Mandatory Palestine Research Articles

Lawyers in transition – Palestinian Arab lawyers in the first decade of the Jewish state

AbstractThis article traces the careers of 12 Palestinian Arab lawyers who practised law during the last years of the British Mandate in Palestine (1920–1948), and who became Israeli citizens after 1948. The State of Israel made efforts to limit the professional practice of Palestinian lawyers and to supervise them. Yet, despite the pressures, most of them continued their legal practice and became active in the Israeli public sphere. We show that the Palestinian lawyers’ struggle to maintain their practice in Israel was used to assert autonomy for the legal profession, and concurrently, it was perceived as a touchstone for minority civil rights in the state.

תרבות בהסתדרות, 1945-1930

The Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine was dominated by the Hebrew national culture. Culture was an important and sometimes definitive element in securing the dominance of the Zionist Labor Movement during the Mandate era. The construction and shaping of a new Hebrew culture was a central principle in the movement’s creedal, political, and educational approach. The General Federation of Jewish Labor in Palestine, known as the Histadrut, which was the main institutional player in the shaping of cultural endeavor in Yishuv society, hewed to the spirit of the Socialist Zionist worldview. During this period, the Histadrut emerged as the most progressive, authentic and current cultural agent working to shape the Jewish-Zionist atmosphere and every-day life in Palestine. In the 1930s, the leading figure in the Histadrut’s cultural endeavor was Jacob Sandbank, who operated as part of the Cultural Center established in 1935. According to Sandbank, culture, in the sense of kultura, cannot be ‘manufactured’. Instead, he claimed that it materializes in various spheres of life, and its vital and spiritual elements come about inadvertently – without prior intent, without setting goals, and without dictating things ab initio.

Lone Jewish Medical Personnel in Arab Towns: A Conditional Presence in British Mandate Palestine

Lone Jewish Medical Personnel in Arab Towns: A Conditional Presence in British Mandate Palestine

The German Platoon of the Palmach: the first German-Jewish fighting unit in the Second World War and the unsung story of heroism

ABSTRACT Among the fifty thousand Jewish refugees who escaped from the National Socialists in western and central Europe between 1933 and the beginning of World War II was a group of young and idealistic German-speaking Zionists, mainly from Germany and Austria. In 1942 many of them created and joined the Hapalmach Hagermanit—the German Platoon of the Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, a Zionist underground paramilitary organization that operated in Palestine. The Deutsche Abteilung (German Platoon) embodied the first “German” clandestine Jewish fighting force in British Mandate Palestine. This article explores the origin and history of this unit and its significance as the first German-Jewish fighting unit in World War II. It also discusses the internal and external challenges its members faced and eventually overcame. This article relies on the few available sources on the German Platoon, including the testimonials of veterans recorded at their reunions, interviews with the last living member of the German Platoon conducted between 2011 and 2016, and documents and photos obtained with the assistance of the Palmach Archive in Ramat Aviv, Israel.

Competing Administrations in Palestine: Imperial Power and Settler Regimes in the British Empire

This paper investigates the similarities between the British experiences with settlers in other instances of colonisation, and mandatory Palestine. It addresses the extent to which British officials were aware of, and understood the aims, intentions, and methods of the Zionist movement, as well as the consequences for the indigenous population. Utilising primarily British documents from the mandatory period, and the literature on settler-colonialism, this paper will address a gap in research on the imperial responsibility, and role in, the mandate's development. This examines the knowledge and intent of the British in the settler-colonial context, and British imperial history.

Peddlers and the Policing of National Indifference in Palestine, 1920–1948

Abstract This article explores nationalism and consumption in British-mandate Palestine using a history-from-below approach. It focuses on Arab and Jewish peddlers who regularly crossed national, cultural, and geographic borders in order to conduct petty trade with customers. Colonial and nationalist actors worked hard to curb the ubiquitous presence of such peddlers for various reasons. First, British colonial officials regarded urban hawking as unhygienic, noisy, and not modern. Second, many Zionist actors deemed Jewish-Arab trade threatening to the Zionist principle of ‘Hebrew consumption’. Zionist leaders also expressed concern about the presence of Jewish peddlers whom they viewed as the antithesis of the idealized, Hebrew-speaking Zionist ‘New Jew’. Third, Palestinian Arab nationalists policed Arab peddlers who violated the six-month national strike in 1936 by continuing to hawk their goods. In short, in the eyes of various nationalist actors, these peddlers displayed ‘national indifference’ that needed to be controlled. By studying how nationalist actors policed everyday, small-scale peddler-consumer exchanges, we are able to understand how a ‘culture of nationalism’ arose in mandatory Palestine.

The Emergence of Social Work Research Between Professionalisation and Nation-Building: A Transnational Case Study

Abstract This study explores the transnational history of social work and, as a case study, examines the movement of social work research between Germany and Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s. This transnational circulation of knowledge and ideas was driven by a group of German-Jewish social workers who migrated to Palestine and helped establish the profession in the new country. Particular attention is paid to early professional schools of social work, which served as hubs for knowledge circulation and laid the academic foundations of social work long before the discipline found its final form. To study this translation process, this article analyses research activities at Alice Salomon’s Academy for Social and Educational Women's Work in Berlin and Siddy Wronsky’s School of Social Services in Jerusalem. Both institutes were influential in establishing the profession in their countries and closely linked the emerging social work training and research. As a transnational research team, we approached and analysed these activities through archival files and documents in Israel and Germany. This analysis is framed by assumptions about the transnational translation of knowledge and, to add context, presents findings on the origins of social work in both countries and its societal embeddedness.

The Thessaloniki Jewish pioneers in the Haifa waterfront, 1929–32

ABSTRACT This article traces the economic history of the small Jewish maritime community in its hometown of Thessaloniki during the 1920s and its new home of Haifa in the early 1930s. The Thessalonikians’ strong connection to port occupations made them an ideal pioneer in the Zionist scheme of creating a Jewish maritime presence in Mandatory Palestine. The Thessalonikians’ arrival in the Arab-dominated Haifa waterfront led to continuous conflict. The article examines the encounter between the Thessaloniki port culture and the Arab one in Haifa and its reflection in the core issue of the Jewish hold in the port of Haifa.

Janusz Korczak’s visits to Palestine in 1934 and 1936

ABSTRACT Janusz Korczak is known for his pedagogical methods and for the fate he suffered in the Warsaw Ghetto. We are less familiar with his interest in the image of the ‘New Jew’ and the Zionist movement of his time. This article attempts to introduce unknown ties that Korczak created with the collective settlement in Mandatory Palestine, and to shed light on his two visits at the kibbutz where he stayed, in 1934 and 1936. The article uses, among other sources, interviews with several of Korczak’s orphans who survived, and with those who accompanied him on his visit.

When colonialism and nationalism meet - but speak a different language: the case of Haifa during the British Mandate

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the convergence of British colonialism and Zionist aspirations in Mandatory Palestine. As research so far explored this topic mainly as a confluence of colonial-national interests, this paper is an attempt to look at it from another vantage point, based on the different interpretations of European Modernism and Orientalism by these two groups. The new variable is the Zionist perception of nationalism, and its ties to European Modernism, which strengthened Zionist autonomy in a way that countered British interests to some extent and strengthened Zionist advantages in Palestine over Arab society. These processes were particularly prominent in mixed cities. Haifa was central to this concept as it was free of historical or symbolic baggage. The British developed Haifa as a strategic economic centre, and as a modern space. Promoting unilateral national interests was the very opposite of the British intention for the city. Yet, they allowed and even encouraged Zionist entrepreneurs to create an autonomous national community. We contend that the British had a certain blindness to the symbolic significance that the Zionists attached to the process of urban development, not only as a Modern-European development process but as a basis for national autonomy.

Colonial Trademark: Law and Nationality in Mandate Palestine, 1922–48

Trademark law protects distinctive signs of products against unauthorized uses. It is a legal tool to enhance market efficiency by conveying information about the origin of goods to consumers. Trademarks are also carriers of cultural information about the manufacturers, their products, and their message to the consumers. Thus, trademarks provide an unexpected reflection on society. This article explores the history of trademark law in Mandate Palestine, from the enactment of the first law to the end of the mandate (1922–48) in three cumulative avenues. First, a legal history analysis is provided, which seeks to understand why the British imposed trademark law at the time and manner they chose and how it was received by the local communities. Second, an empirical study of trademark data is given that reveals why the original trademark registry did not survive and how it was reconstructed for the current study. Trademark data offer an understudied and rich resource indicating economic changes and the reception of the law. Third, a semiotic analysis is provided that examines the trademarks themselves, focusing on local trademarks. Nationality is the common thread in these inquiries. The research reveals the differential reception of the British trademark law, with the Jewish population embracing it and the Arab-Palestinian population being much less receptive to it. The Jewish traders often used trademarks to convey national Zionist messages.

On Waters's Miriam and Youssef

On Waters's Miriam and Youssef Efrat Urbach and Netta Schramm Miriam and Youssef. By Steve Waters, audio drama, broadcast on BBC World Service, 2020, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtv38. Miriam and Youssef, a ten-part BBC World Service audio drama released in 2020, is set in Mandatory Palestine and recounts the story of fictional characters—Arab, Jewish, and British. As this review is concerned with questions of representation, we will not examine the plot's accuracy or fidelity to historical events, leaving that to historians. Instead, as a team comprising a musicologist and a textologist, we focus on the storyline and its accompanying musical line. Each of us focused on elements relevant to her field. Together we address questions of voice, narrative, and especially the congruency of the spoken and musical narratives. Evaluators of audio drama, lacking a theoretical framework, always borrow concepts: close reading from literature, analysis of rhyme and stanza from poetry, shot-by-shot from film studies. Some even try to think of the audio drama as a musical score.1 The audio drama storyline is affected by the atmosphere, tone, and mood created by the music. To the untrained ear, however, these effects may remain transparent. Spoken Narrative The chronicle of the British Mandate in Palestine (1917–1947) is a contested history bearing uncomfortable, bitter, and painful memories for all [End Page 293] involved—Palestinians, Israelis, and the British. Miriam and Youssef, a work of fiction set in a real past, is a political enterprise. "This drama presents an unreliable tale tainted by insidious inaccuracies," writes critic Richard Lightbown.2 Miriam and Youssef is also not the first British drama featuring Britain's role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A controversial four-part television drama, The Promise, was released in 2011.3 The Promise builds a dual storyline featuring a contemporary young British woman visiting Israel in the footsteps of the British paratrooper her grandfather once was. One may consider Miriam and Youssef, like The Promise to be a risky postcolonial drama which, fighting amnesia, "takes us somewhere we have learned to forget we ever inhabited."4 Miriam and Youssef's storyline suppresses the British narrative, another form of the postcolonial battle with amnesia. Without contradicting such a reading, another interpretation of this drama's postcolonial momentum is called for. The drama was written by Steve Waters, a prolific playwright and a faculty member at the University of East Anglia. In an article on political dramaturgy, Waters communicates his political preference for bipartisan expositions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His critique is directed at a highly controversial play, Seven Jewish Children, by playwright Caryl Churchill, a response to a 2008 Israel Defense Forces military strike in Gaza. Waters criticizes Churchill not for her "rage at the willful and fruitless brutalities propagated against the people of Gaza by the State of Israel." Rather, Waters's issue is with a one-sidedness in form that leads to poignant rhetoric. His claim is that form, as in artistic decisions about times and places, introduces a logic to content, as in what is said and done on stage.5 Waters concludes by advocating for form-as-content, stressing that form is as important as content. Miriam and Youssef is written to the blueprint of Waters's 2011 article and exhibits great care for decisions on form and bipartisanship. It also reveals other commitments to British perspectives, to be discussed below. Miriam and Youssef's plot contains two and a half intertwining storylines featuring an Arab, a Jew, and a British sergeant, played by Amir El-Masry, Shani Erez, and Blake Ritson, respectively. Miriam is a young Jewish refugee who fled Poland in 1917 when rioters raided and burned down her shtetl. Youssef, destined to be a quarry worker, is the son of the Mukhtar of the village of Deir Yassin. Harry is a gentle and bookish British soldier who is killed halfway through the story. The narrative is ideologically invested in parallelism, a literary technique [End Page 294] that unfolds interlocking events "like the two tapes of a zipper."6 The drama is named for the two protagonists whose fates repeatedly converge and whose moral ambiguities are...

New Arab Maids: Female Domestic Work, “New Arab Women,” and National Memory in British Mandate Palestine – Corrigendum

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Migration spawning migration - on continuity in Jewish emigration from Yugoslavia to Palestine/Israel

The Yugoslav participation in the Jewish emigration to Mandatory Palestine and, after 1948, to Israel, can be defined as a process consisting of six stages. When the migration is observed on the level of socio-political circumstances, the discontinuity between these stages is apparent. However, the same discontinuity is not to be found when the process is deconstructed down to and examined on the level of families and individuals involved in it. The aspiration of individuals to join members of their families already in Palestine, especially after the tragic losses suffered in the Holocaust, has persevered as one of the key motives driving emigration from Yugoslavia. This paper examines the way in which family ties continuously drove emigration to Mandatory Palestine/Israel and pulled its individual stages into an integral whole. It is primarily based on documents kept at the Archives of the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade.

In Pursuit of Political Imagination: Reflections on Diasporic Jewish History

AbstractIn recent years, scholars of Jewish politics have invested political hopes in the revival of “political imagination.” If only we could recapture some of the imaginativeness that early Zionists displayed when wrestling with questions of regime design, it is argued, we might be able to advance more compelling “solutions” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet how does one cultivate political imagination? Curiously, scholars who rehearse the catalogue of regimes that Jews have historically entertained seldom pose this question. In this Article, I revisit a historical episode—the appropriation of diasporic historical narratives by Zionists in mandatory Palestine—in an effort to cultivate a richer political imaginary. I analyze the labor Zionist deployment of Simon Dubnow’s influential master narrative, focusing on a 1926 speech in which David Ben Gurion depicts the autonomist regime that he advocates as a variation upon diasporic political practices. On my reading, this episode illustrates the dilemmas that confront thinkers who invest political hopes in regime design. To realize the promise that new political configurations may emerge from reflections upon Jewish history, I argue, we must develop a new account of political agency, once foundational assumptions of the nation-state have been suspended.

Advancing the historical geography of late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine using GIScience: A review

AbstractLate Ottoman Empire and Mandate Palestine are two important periods preceding independent Israel, characterized by increased attention to Palestine along with modernization processes and substantial landscape changes. Significant increase is also noted in survey and mapping, resulting in a wealth of visual sources. However, while textual sources were used intensively in various studies, the latter were analyzed to a much lesser extent. A major discipline based on the study of visual sources is historical geography. However, lately it seems that historical geography worldwide seeks for new approaches while struggling to retain dominancy in an environment becoming more computerized and technological. In this article I review the opportunities, pitfalls, and challenges of incorporating GIScience into the historical geography of late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine. Accordingly, it is suggested that a proper integration will contribute a substantial theoretical and methodological novelty while boosting the discipline of historical geography as well as other social sciences and humanities disciplines.

Far Apart and Close Together: Fritz Haber and Chaim Weizmann

AbstractFritz Haber (1868–1934) and Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952) were both prominent German‐speaking Jewish chemists with rather divergent views on Jewish assimilation and Zionism that only converged upon the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany. While Haber converted to Protestantism and followed the calling of a German patriot during World War One and the turmoil of the Weimar Republic, Weizmann became the leader of the Zionist movement whose efforts led to the founding of Jewish academic institutions in British Mandate Palestine and eventually to the creation of the State of Israel. Weizmann won the support of the British political establishment for the Zionist cause through his invaluable services to the British military as a chemist during World War One. Guided by the timeline of their encounters as well as their mutual correspondence, we trace the ever‐closer relationship between these two towering figures of the 20th century. Had it not been for his ill health, Haber would have likely assumed a leading position at what is today the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot as well as played a direct role in shaping other academic institutions, including The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in the future State of Israel.

RAF Ein Shemer: A Forgotten Case of Jewish and Arab Work in a British Army Camp in Palestine during the Second World War

This article explores lingering recollections of a marginalised sphere of participation by Jewish and Arab citizens of Mandatory Palestine in the Allied war effort. During the war, Palestine became a major staging ground for Allied troops in the Middle East. Some 15,000 Jewish and 35,000 Arab workers worked in administrative, construction, catering, and maintenances roles within the newly built army bases. The story of civilian labour in RAF Ein Shemer reveals previously neglected normative and non-normative patterns of inter-communal relations between British soldiers and Jewish and Arab workers on the social, economic, ideological, and romantic levels within the context of a colonial-era military installation.

Rezension: Liebermann, Guido, The Origins of Psychoanalysis in Israel. The Freudian Movement in Mandatory Palestine 1918–1948

Rezension: Liebermann, Guido, The Origins of Psychoanalysis in Israel. The Freudian Movement in Mandatory Palestine 1918–1948

New Arab Maids: Female Domestic Work, “New Arab Women,” and National Memory in British Mandate Palestine

AbstractThe “new Arab woman” of the early 20th century has received much recent scholarly attention. According to the middle- and upper-class ideal, this woman was expected to strengthen the nation by efficiently managing her household, educating her children, and contributing to social causes. Yet, we cannot fully understand the “new Arab woman” without studying the domestic workers who allowed this class to exist. Domestic workers carried out much of the physical labor that let their mistresses pursue new standards of domesticity, social engagement, and participation in nationalist organizations. This article examines relationships between Arab housewives and female domestic workers in British Mandate Palestine (1920–1948) through an analysis of domestic reform articles and memoirs. Arab domestic reformers argued that elite housewives, in order to become truly modern women, had to treat maids with greater respect and adjust to the major socioeconomic changes that peasants were experiencing, yet still maintain a clear hierarchy in the home. Palestinian memoirists, meanwhile, often imagine their pre-1948 homes as a site of Palestinian national solidarity. Their memories of intimate relationships that developed between elite families and peasant maids have crucially shaped nationalist narratives that celebrate the Palestinian peasantry.