Watch Eran
Torbiner’s Film About the Man who Helped Fund the anti-Zionist Left and Stood
in the Forefront of the Fight for the Rights of Israeli Palestinians
DAVID
EHRENFELD - THE RED DIAMOND MERCHANT
It’s not often that a rich capitalist
or member of the ruling class crosses class lines to support the left. Of
course there are exceptions such as Friedrich Engel, Tony Benn and the Countess Markievicz
and one would expect, if capitalism was in danger of being overthrown, for
others to join the side of the revolutionaries. However it is very much the
exception.
Class traitors usually come from the
ranks of the oppressed not the oppressor because that is, after all, the way
rich and powerful minorities maintain their grip on society. David Ehrenfeld
was one such exception to the norm.
David Ehrenfeldwas the majority shareholder and head of the Israeli
diamond company Keren Or. By all accounts he was a brilliant businessman and as
such he was very rich.
However unlike most of his class he
used this money to support a variety of organisations on the Israeli left,
including Matzpen, the Socialist Organisation in Israel, an anti-Zionist
political group.
This would sometimes cause
difficulties on a personal level. One such friend, Gideon Freudenthal, spoke
about how when David went out he took him to an expensive restaurant which
Gideon could not afford to reciprocate, so they reached a deal. David would
take him to an expensive restaurant and Gideon would in turn take him to a
workers’ cafe!
The film deals primarily with the
1950s and 1960s and includes footage of the struggles of Israeli Palestinians
against land confiscations, police repression and the Zionist state as well as Israel’s
Black Panthers who were from Israel’s Arab or Oriental Jewish community. David
was always on hand to help fund an activity and take part.
David was placed number 3 on the
elections slate of Haolem
Hazeh, an anti-establishment magazine edited by Uri Avneri which came
repeatedly into conflict with the governments of David Ben Gurion. Since Haolem
Hazeh secured 2 seats in the Knesset David must have been in with a chance of
becoming a member of the Knesset.
We also see plenty of evidence of the
hostility of other diamond merchants in Tel Aviv to David’s activities.They expected him to act and behave like a
capitalist not a socialist.
David paid the deposit for an openly
revolutionary socialist party which was standing for the Knesset and which was
supported by members and supporters of Matzpen (though it did not stand
officially on behalf of Matzpen). He helped to fund many other activities,
demonstrations, leaflets etc. by which the Israeli left spread its propaganda.
The film covers Israel during the
period of the Israeli Labor Party governments. We can see how these governments
behaved in the same way to the Likud governments that succeeded it. This is
important because it shows that contrary to those who believe Israel was
corrupted by the post-1967 occupation, Israel was always an apartheid and
settler colonial society where different laws, rules and regulations applied to
its Arab population.
Interviewed is his friend and Matzpen member, Giyora Neumann, who was gaoled for 6 months as a result of his refusal to serve in the Israeli army. Giyora must have been amongst the first, if not the very first, refusenik in Israel.
The film handles very skilfully David’s
character and the difficulties experienced by someone who mixed with the
wealthy and powerful as well as those struggling against the society those
people represented. His sister, Mira Eran described how, when he was dying,
David could not handle the interest shown in his welfare by others. Mira quotes
him as saying that: ‘I’ve been alone my
entire life all of the sudden I have 50 visitors.’
David died in December 1975 aged 47.
His funeral was a strange mixture of diamond merchants and ‘long-bearded friends’, ‘wealthy diamond dealers and members of
Rakah (Israeli Communist Party) and Matzpen. The rich and powerful meeting,
probably for the first and last time, his friends on the Israeli left and Arabs.
The Committee of Arab Students brought a huge bouquet of flowers.
His friend Ahmad Massarwa, who lived
in the Arab village of Ar'ara, said that people thought it was an Arab
funeral!
The impression that I got coming
across was that David was a thoughtful but lonely individual, extremely
empathetic and understanding, who saw the ugliness in Israeli society and the
way it treated its ‘minority problem.’ He was someone who could be called a
beautiful soul who hated injustice and yet had found himself at the pinnacle of
society with riches he could find little use for.
His niece, Orly Eran, told of their
shared family history, through a variety of press clippings, photographic
archive materials and interviews with his family and comrades.
David made a strange political
journey from the vehemently anti-Arab Revisionist Etzel (Irgun) to the far-left
of Israeli politics. David was an unobtrusive person, rarely putting himself
forward and yet he consistently attended socialist and left-wing protests.
This film is well worth seeing just
for the archival footage and its periodisation. It shows the build up to and
aftermath of the 6 Day War when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and
Golan Heights and how some supporters and members of Matzpen put an advert into
Ha’aretz, opposing the occupation and predicting that it would lead to
resistance, counter-resistance and what is called ‘terrorism’ i.e. resistance. All
of this was inevitable and yet the Israeli Labour government was determined to
ensure that its conquests would not be returned to the people who lived there.
Mira describes him as someone who was
never truly happy despite his business success. Although he was surrounded by many
friends, he was fundamentally lonely.
Director Eran Torbiner has also
produced the film Bunda’im
about the remnants of the Bund in Israel and a film on Matzpen.
The film was shot in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, U.K and Germany between 1999 –
2003.
Machover looks
back on life since his childhood under the Palestine Mandate and describes both
his own family and political background
There are not many people who can justly be described as
legends in their own lifetime but Moshe Machover is one such person. An indefatigable
optimist he was the ‘one who got away’. Targeted by the Zionists and expelled
summarily by the Labour Party’s discredited Sam Mathews, there was such a
groundswell of opposition both within and without the Labour Party, that Moshe
was reinstated
within a month after Corbyn’s office had been forced to intervene with the
Compliance Unit.
Unlike the cowards of the Socialist Campaign Group, Dianne Abbot et al, Moshe was proud to appear in Zoom meetings alongside expelled members like myself and Chris Williamson, the only MP who did not subscribe to the false 'antisemitism' narrative
Moshe has subsequently been suspended by Starmer as part of
his purge of anti-Zionist Jews (its official name, as befitting such
doublethink, is ‘rooting out anti-Semitism’).
The first pamphlet that I read, at the age of 18 when I was
coming out as an anti-Zionist, was by Moshe Machover and two fellow members of
Matzpen, Akiva Orr and Haim Hanegbi. Up to then my opposition to Zionism was
largely instinctive rather than theoretically worked out. This was a time when
the very word ‘Palestinian’ was disputed. I had been brought up to consider Palestinians
as just ‘Arabs’. It is as if Romanians or Swiss nationals were referred to as Europeans.
Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister famously declared that
there was no such thing as the Palestinians.
Moshe as a child
‘The Class Nature of Israeli society’ was published by New Left Review in January/February 1971
although I read it in a pamphlet published by the International Socialists (SWP).
It helped me to clarify my intuitive feelings about Zionism, that it was an exclusivist
and chauvinist project that rejected the basic ideas of Socialism. The pamphlet
helped me to jettison many of the ideas that I had grown up with in a Zionist
environment.
A Young Moshe Machover & Jabra Nicola
Matzpen (Compass), which Moshe helped form in 1962, was the
first Israeli anti-Zionist organisation. In the film Moshe describes briefly
the origins of the organisation and the influence of the Palestinian Marxist
Jabra Nicola over him and others. Nicola saw the solution to the dispossession and
oppression of the Palestinians as being a regional one involving workers and
peasants struggle in the Arab East to overthrow the corrupt and repressive
regimes which dot the landscape.
The Israeli Communist Party, from which Matzpen broke, never
rejected Zionism. Indeed it has never had any analysis of Zionism worthy of the
name. It sees Zionism as largely irrelevant and doesn’t see the Israeli working
class as a settler working class.
The Irgun, a terrorist militia which perpetrated the massacre at Deir Yassin in April 1948 before the declaration of independence
By way of contrast Matzpen developed an understanding of
Zionism and Israel as a settler-colonial ideology and movement or what Moshe
describes, using Kautsky’s terminology a ‘work’ or ‘exclusion’ colony as
opposed to an ‘exploitation colony’.
In my view these categories are too rigid, as some colonies
like South Africa could be both exploitation and exclusion colonies. Hence South
Africa’s Bantustan policy.
Jabra Nicola
Rakah, the Israeli CommunistParty believed and still believes that the Israeli state can be reformed
and that Israeli Palestinians can achieve equality within it. They never
understood that it was Zionism which ensured that Israel could never become a
state of its own citizens. Rakah was a Stalinist party that went along in 1948 with
Stalin’s support for the establishment of a ‘Jewish’ state, a policy which all
but destroyed the Arab Communist Parties in the region.
The idealised image of the Kibbutzim and Jewish Labour - what wasn't shown were the evictions of Arab peasants with the help of the British army to make way for the Kibbutzim
Today the Palestine solidarity movement and academia takes it
for granted that Israel is a settler colonial state, but for many years people
saw Israel as either a liberal democracy or a social democratic, if not socialist
society, with the Kibbutzim as their idea of socialism in practice. The idea 60
years ago that Israel was a settler colonial state was ground breaking.
I freely confess that Moshe has been an enormous influence
over my own political development although, as often happens with one’s mentors,
we disagree on certain issues. I don’t for example accept Moshe’s belief that
the Israeli or Hebrew people constitute a nation in their own right with a right
to self-determination as a Hebrew state in the future. In my view such a state
would inevitably contain within it forces seeking to reconstitute themselves as
a Zionist and Jewish Supremacist state with all that entails. Hebrew culture in
Israel is inevitably a culture of oppression.
Zionist 'socialism' was a strictly Jewish only affair and thus it negated the basic principle of socialism, the unity of the working class whatever its ethnic or religious origins. Today that has played out in the presence in a far-right coalition of the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz
Unlike Moshe I also believe that the idea or concept of a unitary
democratic secular state is one that the Palestine solidarity movement should
adopt. Why? Firstly because it negates the concept of a Jewish State, which the
two state solution does nothing to challenge. But also because a solidarity
movement that is unable to present a vision of what it is striving for will in
the end succumb to partial solutions such as a repartition. How such a goal will
be achieved is a separate question.
I also have less faith in the future potential of the Israeli
working class than Moshe because experience has shown that in settler colonial
states, be it South Africa or Ireland, the settler working class is to the
right of its own bourgeoisie. Their support for an ethno-supremacist state
means that they are incapable of acting as a class for itself.
The ethnic cleansing of Jaffa - the only people driven into the sea were the Palestinians
I see no progressive or socialist potential in the Israeli Jewish
working class because its identity wrapped up in the super oppression of the Palestinian
working class.
Today the idea of Israel as an Apartheid State has become widely
accepted. This idea, that Israel is a state in which racial oppression is not a
side effect or by-product of its other policies but inbuilt into the state
itself, has gradually taken hold. Ideologically Israel and its defenders are in
a weaker position now than they have ever been.
The flight of the Palestinians was necessary to create an artificial Jewish majority in Israel
This development has taken place at the same time as Israel
is militarily and economically stronger than it has ever been although still dependant
on its benefactor, the United States.
Where I agree with Moshe is that the Question of Zionism or
Palestine cannot be solved within the borders of Palestine. The great mistake
of the Palestinian leadership, the PLO, was to believe that they could become yet
another corrupt Arab leadership in a Palestinian state of their own side by
side with the Israeli state. The PLO leaders desired nothing more than the
right to oppress their own people, as the Palestinian Authority today
demonstrates.
Tel Aviv, a Jewish only city in its early days in British Palestine
It was this that led to the disaster that is the 1993 Oslo
Accords. At the time those of us who opposed Oslo were very much in a minority.
Fateh activists were enthusiastic about its prospects and their prospects. This
enthusiasm derived from the belief that Zionism could be confined within pre-1948
borders and could live alongside a Palestinian state. Unfortunately the
Palestinian leadership never understood the nature of Zionism and how it is an
inherently expansionist and colonisatory project. Or if they did understand it
rhetorically they never incorporated it in their theory and practice. Today it
is very clear that the Israeli state cannot be reformed and Zionism cannot
change its spots.
An artist's view of Tel Aviv
The other mistake of the PLO was, in exchange for subsidies to
finance their operations, to establish uncritical relationships with the very Arab
regimes which oppressed their own people. These regimes paid lip service to the
Palestinian cause whilst in practice abandoning them. Today we can see this
clearly with the Abraham
Accords, which follow on from the 1978 Camp David Accords
whereby Egypt recognised Israel. Following Oslo, Jordan also established diplomatic
relations with Israel.
The Arab regimes fear, despise and oppress their own peoples.
They are the junior allies of imperialism. Regimes such as that in Saudi Arabia
and Egypt are some of the most brutal on the planet. They are jealously guarded
by the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv yet the Palestinian movement has largely been
uncritical of these regimes. The role of Israel is to ensure that radical Arab
nationalism never triumphs in the region.
Where I disagree with Moshe is that I don’t accept that it is
necessary for a socialist revolution to take hold in the Arab world before
Zionism can be overthrown. If only because the establishment of socialism has
proved rather more difficult than Marx and the early socialists envisaged. I
think it is possible for nationalist revolutions to overthrow the ancien
regimes in the Arab world and in that way to threaten the very imperialist
interests that Israel is paid to watch over.
The original advert in Ha'aretz
Moshe has lived through the entire period of the Israeli state.
He recalls how, in September 1967, Matzpen was the first group to place an
advert in Ha’aretz decrying the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank which an
Israeli Labor not Likud Government, presided over. Moshe also recalls the
hostility and calls of ‘traitor’ that greeted this advert. The advert met with
unbridled hostility and threats to the individual signatories.
Moshe tells how, at the age of 3, his first definite memory
was the day that World War 2 broke out. He describes the bombing of Tel Aviv by
the Italian airforce and says that by 1944 it was clear that something
horrendous had taken place in Europe in respect of the Jews.
This is in itself instructive because the Zionist leadership
in Palestine were well aware that the Holocaust was taking place from at least mid-1942
if not earlier but they did their best to play such reports down. The Hebrew
press even whilst it reported on what was happening in Europe also cast doubt
on its own reports. Zionism, which has fashioned the Holocaust into an
ideological weapon, was at that time more concerned with state building than
rescuing Jewish refugees.
Moshe emigrated to Britain in 1968. Many others in Matzpen also
emigrated to the West because life was made very difficult for those who were seen
as traitors to Zionism. Moshe became a Professor of Mathematical Logic and
Philosophy at King’s College in London. Far from being a democratic society
Israel has always been extremely intolerant of Jews who dissent from the
Zionist narrative.
Moshe describes in some detail how, in the wake of the Nakba between
1947 and 1949, he and other children would hike into the Galilee and see the
ruins of the Arab villages. They saw the artifacts and belongings left after the
Zionist militias had looted much of what remained when the original owners had
been forced to flee from Palestine. The Zionist myth that people like Israeli Ambassador
Tzipi Hotoveli still propagate is that the Palestinians voluntarily left.
It was the Israeli Labor Party that presided over the 6 Day
War and the conquest of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan Heights. I
remember very well how Israeli propaganda portrayed the situation as a possible
new holocaust. We really believed that Israel might well suffer defeat and that
the Jews would be driven into the sea. Of course this was a lie meant to fool
not only Israeli Jews but the wider Jewish communities world-wide. We now know
that this was, as Moshe says, ‘poppycock’.
The ILP was also responsible for the establishment of the
first settlements. It was an Israeli Labor Government which launched a pre-emptive
war on Syria, Jordan and Egypt with the intention of completing what was they
considered unfinished business in 1947-9, namely the conquest of the whole of what
was Palestine under the British Mandate. In 1956 Israel had launched the Suez
War, in conjunction with Britain and France, against Egypt following Nasser’s
nationalisation of the Suez Canal. At that time Israel had been forced to
withdraw after the US Administration of Eisenhower had made its displeasure
clear.
The remains of the Arab villages after they had been looted and their inhabitants expelled or massacred
Moshe explains how one of the cardinal beliefs of the Zionists
is that Jews don’t merely constitute a religious community but a nation in its
own right. That is integral to the Zionist claim on what they call Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel). The
basis of this claim is that God gave the land to the Jews. Given that the early
Zionists were atheists, we have the absurdity that Zionism based its claim to Palestine
on the promise of a god who doesn’t exist!
I hope you find this interview as illuminating and
interesting as I did.
I am posting this important analysis of Israel’s
Communist Party (Maki) by a veteran Israeli anti-Zionist Tikva Honig-Parnass. The Israeli Communist Party, in the form of its electoral front Hadash, has 5 out of the 13 seats of the Jewish-Arab Joint List in the Knesset.
This is an important article because Maki is a major component within the Joint List. It has traditionally been the largest party representing the Arab sector in the Knesset although not an Arab party. Maki is not, contrary to many peoples' beliefs, an anti-Zionist party. It is wedded to the two state formula, which means that it accepts the existence of a Jewish state. It also means it accepts an imperialist settlement of the conflict in Israel/Palestine which it defines as a conflict of two nationalities rather than seeing it as the outcome of a settler colonial movement which established a state which continued to colonise and settle the land, treating the indigenous population as tolerated guests at best. Although undoubtedly Maki has fought a brave fight against the attacks of Zionism against Israel's Arab population and has stood alone in this for many years, especially under the Labour Zionist governments up till 1977, it has never rejected Zionism per se.
Tony Greenstein
The
Israeli Communist Party (Maki):
DESIGNATING A STRATEGY FOR CHANGE WITHOUT
CHALLENGING ZIONISM
By Tikva Honig-Parnass
Arab members of Maki, the “Israeli” Communist Party (a
descendant of the Palestine Communist Party) in 1949. In 1965 the party
split into two factions, one Zionist and the other anti-Zionist. The
Zionist faction retained the name Maki, while the anti-Zionist faction
named itself Rakah. The Soviet Union recognized Rakah
as the official communist party in Palestine quickly after its
formation. Rakah still exists today, and ironically, it has renamed
itself Maki, while the original (Zionist) Maki has been disbanded.
The Israeli Communist Party, Maki, which is
represented by Hadash in the Arab-Jewish Joint List in the Knesset and which
has 5 out of the 13 seats that the Joint List holds, has had a chequered
history. Its leader in 1948 Meir Vilner signed the Israeli Declaration of
Independence and it followed Stalin in Moscow in recognising the Zionist
state. In 1965 Maki split and the Jewish
section led by Moshe Sneh moved off in a Zionist direction. The largely Arab part went on to form Rakah which became with the alliance with other small
groups like the Black Panthers, Hadash.
Tikva Honig-Parnass was raised in the
Jewish community of pre-state Palestine, fought in the 1948 war and served as
the secretary of the then Radical Left Zionist Party of Mapam (The Unified
Workers Party) in the Knesset ( 1951-1954). In '60 she definitively broke with
Zionism and joined the ranks of the Israeli Socialist Organization, known as
"Matzpen". Since then she has played an active role in the movement
against the '67 occupation as well as in the struggle for the Palestinian
national rights. She co-edited
Between the Lines with Toufic Haddad
Uri Avneri at Hadash Demonstration Against the Lebanon War 1982
At the Marx Conference which took place on
November 27, MK Dov Khenin, a leader of the Israeli Communist Party(Maki) gave
a lecture named :"But the point is to change it" (Published in Hagada
Hasmalit , November 28, where the entire sentence from the Theses on Feuerbach
was posted: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various
ways; the point is to change it") The struggle against Zionism and its
embodiment in the settler colonial state of Israel is fundamental to any
strategy aiming at a thorough change of Israel and the entire region.
However, Dov Khenin presents his suggested
road to change without uttering the word Zionism nor relating to the need to
dismantle the Zionist colonial state as a necessary condition to his strategy
for change.
Some would argue against my going back to
the "original sin" of the old Stalinist Maki of 1948* for tracing
today's Khenin and his Party's political positions. I refer to the old Maki (
The Israeli Communist Party) which was a signatory (through its leader Meir
Vilner) of the infamous "Declaration of Independence". It took place
on May 14 ,1948 when occupations of Palestinian towns and villages and the and
brutal expulsions of their residents were already in full volume. Maki trailed
the Soviet Union support for the 1947 UN Partition Plan which recognized a
Jewish state and confirmed the Zionist claim for historic rights in Palestine,
as emphasized in the Declaration.
Judaism & Communism
Indeed the Israeli Communist Party of
(Maki) of today is not the same as the 1948 Maki from which it split during the
'60 and later assumed its name. The present Maki heads the political alliance
known as Hadash- actually, the heiress of Rakah- formed after split between a
largely Jewish faction led by Moshe Sneh. Still, I mention the 1948 signature
because the Israeli Communist Party , until this day has not made a true
criticism of its conduct during all the years of Soviet rule nor has it
examined its traditional position on the partition plan or its present form of
2 states solution .The different suggested border does not change the essence
of this solution which in the long run does recognize a Bantustan state
alongside a Jewish state.
** Thus, even if the present positions of Maki don’t
derive directly from the 48' Stalinist pro-Zionist stance, the latter still
echoes in Maki's lack of explicit self criticism and its self definition as
"non Zionist ".
Maki's continued support for it's main
faults of the past, is reflected in Dov Khenin's article: He Ignores the
colonialist nature of Israel as a central characteristic that should be the
starting point and base of any analysis of Israel's political regime and its
class struggle. Hence, Maki's claim of adhering to Marxism-Leninism for
designing its "strategy for change", appears to be but somewhat empty
words as long as its political positions are not placed within the framework of
Israel as a settler colonial state.
Dov Khanin presents the fronts and blocks
which workers' parties created in the October and Chinese Revolutions ( as well
as Gramsci's writings) as models on which "the class project should be
based" :"The common denominator of these examples" he says,
"is that revolutionaries' seek to see in their societies the " actual
lines of collisions and thus create a power that can advance the revolutionary
change."
This is how Khenin applies these examples to
in his analysis of Israeli society today and the strategy for its change: Israel is prey to one of Late Capitalism
characteristics, namely the way in which it "dismantles social structures
with the aid of Globalization and its economic and ideological hegemony."
Hence, "We should do today what Marx[ists?] did then- to trace the
subjects for change in our society. Of course the working class is such a
subject. But the Israeli working class is complex and weak. It is very large
but fragmented.[..]
The challenge is to crystallize a new
historic block in which "the working class is significant but not
exclusive." This Block should include all the oppressed groups in Israeli
society which " more than any other society in the world suffers from a
lot of deep and true wounds beyond the class dimension."
These wounds include : "THE NATIONAL
wound of the Palestinians, and also of the Jews, the ETHNIC [MIZRAHI] wound
which stems from the melting pot[The false declared policy aimed at creating
one homogeneous people out of the variety of immigrant Jews) that erased
traditions and cultures, GENDER wounds which stems from a patriarchal society,
etc."
The Task of Maki is to understand the
concrete political role of these wounds which are exploited as a mechanisms for
preserving the system". Khenin presents the "Mizrahi wound" as
an example: "[It} has been formed against the establishment elites of the
labor movement' and thus became "the base for the historic block which
keeps the rule of the Right."
According to Khenin another essential
problem of "this land" [in addition to its "wounds "] is
the weakness of the class struggle. The labor movement (Mapai and Labor) is
historically responsible for it, since "Like any other Social Democracy it
evaporated the idea of class struggle."
The use of the term the
"national" wound which Khenin uses for "Palestinians and also
Israelis", echoes the Zionist left conception of a "national
conflict" between two peoples who have right one land, rather than seeing
the conflict as that between colonizers and colonized. Hence, Khenin is carefyl
not to point to the source from which the "national wound" stems as
he does for the other two- the Mizrahi and gender wounds. Further, The national
issue is reduced to just one of the many "identity wounds" which
characterize Israel as if it is just another Nation-state which the examples of
the October or China revolutions rather than the anti colonial liberation
movements apply to it.
Elaborating on the "national
wound" would have required Khenin to explicitly express his position
towards Zionism and Israel as a settlers colonial state and society which
dictates the nature of its class struggle and the real strategy for its
revolutionary change - dismantling the Zionist apartheid state.
Furthermore, in accord with Maki's
traditional support of 2 states solution Khenin ignores the fact that Israel
already rules the entire historic Palestine and would continue ruling it for
many years to come. No doubt this is an additional factor which necessitates a
re-thinking of the nature of the class struggle out side the box of pre '67
Israel to which Khenin limits his analysis. To be on the safe side he does not
mention even the '67 occupation and focuses his proposal for political strategy
on 'Israel proper' alone.***
All in all the communist Party in Israel
has not passed through a significant radical change towards an anti Zionist
stance which derives from a solid Marxist, anti Imperialist and class
perspective. The need of such a revolutionary party is at present acute more
than ever.
* Maki was a descendant of the Palestinian
Communist Party (PCP), which changed its name to MAKEI (the Communist Party of
Eretz Yisrael) after endorsing partition in 1947, and then to Maki. Members of
the National Liberation League, an Arab party that had split off from the PCP
in 1944, rejoined Maki in October 1948, giving the party both Jewish and
Israeli Arab members
** Israel Poterman: The Soviet Union
Support for the Partition Plan- vision and Reality, Hagada Hasmalit January 31
2004).
*** Ill spare the reader from a detailed
report on Khenin's pathetic self appraisal experience in creating the right
block in "A Town For Us" – a list which ran in the elections to Tel
Aviv municipality in 2008 and 2013.( It yielded 5 and 3 out of 31 members in
the Tel-Aviv Municipality Council, respectively.)
