Tawfik Toubi

Tawfik Toubi ( born May 11, 1922 in Haifa, † 12 March 2011) was an Israeli politician of the Communist parties Maki and Rakach, longtime member of the Knesset, and a well-known representatives of Arab Israelis.

Life

Toubi came from a Christian Arab family, and attended Christian schools in Haifa and later the British mission boarding school in Jerusalem. In 1940 he became a member of the Communist Party of Palestine, founded in 1921 and was a 1943 co-founded the League for National Liberation. Between 1943 and 1949 he was a staff member of the Department of Public Works of the British Mandate government of Palestine in 1948 and one of the founders of the Israeli Communist Party ( Maki ), where he was also a member of the Central Committee of the Bureau and the Secretariat.

In February 1949 he was elected a member of the first Knesset, and this was as a representative of the Communist Party for 41 years until July 1990. During his many years of membership, he was a member of the Board and the committees of the Interior, for the Constitution, Law and Justice, education and culture, and economy.

Toubi, the 1950 became a member of the National Peace Committee was, at times also a member of the World Peace Council. In addition, he was publisher and editor of the Arabic-language daily Al -communist Itihad.

Statewide notoriety he achieved in 1956, when he revealed the massacre of Kafr Qasim, the member of the border police 49 Arab civilians killed, including an unborn baby.

When it came to a split in the Maki 1965, he told himself, together with Emil Habibi and Meir Vilner after disagreements about the growing anti- Israel stance of the Soviet Union from the Maki going on and was a member of the Rakach. Between 1976 and 1989 he was Deputy General Secretary of the Communist Party, which was now part of the electoral alliance Hadash. He then became secretary of the Communist Party and remained in this position even after his departure from the Knesset by the year 1993.

At his death Toubi was the last surviving member of the first Knesset.