1. In the Yishuv, the Hebrew term most commonly used to denote the 1936–39 revolt was hame’ora‘ot, “the events.” The same term had been used to denote earlier outbreaks of anti-Jewish or anti-Zionist violence in 1920, 1921, and 1929, along with mehumot, “riots.” While in private many Zionist leaders were able to acknowledge the genuinely popular and nationalist character of the revolt, they never publicly characterized it as an authentic national uprising, for obvious reasons. Use of the term me’ora‘ot reflected and reinforced a Zionist discourse which represented the revolt as the product of manipulation and incitement by a small number of agitators who, in the interest of the “feudal” effendis, used violence and terror to intimidate and dominate the peace-loving majority of the Arab population. Far from being a genuine popular movement with a comprehensible set of goals, the events of 1936–39 were thus reduced to a series of acts of almost mindless terror perpetrated by a handful of extremists who lacked popular support.

Zionist use of the term me’ora‘ot paralleled official British use of the term “disturbances” to denote this anticolonial uprising in Palestine, as well as similar insurrections against British rule elsewhere. In official usage “disturbances” suggested some unnatural and undesirable disruption of the normal order of things, a troubling of the status quo by disaffected elements. By no means neutral or transparent, these Hebrew and English terms acquired their meaning and emotional power within a certain conception of relations between Europeans and their non-European subjects—i.e., the colonial discourse which I discussed in Chapter 1

2. Filastin, May 2, 1936.

3. Black, Zionism, 34, 65. An official account of the Histadrut's activities in Haifa in 1933–39 asserted that “the relations which were established in previous years with workers and employers at Haifa port were extremely beneficial as one of the direct factors in preventing a strike at the port of Haifa.…” Mo‘etzet Po‘alei Haifa, Hahistadrut behaifa, 245.

4. Bilitzki, Beyitzira uvema’avak, 224 (emphasis added), 232–34. My account of events at Haifa port also draws on Dar, “Hanisayon,” 58ff; my oral interview with Agassi, May 6, 1987; Hacohen, Time to Tell, 88–89; Seikaly, “Arab Community,” 231–32; and Porath, Palestinian Arab National Movement, 167.

In May 1937 Haifa port officials acceded to Jewish Agency demands that the 200 or so Hawranis employed at the harbor be replaced with Palestinian Arabs, in part to create jobs for unemployed Palestinian Arabs in the villages of the interior and thereby alleviate the social discontent which had helped fuel the revolt. Conditions in the countryside were so bad, however, that some 1,200 desperate applicants showed up for these 200 jobs, and the government had to send a thousand of them back home at its own expense. See Mansur, Arab Worker, 10–11.

Ironically, the very success of the general strike in Jaffa permitted the Yishuv to secure one of its long-standing demands: a port of its own. In May 1936, as a way of undermining the strike at the port of Jaffa, the British authorities permitted the construction of a small wharf in Tel Aviv and the unloading of ships there with exclusively Jewish labor. Despite Arab protests this new facility continued to function long after the strike was over. On this episode, see Porath, Palestinian Arab National Movement, 175–76

5. In ibid., 168.

6. Ibid.; Hacohen, Time to Tell, 89–91; AA 205/7, survey of Arab Department activities for June–December 1937.

7. Mansur, Arab Worker, 31.

8. On Hebrew labor in the moshavot during the revolt, see Shapira, Hama’avak.

9. Great Britain, Palestine Royal Commission, Minutes of Evidence, 215, 220.

10. MAPAI Archives, Beit Berl, MAPAI central committee meeting of January 16, 1937; oral interview with Agassi, May 6, 1987.

11. AA 205/5.

12. After a guerrilla attack on workers at this quarry, Tahir Qaraman sent a telegram to Filastin (published on June 23, 1937) in which he claimed to have severed his connections with Even Vesid at the beginning of 1937. In fact, though he had sold a larger share of the enterprise to the Histadrut, he still remained a partner.

13. Mansur, Arab Worker, 33; Filastin, July 28, 1937. But see also the version in AA 205/7, survey of Arab Department activities for June–December 1937, which portrays Solel Boneh as the innocent victim of Arab nationalist propaganda and agitation.

14. See Horowitz and Hinden, Economic Survey of Palestine, 194–95.

15. Hashomer Hatza‘ir activists in Haifa were not pleased about Alafiya's appointment: the local branch's discussion bulletin asserted that “the very choice [of the young and inexperienced Alafiyya as local PLL organizer] means the whole thing will be buried.…It is clear that strengthening the PLL is not an imperative for MAPAI.…” HH 90/17alef (2alef), December 6, 1936. On Jewish Agency funding for the PLL's security and political operations during the revolt, see AA 208/2046, Agassi to S/EC/H, September 27, 1939.

16. Nassar's letters are in AA 407/605. See too AA 205/6; AA 205/7, survey of Arab Department activities for June–December 1937, 3; CZA, S25/2961, Agassi to the Jewish Agency's Political Department, February 15, 1937; and Eshed, Mosad, passim.

17. See, for example, “Ayyuha al-sukkan,” issued in Haifa and dated July 31, 1936, in AA 208/781alef. The Erem-Nir faction of Po‘alei Tziyon Smol put out at least one Arabic leaflet of its own, under the name of its front group Antifa (from “antifascist”).

18. AA 298/781alef, Agassi to Harpaz and Hacohen, October 2, 1936; AA 205/6, meeting of the Arab Committee, November 11, 1936; CZA, S25/9161; AA 205/7, Agassi, report on PLL activities, May 20, 1937.

19. Mansur, Arab Worker, 6; for Alafiya's account of this and other meetings, see AA 205/7, survey of Arab Department activities for June–December 1937, 4. See too the comments by one of the ILP members of Parliament who had visited Palestine in Jewish Socialist Labour Party, British Labour Policy on Palestine (London, 1938), 114–16.

20. See, for example, Mordekhai Orenstein, Jews, Arabs and British in Palestine: A Left Socialist View (London, 1936).

21. AA 205/7, Agassi's report on PLL activities, May 20, 1937.

22. Ibid. See also Black, Zionism, 336–64.

23. The memorandum, “Co-operation between Jewish and Arab Workers under the Auspices of the General Federation of Jewish Labour,” is in CZA, S25/4618; the testimony is from Great Britain, Palestine Royal Commission, Minutes of Evidence, 234–37.

24. Ibid., 340–43; Filastin, January 17, 1937.

25. MAPAI Archives, Beit Berl, minutes of MAPAI political committee meeting of May 9, 1935; S/EC/H, May–August 1936; Black, Zionism, 66–67.

26. EC/H, May, June, September 9, October 29, 1936.

27. On Assaf's career, see Shapiro, Formative Years, 82–83.

28. Haqiqat al-Amr, March 24, 1937.

29. Ben-Gurion expressed this perspective concisely in an address to his colleagues in the Zionist leadership in October 1936: “There is no conflict between Jewish and Palestinian [Arab] nationalism because the Jewish nation is not in Palestine and the Palestinians are not a nation.” In Flapan, Zionism, 131. I have not seen the Hebrew original of this quotation, but I very much doubt that Ben-Gurion actually used the term “Palestinian” to refer to those whom labor Zionists usually called “the Arabs of the Land of Israel” (‘araviyei eretz yisra’el).

30. Quoted in Teveth, Ben-Gurion, 170. See also Ben-Gurion's July 1938 speech to MAPAI's Political Committee, quoted in Flapan, Zionism, 141–42.

31. Teveth, Ben-Gurion, 179ff, and Flapan, Zionism, ch. 1.

32. EC/H, March 27, 1941. But see also AA 205/7, Agassi's report on PLL activities, May 20, 1937, which claims that Haqiqat al-Amr evoked some positive responses among Arab readers.

33. See, for example, Agassi's report to the MAPAI central committee, meeting of January 16, 1937, in MAPAI Archives, Beit Berl.

34. Ibid.

35. Teveth, Ben-Gurion, 170; Black, Zionism, 63–64.

36. On the continuing search for funding, see CZA, S25/2961, Agassi to the Jewish Agency's Political Department, February 15, 1937; Agassi to Shertok, May 18, 1937; Hoz to Shertok, December 17, 1937 and June 15, 1938.

37. CZA S25/2961, Agassi to the Jewish Agency's Political Department, March 22, 1938, and report on the PLL, July 1938.

38. Superintendent of Police, Lydda District, to the Acting District Commissioner, Lydda District, February 1943, reproduced in al-Budayri, Tatawwur.

39. Quoted in Porath, Palestinian Arab National Movement, 238.

40. HH/AC 4/2, from Agassi's diary.

41. Ibid.; CZA, S25/2961, PLL report for January–June 1938.

42. Lesch, Arab Politics, 226.

43. Quoted in Tzvi Lavi, “Hashomer Hatza‘ir–Hakibbutz Ha’artzi uva‘ayat ha‘avoda ha‘aravit bameshek hayehudi, 1926–1939” (unpublished M.A. thesis, Tel Aviv University, 1980), 70.