Issa El-Issa


Issa Daoud El-Issa was a Palestinian Christian poet and journalist. With his cousin Yousef El-Issa, he founded and edited the biweekly newspaper Filastin in 1911, based in his hometown of Jaffa. Filastin became one of the most prominent and long running in the country at the time, and was dedicated to the cause of the Arab Orthodox in their struggle with the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. The newspaper was the country's fiercest and most consistent critic of the Zionist movement, denouncing it as a threat to Palestine's Arab population. It helped shape Palestinian identity and was shut down several times by the Ottoman and British authorities, most of the time due to complaints made by Zionists.

Biography

Exiled during World War I, al-Issa became chief of the Arab Kingdom of Syria's royal court in Damascus during King Faisal's government. During that time, he required the publishers of Damascus-based newspapers to dedicate half of their newspaper columns to the Palestinian cause as prerequisite to receiving their monthly salaries. Al-Issa was elected to the 7th Congress of the Arab Executive Committee in June 1928 as a representative of Jaffa. During his time on the committee, he joined the National Defense Party, the opposition to Hajj Amin al-Husayni's sympathizers on the AEC. Al-Issa hosted several Arab Christian-Orthodox conferences in Mandatory Palestine and Transjordan. His son Raja El-Issa succeeded him as the publisher of Filastin. On 29 June 1949, al-Issa died in Beirut, Lebanon. Issa once experienced an assassination attempt in August 1936.