Dayton Daily News · Dayton, Ohio · 2 December 1945

CP-1945-011

Arab Women Plan Future

Beatrice Oppenheim, Jerusalem

Transcribed from the clipping

“JERUSALEM, Dec. 1. — Arab women are rapidly mobilizing to take an active and militant part in influencing political decisions concerning Palestine. At the same time their leaders are sponsoring a long-range educational program. Recently Mrs. Mateil Mogannam — whom Arabs like to call ‘our Mrs. Roosevelt’ — gave this reporter the exclusive news that plans are being discussed for a second World Arab Women’s congress. The first was convened during the 1929 Arab-Jewish disturbances, when Mrs. Mogannam organized huge mass meetings and helped to supply Arab rioters, hidden in the hills, with food and water. As president and founder of the Arab Women’s association and author of the book ‘The Arab Woman and the Palestine Problem,’ Mrs. Mogannam wields a tremendous influence in upper-class Arab circles here. She is an energetic, outspoken matron who believes that ‘Zionism has given the world a false impression of the Arab.’ Mrs. Mogannam is one of seven Arab women leaders — including both Chrisitans and Moslems — with whom this reporter has discussed current Arab-Jewish tensions. All are well educated, well to do and thoroughly versed in the feminist programs of Europe and America. All agree that Arab women must have a voice in the settlement of Palestine’s tangled racial problem.”

Context added by this archive

The woman who organised the first Arab Women’s Congress, named at last. This archive holds two American printings of that 1929 congress: one counts the cars in the motorcade, the other reports the resolutions and says it was the first time the country’s women had entered its political life. Neither names anybody. Sixteen years later a woman reporter in Jerusalem names Matiel Mogannam, cites her book, quotes her, and reports that seven Arab women leaders, Christian and Muslim, are reading European and American feminist programmes and intend to be heard. The paper’s spellings, Mateil and Chrisitans, are kept.

Cite this item

"Arab Women Plan Future," Dayton Daily News, 2 December 1945. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1945-011. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1945-011

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