Najib Nassar

Najib Nassar (January 1, 1865 – December 28, 1947) was a Palestinian journalist.

Nassar was born in a mountain village called Ein Einub (or Ain Ainoub),[1] Lebanon. The family left the village in the middle of the 19th century. Nassar was educated in Lebanon. He worked as a pharmacist for the Scottish Hospital in Tiberias. Later he became the founder and editor of Al-Karmil, the first Palestinian anti-Zionist weekly newspaper in Arabic, which appeared in Haifa in December 1908 and was closed down by the British government in the 1940s.

Nassar was involved in the formation of an association in Haifa with the aim of preventing the implementation of Zionist plans and colonial activities in Palestine. He warned against land sales to Jews and Zionists. In 1911 he published the first book in Arabic on Zionism, entitled Zionism: Its History, Objective and Importance, in which he described Zionism as a racist movement that aims to replace the Palestinians in the Holy Land. This book consisted of an abridged translation of the article on Zionism from The Jewish Encyclopedia and Nassar's commentaries.[2][3] Najib Nassar was imprisoned in Damascus by the Ottoman authorities in 1918. He established the Arab Party in Nazareth in the same year. He maintained his Ottoman loyalty all his life, but called himself a Palestinian patriot.[4]

He traveled to Karak, Jordan, in 1924 with Jordanian poet Mustafa Wahbi At-Tal, calling for Arab Union. Nassar wrote several novels and plays as well as numerous critical articles on Zionism.

In 1927 he married Sadhij, a militant leader of women's rights in Pallestine.[5]

He died in the French Hospital in Nazareth following a hernia operation on 28 December 1947, and was buried in the city's Greek Orthodox cemetery.[6]

References
  1. The Palestine Center. A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle, April 26, 2011. Video and Edited Transcript by Raja Shehadeh.]
  2. Beška, Emanuel (2011). "Anti-Zionist Journalistic Works of Najīb Al-Khūrī Naṣṣār in the newspaper Al-Karmal in 1914". Asian and African Studies. 20 (2): 167–193.
  3. Beška, Emanuel (2014). "Arabic Translations of Writings on Zionism Published Before the First World War". Asian and African Studies. 23 (1): 154–172.
  4. Middle East Information Resource. Nassar, Najib.
  5. SHEHADEH, Raja. A rift in time: travels with my Ottoman uncle, p.216. New York:OR Books, 2011.
  6. Najib Nassar


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