[Tony Cliff was born Ygael Gluckstein, the son of a Zionist building contractor, in Palestine, in May 1917, in between the great Russian revolutions. He was speedily converted out of Zionism by observing the treatment of Arab children. Aged 13, he wrote in a school essay: “It is so sad that there are no Arab kids in the school.” The teacher scrawled across the page the single word: “Communist”.
She was right, and Cliff was always grateful for her perception. He fought vigorously against the exclusion of Arabs from the closed Zionist economy. When a speaker from the Haifa trades council spoke glowingly of the anti-fascist uprising in Vienna in 1934, and ended his speech with a tribute to the Paris Commune and workers’ unity, Cliff, aged 17, heckling from the back of the hall, added the one word “international”. In this context, “international” meant Arab, and the stewards responded by twisting his finger till it broke. ]
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