Issa El-Issa

Issa Daoud El-Issa (Arabic: عيسى داود العيسى, his surname also spelt al Issa and Elissa; 1878 – 29 June 1949) was a Palestinian poet and journalist. With his cousin Yousef El-Issa, he founded and edited the biweekly newspaper Falastin in 1911, based in his hometown of Jaffa. Falastin 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 Movement in struggle with the Greek clergy of the Orthodox Patriarchate of 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.