Birth: NULL/NULL/1919 Death:NULL/NULL/1985
Born in Haifa in 1919; was educated at the Orthodox School in Haifa; received his higher education at St. George’s College and at the Bishop Gobat School in Jerusalem (until 1937); began to study Law at Cambridge University but was unable to complete due to the outbreak of WWII in 1939; joined the Palestine Communist Party (PCP) in 1939; helped organize the Shu’aa Al-Amal (Ray of Hope) Club in Haifa with Tawfiq Tubi and Bulos Farah (which was a gathering point for Palestinian labor workers); co-founded in 1943 – with Haidar Abdel Shafi, Mukhlis Amer, Mufid Nashashibi and Emil Habibi – the National Liberation League (Usbat Al-Taharrur Al-Watani), a progressive nationalist organization which grew out of the PCP, and became its head; published his own weekly communist newspaper, Al-Ittihad, in 1944, which provided a voice for Arab workers in Palestine; after the 1948 Nakba, sought asylum in Lebanon; became active among refugees in Lebanon; was arrested by the Lebanese authorities and imprisoned for several months; returned to Haifa upon his release and in 1949; joined the Israeli Communist Party (ICP) and later joined the New Communist List (RAKAH), which grew out of the ICP in 1965; studied at the Oriental Institute in Moscow the same year and received a PhD in History; was an active member of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash), established in 1977; author of various books, incl. The Roots of the Palestine Problem (Arabic, 1972), Social Movements in Islam (Arabic, 1981), and Zionism (1983); died while undergoing medical treatment in Hungary in 1985; was buried in Haifa; the Emile Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa was named after him.
