“The Sun is Shining in Salameh”: An American Communist Observes the Nakba

Abstract

This paper investigates the writing of A.B. Magil, a journalist for the Communist Party of the USA. In Palestine in 1948, he witnessed the birth of the State of Israel and, correspondingly, the creation of the Palestinian refugee crisis. Magil had unfettered access to Jewish military commanders who later joined Israel’s political elite, but also to Palestinian prisoners of war and Communist politicians. He reported from recently ethnically cleansed towns and villages without seeming to recognise the enormity of what had taken place. A close study of Magil’s coverage throw into relief subsequent shifts in the Western left’s understandings of imperialism, (settler-)colonialism and resistance. After returning to the US, he continued his commentary on the Middle East, his later writings revealing how leftist sympathies for Israel were tested throughout the 1950s, including by the Suez Crisis, though without a re-evaluation of the circumstances of Israel’s creation.