, the communists presented a social and economic revolutionary platform on issues related to feudalism, capitalism and monopolies; social justice and democracy. The revolutionary platform that they presented with regard to these issues had gradually seeped into government policy and thinking, particularly, under Egypt’s military regime. The latter reformulated, elaborated, implemented and institutionalized, at different phases and under changing social and political circumstances ideas originated in that platform.