The Manama riots 1947: Bahraini Jews between Palestine and Gulf labour politics

ABSTRACT In December 1947, following the UN decision to divide Palestine, Bahrain’s Jewish community became the target of communal violence. As crowds protested the partition plan, Manama’s Jewish quarter was attacked and looted. In their aftermath, the Manama riots have been understood as a nationalist show of anger against Zionism, unfortunately unleashed against local Bahraini Jews. However, a close reading of events shows the riot as complex event involving local labour politics, anti-colonialism and Shi’a religious rituals. Drawing on British records, Jewish correspondence and personal memoirs, this paper locates the riot in its post-war Persian Gulf context and argues that it represented an encounter between regional politics of the Palestine Mandate and the post-war tensions of Manama as a late colonial oil city. While ostensibly driven by Arab opposition to Zionism, the riots also saw the culmination of socio-political tensions over labour and colonial rule, exacerbated by five years of war. As such, the Manama riots should be understood not only as an extension of emerging Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine, but also within the local politics of the post-war Persian Gulf.


Introduction
In early December 1947, Bahrain became the scene of communal violence directed against the island's Jewish community.Taking place only days after the United Nations voted in favour of the Palestine Partition Plan, the events were widely understood as a spontaneous reaction of the 'Arab masses' to the imperial powers' gifting of Palestine to European Zionists.As protestors marched through the markets of Manama, chanting slogans against the British, United States and Zionism, crowds burst into the city's Jewish quarter and looted three Jewish shops, the synagogue and 12 private homes.The Bahraini police acted rapidly and the rioters soon disappeared.While no one was killed, an elderly lady died from shock and the community's single rabbi was badly beaten.While loss of life was limited, the Jewish community was left devastated, starting a process that would eventually lead to their partial emigration from Bahrain.
The Manama riots, as we will call them from now on, were not an isolated event.Following the UN vote, Arab nationalist parties declared protests and strikes across the Middle East, and in some locations, the manifestations descended into anti-Jewish violence.In places like Aden, Jerusalem and Aleppo, riots broke out and Jews fell victim to lootings and killings.1While these events are commonly mentioned in histories of Middle Eastern Jews, historians have yet to study and locate them in their local social and political context.Perspectives on 'non-Jewish' politics and social relations, as well as the wider context of late imperial rule are particularly lacking.As a result, crowd violence against Jews across the Middle East in the 1940s is often simplistically framed as a direct extension of Arab-Jewish tensions in Palestine, or worse, as an expression of the alleged 'endemic antisemitism' of 'the Arab masses'. 2 While most contemporary historians have abandoned such simplifications, there is still revisionist work to be done on these violent outbreaks of the late 1940s.Events must be analysed by studying the minute interactions between the regional and the local, between the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine taking on regional significance and the lived reality of multi-ethnic and multi-religious urban localities in other parts of the Middle East.For example, how did the Palestinian national struggle come to have such mobilizing power among urban Arabs across the region?Arab unity, as is often taken for granted by Zionist historians, is not a sufficient explanation.On the contrary, Arab solidarities were under continuous negotiation, a process that frequently caused more division than unity. 3he way the Palestinian struggle against Zionism 'travelled' and struck root in various locations differed widely, a complex dynamic that must be accounted for when discussing violence against Middle Eastern Jews in the 1940s. 4This is particularly true for Bahrain, where Sunni-inflected pan-Arabism encountered a sectarian space, where Shi'a religious identity had become a central factor in local politics.Although political alliances could often cross sectarian lines, in the 1940s, it was still far from clear whether Bahrain's Shi'as would embrace the call of Pan-Arabism.As this article hopes to show, during the Manama riots Shi'a political identity was just important a driver as pan-Arab solidarities. 5nother issue is the choice, or rather positioning, of context.The anti-Jewish outbreaks of the 1940s have so far been understood exclusively in relation to Zionism and Palestine.And with good reason.However, there are other frameworks within which we can productively understand communal violence in the Middle East, which may widen our horizon beyond the narrow framework of Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine.In places like the Gulf, labour politics and British imperial rule were equally, of not more important sources of social tension.While acknowledging the transnational appeal of Palestine politics, this paper delves into the precarious situation of the Bahraini working class and Britain's post-war military rule of the Gulf's oil cities, seeing the Manama riots not just through the prism of Palestine, but also that of the colonial Persian Gulf.
In order to do so, I draw on two fairly new trends in Middle Eastern history.One is Nelida Fuccaro's call to study urban violence as 'rituals of power' deployed in urban spaces for the establishment of political legitimacy. 6As they are 'contingent on place and the rhythms of urban life', violent upheavals should not just be understood as taking place in national or ethnic spaces, but as rooted in particular urban contexts. 7Understanding the complex, and often contradictory dynamics of urban crowds requires moving beyond the politics of elites to study the actions and motives of subaltern groups. 8In this regard, I am inspired by Stephanie Cronin's thoughtfull study of urban crowds in Iranian history. 9s will become evident, the practice of 'reading' the subaltern is particularly relevant to understanding the Manama riots.
Another literature that may help us understand social tensions in Bahrain is the recent writings on oil cities.As oil wells proliferated across the Gulf in the first half of the 20 th century, British and American oil companies developed highly securitized and hierarchical industrial cities, whole societies in fact, that were exclusively governed by foreigners.The oil fields were staffed by underpaid and exploited migrant labourers, frequently called coolies by their Western managers. 10By the 1940s, such segregated company towns existed in places like Abadan, Dhahran, Aden and Bahrain.Highly repressive and unjust at the outset, the Second World War turned these towns into social pressure cookers.Inflation and shortages exacerbated class antagonisms, and the fear of sabotage and revolt drove British forces to turn the oil fields into militarized labour camps. 11These tensions lingered on into the post-war years and remain crucial to understanding Manama in 1947.
In order to study the Manama riots, I rely on a wide range of primary sources.Most of them are found in British archives as intelligence reports and administrative correspondence.To this, I add correspondence by Bahraini Jews found scattered in various Israeli archives.Moreover, I have made extensive use of personal memoirs and printed source collections in Arabic, Hebrew and English.Notable among these are the memoirs of Natan Aluf, a Jewish oil worker who later settled in Israel, Nancy Kheddouri's personal history of Bahraini Jews, as well as interviews with 'Abd al-'Aziz Shamlan, the reformist who organized many of the Palestine protests in Bahrain. 12On this basis I argue that the Bahrain riots represented an encounter between regional politics of the Palestine Mandate and the social tensions of Manama as a late colonial oil city.While ostensibly motivated by pan-Arab opposition to Zionism, the Bahrain riots also saw the culmination of socio-political tensions over labour and colonial rule, exacerbated by five years of war.Although Bahrain's Jews generally shied away from the Palestine question, they fell victim to 'guilt by association', not only with Zionism, but also with the exploitative structures of petro-imperialism in Bahrain.The Bahrain riots were therefore not only an expression of Arab-Jewish conflict, but should also be understood within a series of post-war labour revolts in the Persian Gulf.

Empire and resistance in Bahrain
In order to understand post-war Bahrain, it is worth going back to the island's emergence as a British colonial possession in the 19 th century.Since 1861 the ruling Al Khalifa family had been in treaty relations with British India, an arrangement which cemented tribal rule while giving Bombay full control over Bahrain's external relations.With British support and a lenient tax regime, Bahrain developed as a commercial hub, serving as an entrepot of colonial trade between India, the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Gulf.At the same time, the local pearling fisheries boomed, providing income while attracting pearl divers, merchants and boatsmen from across the region. 13As the British presence deepened following World War One, the tribal state of Al Khalifa developed into a bureaucratic structure with British presence at all levels.From the mid-1920s, the former soldier and colonial officer Charles Belgrave was appointed as Shaykh Hamad ibn Isa's personal advisor and he effectively ruled the island until stepping down in 1957. 14What had initially been a light-touch British security arrangement, over time mushroomed into a veritable colonial state-building project.
Britain's support for Sunni Al Khalifa family and their colonial-tribal state building project enfranchised the Sunni tribes at the expense of Bahrain's Shi'a Arabs (the baharna) who made up more than half the population.In addition to being excluded from new political institutions, Shi'a villages were forced to accommodate the Shaykh's livestock and were frequently subject to tribal raids. 15With the expansion of Sunni state courts in the 1920s, the Shi'a also fell under a new judicial system that was fundamentally rigged against them. 16Shi'a leaders resisted these encroachments and mounted campaigns for greater representation throughout the interwar years.However, with the British Agent standing firm with the Al Khalifa, little productive change came about and discontent continued to simmer. 17 Social tension also emerged in the sphere of labour.Since the pearling boom in the late 19 th century, Manama and its surrounding villages had become home to a growing population of underpaid and exploited pearl divers.With the 1929 Great Depression, global pearl prices collapsed and many divers became unemployed.However, since BAPCO struck oil in 1932 many of them moved into construction and later oil production.These new industrial workers, or coolies as they were often called, were a mixed crowd mostly consisting of local Shi'a Arabs and migrant labour from Iran and India.Particularly from the 1930s, BAPCO hired swaths of Iranian immigrants, many of which had experience from the Iranian oil industry and worked for less than the locals. 18Casually employed and heavily exploited, this population of industrial workers and pearl divers were Bahrain's subaltern precariat whose predicament frequently drove them to revolt.As such, the social conditions mirrored other colonial industrial centres in the region such as Abadan and Aden.
Political contestation grew during the 1930s.Shi'a leaders campaigned for increased access to employment as well as representation in municipal and state councils. 19In 1938, the oil fields also saw strikes and protests, while the British responded with fierce crackdowns and by banishing union leaders abroad. 20Notably, many of these essentially political and social protests were articulated in religious language and the traditional Shi'a Muharram procession (commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, Prophet Muhammad's grandson) was a particularly powerful ritual of dissent.As the Shi'a sense of exclusion increased, workers could be seen marching through Manama, beating their chests and chanting slogans related to Hussein's suffering, not only during Islamic holidays but also in connection with strikes and political protests. 21owever, protest and dissent were far from limited to Shia Muslims.During the 1930s, Bahrain saw the emergence of nationalist clubs, founded by well-travelled Bahrainis who had experienced the surge of Arab nationalism in other parts of the Middle East.Clubs like Nadi al-Ahali (Club of the People) and Nadi al-'Uruba (The Arab Club) cut across sectarian divisions and fostered a public sphere, helped by a new nationalist press and demands for greater political representation. 22They were particularly opposed to Charles Belgrave, the Shaykh's British advisor who they argued exercised undue foreign influence in the country. 23The emergence of clubs coincided with the Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936-1939), and prodded on by the circulation of Arabist newspapers, support for the Palestinians became a central topic in Bahraini public discourse.When a charity fund was established to support Palestinian orphans in 1939, the appeal resonated across the Bahraini commercial and political elite. 24The reformists identified strongly with the Palestinian struggle against British imperialism and foreign rule, and in a way, Palestine became constitutive part of a new political consciousness in Bahrain. 25oncurrent with building tensions domestically, the 1930s only saw Bahrain gain importance within Britain's imperial network.As the new Pahlavi dynasty squeezed British influence on the Persian side of the Gulf, Britain's air route to India was moved from Iran to Bahrain in 1932, as was the British naval base in 1935. 26With the development of oil industry from 1938, the island gained new strategic significance, particularly as Britain made itself entirely dependent on Persian Gulf oil. 27The fact that the oil fields were run by BAPCO, an American oil company, also made it a potential avenue for American commercial and military influence, inserting Bahrain into the British-American rivalry for control in the Persian Gulf. 28.Finally, along with the decolonization of India, the Persian Gulf Residency was moved from Bushehr to Bahrain in 1946, making it the centre of British influence in the Gulf well into the 1970s. 29he strategic importance of Bahrain's oil came to put the island under immense social pressure.During the Second World War, the imperative to fuel the war effort drove the British Army to impose military labour discipline across the Gulf, most importantly in the enormous Iranian oil fields in Abadan, run by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.Production was boosted, and coupled with wartime shortages and inflation, the workload put the already exploited workforce under tremendous pressure. 30Soon after the war, the region's oil fields experienced a series of labour revolts where workers struck for liberty and better wages.Strikes were frequently accompanied by riots aimed at company management and symbols of British-American power.At the time of the Manama riots, Abadan had already seen two uprisings (in 1942 and 1946), news of which rapidly travelled to Bahrain along with migrant workers and solidarity networks. 31Although Bahrain was smaller than Abadan, both in terms of work force and oil production, the same dynamics were at play.As soon as the war ended, the oil fields were already boiling with discontent.

Jews and Zionism
Bahrain's Jewish community was relatively new and in many ways part and parcel of the island's modern history.While Jewish merchants had certainly frequented Bahrain in earlier times, it was only from the 1890s that Persian and Iraqi Jews settled in Manama and formed a community. 32Attracted by the pearling boom and the prospect of lightly taxed trade with British India, Jewish families from Basra, Mohammera and Bushehr established shops and trading houses in central Manama, in an area that would later be known as Suq al-Yahud. 33While Jews never flocked to Bahrain, individual fortune seekers and merchant families continued to seek out the island throughout the first half of the 20 th century.In 1915, a British observer reported some fifty Jews in Bahrain, while in 1947 the community counted 414 individuals. 34s generalization, one could say that Bahraini Jews were clients of Britain's imperial presence.Since their arrival on the island, the Jews enjoyed British protection, both as foreign citizens and as Jews.In 1906, when Shaykh Isa ibn 'Ali attempted to tax the Jews, the British Agent intervened to ensure their continued exemption.This was not only thanks to their status as foreigners under Bahrain's regime of divided rule, but as Agent Francis Prideaux pointed out, also essential to the islands' economy and consistent with Britain's policy of protecting Jews in neighbouring Iran. 35During the First World War, the British Agent also made sure that Bahrain accommodated a growing number of Iraqi Jews who deserted the Ottoman army. 36After the war, the community prospered and Jewish merchants integrated into the island's economic elite.For example, merchants of the Murad and Kheddouri families enjoyed close relations with British representatives.Moreover, they routinely made business with Manama's other leading merchants, be they Hindu, Sunni or Shi'a. 37By the Second World War, a pro-British attitude can be detected in the Bahraini Jewish elite, most notably by active fundraising for the British Royal Air Force. 38he expansion of foreign capital in Bahrain provided Jews with opportunities and social mobility.Those who were not born into wealthy merchant families often gained white-collar employment in foreign companies, particularly British and American ones.This was the case of the Eastern Bank, a London bank which came to Bahrain in the 1920s and long maintained a monopoly on many financial services.The Bank was partly owned by the Sassoon family and a majority of its employees were Jews. 39Similarly, a small group of local Jews held managerial positions at BAPCO, the American oil company.Natan Aluf was one of them, and in his memoirs he pointed out the social importance of working for BAPCO as it opened doors for Jews to enter government bureaucracy and banking.Aluf described his work of managing oil workers in the oil fields, highlighting their dreadful work conditions and the dire social circumstances produced by proletarization. 40While work in oil and finance placed Jewish incomes well above the average, Bahraini Jews were not uniformly rich.For example, more recent Persian Jewish immigrants were poor and lived in conditions not dissimilar to those of industrial workers and the urban poor. 41owever, by the mid-1940s contemporary observers would be forgiven for seeing Bahraini Jews as generally rich and closely associated with the British imperial presence.
So far, Zionism and Jewish nationalism have been absent from the story.This is also the case in the existing literature on Bahraini Jews, where Zionism and Palestine politics appear to be non-issues. 42There is some truth to this narrative.No public Zionist associations were ever formed in Bahrain, and up until the fateful days in 1947, Jewish leaders did not make public statements Zionism.Still, as Palestine solidarity gained currency in Bahrain's Arabist reform clubs throughout the 1930s, the issue must certainly have been discussed in private.While sources are scant, Jews cannot have remained oblivious to the fact that their colleagues and business partners increasingly subscribed to an Arabist discourse contesting the 'Zionist encroachment' on Palestine.Another simultaneous development was the arrival of Baghdadi-Jewish immigrants, some of which had experience with Zionist activism in Iraq. 43In this atmosphere, the community appear to have stuck to its neutral stance.While no Jews supported Zionism publicly, neither did they join the Bahraini elite's active support for the Palestinians.While all major Bahraini merchants donated funds to the Palestinian cause and had their names published in the local press, the leading Jewish merchants glared with their absence. 44ahraini Jews' relative aloofness to the Palestine question changed dramatically in 1945 when Zionist emissaries arrived on the island.They came as construction workers for Solel Boneh, a Zionist company contracted by the Royal Air Force (RAF) to build a new runway at the British airbase in Muharraq.Among the engineers were agents dispatched by the Jewish Agency in Palestine to preach Zionism among Middle Eastern Jews. 45While the emissaries were generally disappointed by the local Jews (both their 'work ethic' and their supposed knowledge of Jewish traditions did not live up to Ashkenazi Zionist standards) they appear to have made some impression on the locals.In late 1945 Natan Aluf was helped by the emissaries when he tried to emigrate to Palestine with his son.He only reached Egypt however, and stayed there for months awaiting a permit to enter Palestine.When the situation in Palestine deteriorated in 1946, he was promptly called back to Bahrain by his wife who was rightfully concerned about his safety. 46Zionist emissaries also reported that other Bahraini Jews had in fact visited Palestine during the 1930s but later returned. 47While Palestine and Zionism may have sparked a certain interest, it never prompted any form of collective migration.
Although the arrival of Zionist emissaries during the summer of 1945 had a limited impact on Jewish life, it certainly had greater significance in Bahraini society.For the Zionists did not just come into contact with the Jews, but also became part of the fraught labour relations of wartime Bahrain.As the 45 Jewish engineers took on the job of paving a new runway at the Muharraq airbase, they hired some thousand local labourers to carry out the manual work. 48As such, Ashkenazi Zionist Jews from Palestine became the field supervisors of a significant part of Bahrain's workforce.In a small town like Manama, that didn't go unnoticed.The locals called the Zionists 'al-kombani min falasteen (the company from Palestine)', and they were, according to one of the engineers, well-known across the island. 49While the work was completed on time, the airport project caused tensions.
While citing a general 'Zeitgeist' of labour tension, one British intelligence officer wrote that the airstrip project caused wildcat strikes, leading the Zionists to summarily fire a number of workers. 50Moreover, the airfield's expansion permanently blocked roads and lay claim to locally owned land, leading to protests from nearby villagers.While ultimate responsibility lay with the RAF, the troubles were down to hasty work of the engineers. 51While we have no sources describing general perceptions of the Zionist engineers, it is reasonable to assume that by the time they returned to Palestine in late 1945, a significant part of Bahrain's subaltern class had experienced negative interactions with Zionist Jews, closely associated with the British imperial presence.

Reading the Manama riots
Against this historical background, we now turn to the Manama riots themselves.As will become clear, the events were not just directed against Jews but expressed a multitude of agendas linked to transnational solidarities, colonial rule and exploitative labour relations.In this section we will read the riots temporally (what happened when), spatially (the significance of where things happened) and finally qualitatively, by studying how rioters behaved and interacted with their surroundings.In doing so, I rely on two main bodies of sources.British intelligence reports and memoirs are the most contemporary and provide a wealth of details, some of them collected by informants participating in the events.Notable here are the accounts by Rupert Hay, the British Political Resident and Charles Belgrave, the Shaykh's political advisor.However, in their fixation on re-establishing order and stability, British reports fail to grasp the social and political nature of the riots and simply dismiss the rioters as 'riff-raff' and troublemakers.Less contemporary, but equally important, are accounts by Natan Aluf, the Jewish BAPCO employee and 'Abd al-'Aziz Shamlan, an Arab reformist who co-organized the Palestine demonstrations.Although recollected years later and visibly coloured by subsequent events, these accounts provide depth, giving insight into the cultural and political dynamics of the riots.
First of all, timing is crucial to understanding how the riots developed.Following the UN vote on 29 November 1947, leading personalities of Bahrain's reform movement gathered on the evening of 1 December and heeded a call from the Arab High Committee in Jerusalem to declare a general strike the following day. 52At this point Palestine politics had been high on the agenda for months, including the 'Palestine week' fundraising campaign held earlier in November. 53On 2 December all shops were closed and crowds of high school students, workers and women marched through town waiving various Arab flags and shouting slogans in support of Palestine.According to Hay, school boys threw stones and mud at cars with Jews in them.The second day proceeded similarly, although with larger crowds.Natan Aluf noted that the Jewish community was tense, with Jewish BAPCO workers discussing whether it was safe to go to work.Taking a more alarmist tone, Hay wrote that the Jewish community was in a state of panic and went into hiding.Still, Aluf concluded that the first two days 'passed peacefully, and although a few stones were thrown at Jews here and there, public order was not disturbed'. 54As it appears, Bahrain's students and Arab reformists were largely capable of demonstrating their support for the Palestinians without imperilling their Jewish neighbours.
On day three, things changed dramatically.In addition to nationalists, students and women, the crowds were now joined by a greater crowd of workers and urban poor.While the activists marched in front accompanied by the police, the new crowd of workers followed at the back.As the procession passed the synagogue in central Manama, a riot broke out.The synagogue was looted and burnt, and according to Natan Aluf, the Torah scrolls were desecrated and stepped on.Subsequently, the crowd proceeded to loot nearby Jewish homes.The police intervened quickly and within a few hours, the crowds had disappeared.When the dust settled in late afternoon, twelve Jewish houses had been looted and 20 Jews were in hospital undergoing treatment for physical injuries.
It remains unclear exactly how the riots began.Some sources allege that a Jew threw a stone at a boy, provoking the crowd into attacking the synagogue.Although the exact trigger is unknown, it nevertheless turned what had initially been a peaceful, if agitated, demonstration into a riot.The crowds of workers and urban poor at the back of the procession played a central role in this.British sources variously described these people as Persians, Shia Baharna, pearl divers and even 'bazaar scallywags'.These were ambiguous terms used to describe the island's population of precarious workers, mostly a mix of Persian immigrants and local Bahraini Shi'as.'Abd al-'Aziz Shamlan, one of the principal organizers nevertheless made the point that the rioters were distinct from the reformist activist.As the rioters clamoured to enter the synagogue he tried to hold them back and make them go home. 55This claim is supported by Hay, who wrote that 'in spite of the efforts of the police (. ..) and one or two of the organizers to restrain the crowd, a mass of people burst into the building'. 56he third day of protests clearly stood apart.From that point, the protests involved a complex new dynamic which went beyond Palestine, now also involving the agenda of workers and what appeared to be disenfranchised Bahraini Shi'as.Belgrave and Hay appear unable to comprehend this, as became evident in the ambiguous and derogatory terms they used to describe the new protestors.However, as Aluf pointed out, the rioters were in fact industrial workers and unemployed pearl divers.He would know, because he had supervised many of them as a safety officer in BAPCO. 57To British officers however, the rioters were to be dismissed as irrational 'riff-raff' and 'bazaar scallywags'.Indeed, the tensions fuelling the riot were directly connected to Bahrain's exploitative labour regime.The country had been tense throughout the war, and in October the situation deteriorated further when the pearl divers returned with only half of the normal harvest. 58Trying to describe the 'zeitgeist', a British officer wrote: The anti-Partition demonstration partly originated in strikes against attending schools by the students, and they have been quick to learn the use -or rather, the abuse -of the strike weapon.(. ..) The dsease spread also a few days ago to the labour employed by the Royal Air Force at 54 Aluf, A community that was, 111.55

Muharraq airfield. It threatened a strike for increased wages and an attempt was made to picket the RAF's own lorries which carry the labour to work. 59
As such, the third day of protest saw the merging of Palestine protest with the subaltern agenda of the disenfranchised precariat.
Moving on from the temporal perspective, a spatial analysis reveals other agendas.Protestors did not just target Jewish sites, but also others that could be associated with foreign interests.For example, on the second day of protests the American missionary doctor Paul Harrison was shouted at when passing in his car.On the same day, mud was thrown at the houses of some Iraqi Christians.The multiple directions of popular anger was encapsulated in the slogan 'down with America, Zionists, Russians and Communists'. 60According to British reports, the targeting of Americans and Christians stemmed from the fact that the United States voted in favour of the Palestine partition plan.However, these actions should also be understood in the context of foreign domination and imperialism in Bahrain itself.After all, an American oil company was the island's largest and most exploitative employer.While aware of the UN decision on Palestine, students and activists who joined the protests were more likely driven by such local grievances.
In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that the targeting of Jews was incidental.According to Hay, when the riots broke out, the crowds were in the process of leaving Manama's main Persian ma'tam, located in central Manama not far from the synagogue.Despite there being no specific religious occasion, they had congregated and listened to political speeches 'of an inflammatory nature'.Ma'tams were houses of mourning and community spaces associated with Shi'a Muharram rituals, locations that in later years had taken on political significance. 61Hay writes: 'The procession then proceeded towards the municipal building.Until now the demonstrations had been conducted in an orderly fashion.Somewhere here an incident occurred'.Were the crowds in fact on their way to demonstrate in front of the municipality when the riots broke out?Possibly so, for later Hay writes: 'If they [the organizers] had not led the procession to the Jewish synagogue, it is possible that the disorder would not have occurred'. 62The suggestion that the riots were a random occurrence is not fully convincing and Hay's account should be read with some reserve.After all, he was not there and only learnt about the riots later in the day.Still, the ma'tam, synagogue and municipality were all located in close proximity in a dense urban centre.The fact that the crowds passed the synagogue does not necessarily mean that they deliberately approached it, and could indeed be incidental.
At any rate, Hay's observation opens the scope for thinking about the riots as a complex and multi-directional event.If the crowds intentionally moved towards the municipality, we could more productively understand them in the framework of local politics, rather than a planned and determined attack on the Jewish community.
Finally, it is worth dwelling with the protestors' behaviour and ritualistic practices.The performance of Shi'a religious rituals is of particular interest.Not only did the protestors visit the Persian ma'atam, but they also performed public rituals associated with Shi'a 59 Ibid. 60Ibid. 61 Muharram processions.When Natan Aluf smuggled his family over to the neighbour's house, he could hear crowds in the street yelling 'ya Hussein, ya Hussein'. 63Charles Belgrave, who was also physically present, observed that 'the Persian boatmen were . . .beating their chests and chanting the verses which they normally repeat during the Muharram procession, the Persians probably thinking it was a Shia religious occasion'. 64t's worth noting that Belgrave described what was essentially a mixed crowd as 'Persian', a move to externalize responsibility which we will return to later.Whether the crowds were mostly Persian or local Shi'a, the Shi'a religious element was nevertheless pervasive, indicating yet again how the third day of protest stood apart from the preceding two.
What explains this strong presence of Shi'a religious rituals in an anti-Zionist Palestine protest?Did Bahraini Shi'a Muslims have particularly strong views on Jews or Zionism?In the specific context of Bahrain, there is no evidence to this effect.However, some scholars have argued that classic Shi'a jurisprudence is inherently antagonistic towards Jews, and that these religious attitudes drove sectarian violence against Jews in 19 th -century Iran. 65hile the alleged connection between jurisprudence and social action rests on shaky ground, it is true that Muslim-Jewish sectarian tensions in Iran did run high at the turn of the 20 th century. 66One could speculate that by the 1940s, some of these sectarian attitudes had migrated to Shi'a communities in Bahrain, prodding them to interpret an anti-Zionist protest as an opportunity to attack the Jewish community.Even if that was the case, it still doesn't explain the presence of religious rituals throughout the riot itself.
Here we are better served by looking at the socio-political significance of Muharram rituals.Of course, the Shi'a rioters certainly did not confuse the Palestine protests with one of their own religious occasions.What Belgrave failed to understand was that the rioters performed Muharram rituals as part of a wider expression of popular dissent against the state.Throughout the reform movements of the 1920s and 30s, Muharram processions had become an important tool for expressing political opposition, not only in Bahrain but across the Shi'a world.As such, the strong participation of Shi'a Bahrainis indicates the importance of a labour agenda and subaltern opposition to the state, rather than a distinctly Shi'a religious antagonism against Jews.Shi'a pearl divers and workers had long been marginalized and exploited, both by the Sunni tribal state and by foreign entities like BAPCO and the RAF.Although the chaotic riots ended up targeting the Jews, their political impetus was equally directed at the colonial state.

Zionism and 'guilt by association'
Two main conclusions can be drawn from the preceding close reading of the riots.Firstly, that the reformists and students who dominated in the first two days of protests were largely capable of demonstrating their opposition to Zionism without attacking local Jews.Secondly, that the Shi'a workers, pearl divers and urban poor who finally looted the Jewish houses were just as much driven by labour politics and political opposition as 63 Aluf, A community that was, 118. 64 by the Palestine cause.These conclusions require some further discussion.If animosity towards local Jews was indeed so peripheral as this reading suggests, how could it be that the crowds in the end turned against Jews and Jewish property?To answer this question we now turn to the socio-political position of Bahraini Jews and try to tease out how social practices, events and interactions may have generated negative perceptions of Jews. 67As such, I apply the concept of guilt-by-association, arguing that these perceptions, combined with the politics emanating from Palestine and the tense social relations of postwar Bahrain explain the transformation of social dissent into anti-Jewish violence.Given the difficulty of reconstructing social perceptions, particularly among subaltern classes, the following paragraphs are necessarily hypothetical.However, an exploration of how anti-Jewish resentment may have emerged in Bahrain specifically seems more useful than simply assuming that antisemitism was prevalent among common Bahrainis.
The first and most obvious question is to what extent Bahrain's Jews were commonly associated with the Zionist movement in Palestine.With the sources currently available, this question has no obvious answer.During Palestine rallies and fundraisers in the months prior, speakers were careful to distinguish between Jews and Zionists. 68owever, these speakers tended to be the educated leaders of Bahrain's reform movement, and their sense of nuance may not have extended to the rest of the population.In addition, Bahrain was influenced by outside media.From the late 1930s, antisemitic propaganda flourished, including pamphlets from Egypt and Axis radio broadcasts during the war.Predictably, these sources rarely paid heed the distinctions between Jews and Zionists.There was only one enemy and that was al-yahud, or the Jews, regardless of their nationality or ethnicity. 69Given the vast popularity of foreign radio broadcasts, they most likely did their part to erase the distinction between Jew and Zionist in the public mind. 70ocally, the association of Jews to Zionism was probably also strengthened by the arrival Zionist engineers and emissaries in 1945.While the Solel Boneh workers lived out at the RAF airfield, away from the Jewish quarter in central Manama, they frequently entered the city for shopping and socializing with local Jews.Notably, they celebrated Jewish high holidays together, a fact that did not go unnoticed in a small place like Bahrain. 71As opposed to other places in the Gulf, where local Jewish connections to the Zionist movement remained pure propaganda and speculation, in Bahrain, Ashkenazi Zionist Jews could actually be seen socializing with the local Sephardic Jews.While we cannot know to what extent that was common knowledge, it may well have contributed to popular perceptions that local Jews and the Zionists were, if not one and the same, then closely connected.
Moreover, the Zionist engineers may have helped cement the position of Jews in Bahrain's colonial hierarchy.As mentioned earlier, some local Jews already worked as supervisors in the oilfields, commanding teams of exploited and underpaid industrial workers.As Solel Boneh got to work at the new airfield, even more workers came under Jewish command, something which may have strengthened the association of Jews with the oppressive labour regime of foreign companies.There is nothing to suggest that Jewish supervisors were any better or worse than their British and American colleagues.But given the brutal policing of labour and the high incidence of strikes at the time, any worker-manager relationship was bound to be antagonistic.For those labouring under the command of Jews both in the oilfield and the airfield, it may not have been unnatural to view Jews as beneficiaries of the oppressive system they suffered under.Neither did it help that both BAPCO and RAF were symbols of imperial domination in Bahrain and increasingly detested as labour activism fused with anti-colonial nationalism.
Finally, there is some evidence to suggest that Jews in Bahrain were seen as profiteers.As noted earlier, the Eastern Bank had a majority of Jewish employees.Being the only bank in the country until 1946, it showed strong monopolistic tendencies and charged exorbitant rates both to foreigners and locals. 72The bank certainly drew ire and during the first few days of demonstrations, stones were thrown at it, breaking some of its windows.Beyond banking, some sources also reported that Jewish merchants profited from wartime shortages.While seeped in antisemitic stereotypes, one British officer noted that the Jewish community in fact regretted the peace in 1945, lamenting that 'the days of high profiteering' were about to pass. 73Despite the sweeping and erroneous generalization, it is not unlikely that Jewish merchants, already well placed in the import-export economy, benefited from war-time price hikes.If so, they were in good company with their Muslim colleagues who also charged whatever they could.Even so, the likelihood of Jewish profiteering, combined with the strong Jewish presence at the Eastern Bank, may well have fuelled rumours that Bahraini Jews were enriching themselves on the suffering of the country's less fortunate classes.
This attempt to reconstruct commonly held perceptions of Jews in post-war Bahrain, may help explain how the essentially political and socio-economic Manama riots could descend into what some Jewish sources later called a pogrom.Even though the official demonstration was directed against the UN partition of Palestine, and the rioters primarily frustrated with political exclusion and socio-economic concerns, Jews came out as the main victims.As such, the Manama riots represented a socio-political encounter, between the regional politics of the Palestine mandate on the one hand, and the contentious politics of labour and colonial rule in Bahrain on the other.As the regional significance of Palestine encountered local Gulf politics, it entered a field charged with decades of failed reform movements, repressed labour activism and five years of wartime military rule.In a tense political atmosphere of distrust and rumours, Jews could be plausibly associated with all these ills.Coupled with the unpredictability of contentious political action, this context may help explain why the Manama riots turned out so fateful for Bahrain's Jews.

Consequences
Although the physical damage was relatively limited, the riots left Bahrain's small Jewish community in a state of chaos.Some families found themselves homeless and others had lost all their property to the looters.The ensuing months were dominated by a long and unsuccessful quest for compensation, first from the Shaykh's government and then from the British Resident.On the political front the community was divided.Some leading merchants, claiming to represent the 'Jewish Committee of Bahrain' issued a statement where they 'joined the struggle against the cruelties of Zionism'. 74However, the Jewish Committee only represented parts of the community and while members of the Kheddouri and Zuloof families put their names down, the Murads and the Nonos, who were also important merchant families, were notably absent.In 1948, some Jews also joined fundraisers for Palestine and generally supported pro-Palestine initiatives.However, this appeared to be tactical politicking and at the same time members of the same families started thinking about emigration to Palestine, reaching out to the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem asking for immigration certificates. 75espite this sorry state of affairs, the following year also saw a process of elite reconciliation..While the Arab elites sought to externalize responsibility, Jews focused on the positive side of things.The royal family and the Arab reformists appeared genuinely shocked and ashamed by how events had spiralled out of control.Shaykh Salman was regretful and only reluctantly agreed to discuss the affair.Like the reformists, he categorically blamed 'the Persian element', a narrative that over time gained currency in several quarters. 76Of course, the new consensus served to hide a more complex reality where an event, organized by locals and condoned by the elites, had descended into public chaos.However, by placing responsibility with the outsider 'Persians', blame could be externalized, facilitating social reconciliation.Over time, Bahraini Jews also appeared to join the new consensus.Although there is no contemporary evidence, later Jewish accounts have highlighted how prominent Arab families protected Jews during the riots and helped them get their houses in order after the looting.In Nancy Kheddouri's personal history, communal solidarity appears to be the main lesson drawn from the entire episode. 77Natan Aluf also reported that his family was sheltered. 78These posterior claims may well be true, but the fact that no contemporary source corroborate them, indicates that the politics of memory and reconciliation might be at work.Perhaps a narrative of communal solidarity, whether real or imagined, was a necessary for Jews to continue living in Bahrain.
Indeed, the process of reconciliation ensured that the riots did not cause an immediate Jewish exodus.Emigration only started in late 1949 when some families took the opportunity to start anew in Israel.Later, many of them continued to the United Kingdom and some even returned to Bahrain.Economic problems appear to have been a major factor, and it was mostly poorer families who accepted the Jewish Agency's free tickets to Tel Aviv.The loss of property during the riots, and the lack of subsequent compensation was frequently highlighted as reason for emigration.As such the community decreased, and while it counted 414 individuals in 1947, only 143 Jews were left by 1951. 79Those who remained were mostly the richer merchant families, notably the Murad, Nono and Kheddouri families.As, such the Manama riots of 1947 did contribute to Jewish emigration from Bahrain, but for economic rather than social and political reasons.While the communal violence had been traumatizing, it did not signal the end of Jewish life in Bahrain.Those who remained and their descendants continue residing in Bahrain until this day.

Conclusion
While the Manama riots were decisive in the history of Bahrain's Jews, it was also significant in Bahraini history more widely.During those days in December 1947, reformist anti-colonialism, labour unrest and opposition to Zionism fused, creating an uncontrollable critical mass.Jews fell victim to the agitation partly for reasons of circumstance, and partly because Jews had over the last few years come to be associated with the complex of foreign domination, so detested by many Bahrainis.More widely, the riots represented the encounter between Palestine and the Gulf.The Arab-Jewish conflict had regionalized, especially from the late 1930s when Palestinian leaders issued pan-Arab calls for support.The Zionist movement also contributed to this dynamic, as their agents and emissaries approached and sought to recruit Jewish communities across the region.
All this happened on the background of the Second World War and its social consequences in the Gulf's industrial metropoles.Shortages and military rule pushed hierarchical and unjust societies to their very limits.As such, the Manama riots joined a series of other post-war uprisings, most notably the strikes in oilfields like Dhahran and Abadan.Also there, thousands of exploited labourers rebelled for the sake of improved working conditions, in demonstrations infused with a growing sense of anti-colonial nationalism.What distinguished the riots in Manama was how they intersected with Jewish history and the regionalizing politics of Palestine and Zionism.As such, social and labour history helps us understand how the conflict over Palestine became regional, but also how Zionism and the British Empire impacted Jews across the Middle East.