What do you think?
Rate this book
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948
In Comrades and Enemies Zachary Lockman explores the mutually formative interactions between the Arab and Jewish working classes, labor movements, and worker-oriented political parties in Palestine just before and during the period of British colonial rule. Unlike most of the historical and sociological literature on Palestine in this period, Comrades and Enemies avoids treating the Arab and Jewish communities as if they developed independently of each other. Instead of focusing on politics, diplomacy, or military history, Lockman draws on detailed archival research in both Arabic and Hebrew, and on interviews with activists, to delve into the country's social, economic, and cultural history, showing how Arab and Jewish societies in Palestine helped to shape each other in significant ways.
Comrades and Enemies presents a narrative of Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine that extends and complicates the conventional story of primordial identities, total separation, and unremitting conflict while going beyond both Zionist and Palestinian nationalist mythologies and paradigms of interpretation.
Comrades and Enemies presents a narrative of Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine that extends and complicates the conventional story of primordial identities, total separation, and unremitting conflict while going beyond both Zionist and Palestinian nationalist mythologies and paradigms of interpretation.
460 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
3 people are currently reading
403 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 21, 2025
This book ıs an outstandıng pıece of documentatıon. It shows the ıgnorance and the entıtlement of the Yahud sınce the very fırst arrıval to thıs pıece of land we call Palestıne. It ıs absolutely ınhumane and cruel how they can migrate somewhere, and later on occupy the entıre terrıtory. However, great wrıtıng by Lockman overall but ıt could defınıtely be ımproved. He dıd not address al-Naqba ın suffıcıent detaıl lest the reader see hım as subjectıve or bıased. I do understand hıs poınt of vıew, but I would be a lıar ıf I saıd ı concur. Al-Naqba ıs a serıes of events that needs to be addressed (at least somewhat mentıoned) ın every sıngle book about Palestıne regardless of the topic.
The book does get a bit overwhelmıng wıth all the names of the organısatıons and the leaders etc. and it does have a somber vibe to it but I would really recommend it. It shows almost step by step how the sıtuatıon gets worse and worse. 8/10.
The book does get a bit overwhelmıng wıth all the names of the organısatıons and the leaders etc. and it does have a somber vibe to it but I would really recommend it. It shows almost step by step how the sıtuatıon gets worse and worse. 8/10.
June 22, 2022
Professor Zachary Lockman has written a definitive account of yet another "lost chapter" in Jewish/Palestine/Israeli history. This one was not just buried in the sands of time, to join other archaeological strata in Holy Land sediment; it seems to have been deliberately bulldozed and plowed under like an inconvenient Arab village.
Establishing a Jewish state meant for many - even, at one point, the majority of - Jewish settlers, a socialist one. National socialism - before Hitler forever ruined the concept - was two goals in one for Jewish idealists who abandoned revolutions in someone else's land for the radical transformation of one they could claim as their own.
Yet they were not alone upon it. Like their American counterparts, these settlers had a native problem. But, being socialists, they thought they held a way out of the historic impasse of such settler states. Jewish workers, as a revolutionary vanguard, could tansform the Arab workers of Palestine, too - maybe in the whole Middle East. Thus were born the Arab Bureaus of Labor Zionism, different parties seeking either genuine cooperation or patronizing co-option. In either case, Zionist socialism was skewered on two shafts: its own dedication to a Jewish state, where others would be guests no matter how honored; and awakening Arab/Palestinian nationalism, for whom Palestinian Jews could also be honored guests at best, but never masters.
While Lockman takes pains to show that the dominant narrative of polarized nationalism was not the only reality on the ground, he also demonstrates that the pull from both sides made a mutual center unviable. Despite all efforts at cooperation and developing mutual interests, Arab and Jewish workers found themselves torn apart - first by partition, then front lines of battle.
In fact, Jewish workers led the Haganah's military drive to "purify" Israel-to-be precisely to benefit Jewish labor from the threat of cheap Arab workers. In this they were the exact parallels of other American counterparts, the Western workers who drove out their Chinese competition by blood and fire as in Rock Springs, Wyoming. This, too, is a motive for ethnic cleansing overlooked by mainstream middle class academia. The ascendancy of modern nationalist, anti-socialist Israel proved these fears correct: cheap Arab labor destroyed the basis of Jewish labor and with it the Histadrut, the kibbutz, and the Labor Party in favor of Jabotinsky's radical bourgeoisie.
The possibility of cooperation between "Orientals" and "Europeans" in Palestine might have been as equally foredoomed as in the American West. But some did hope for something better, and their legacy has lived on despite the best efforts of Likud and its anti-socialist settler bloc to strangle its survivors, to bury them in the sand with those whom they tried cooperating.
Establishing a Jewish state meant for many - even, at one point, the majority of - Jewish settlers, a socialist one. National socialism - before Hitler forever ruined the concept - was two goals in one for Jewish idealists who abandoned revolutions in someone else's land for the radical transformation of one they could claim as their own.
Yet they were not alone upon it. Like their American counterparts, these settlers had a native problem. But, being socialists, they thought they held a way out of the historic impasse of such settler states. Jewish workers, as a revolutionary vanguard, could tansform the Arab workers of Palestine, too - maybe in the whole Middle East. Thus were born the Arab Bureaus of Labor Zionism, different parties seeking either genuine cooperation or patronizing co-option. In either case, Zionist socialism was skewered on two shafts: its own dedication to a Jewish state, where others would be guests no matter how honored; and awakening Arab/Palestinian nationalism, for whom Palestinian Jews could also be honored guests at best, but never masters.
While Lockman takes pains to show that the dominant narrative of polarized nationalism was not the only reality on the ground, he also demonstrates that the pull from both sides made a mutual center unviable. Despite all efforts at cooperation and developing mutual interests, Arab and Jewish workers found themselves torn apart - first by partition, then front lines of battle.
In fact, Jewish workers led the Haganah's military drive to "purify" Israel-to-be precisely to benefit Jewish labor from the threat of cheap Arab workers. In this they were the exact parallels of other American counterparts, the Western workers who drove out their Chinese competition by blood and fire as in Rock Springs, Wyoming. This, too, is a motive for ethnic cleansing overlooked by mainstream middle class academia. The ascendancy of modern nationalist, anti-socialist Israel proved these fears correct: cheap Arab labor destroyed the basis of Jewish labor and with it the Histadrut, the kibbutz, and the Labor Party in favor of Jabotinsky's radical bourgeoisie.
The possibility of cooperation between "Orientals" and "Europeans" in Palestine might have been as equally foredoomed as in the American West. But some did hope for something better, and their legacy has lived on despite the best efforts of Likud and its anti-socialist settler bloc to strangle its survivors, to bury them in the sand with those whom they tried cooperating.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews