Rashid Hussein Mahmoud (Arabic: راشد حسين, Hebrew: ראשד חוסיין; 1936 – 2 February 1977) was a Palestinian poet, orator, journalist and Arabic-Hebrew translator.

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish called him "the star", who wrote about "human things" like bread, hunger and anger.

[6] Hussein was also a member of the left-wing Israeli political party, Mapam, and edited its social weekly Al Mirsad.

[9] At that time, Hussein began translating the Hebrew works of Israeli poet Hayim Nahman Bialik into Arabic.

[3][9] Hussein collaborated with Jewish poet Nathan Zach as a co-editor and translator of Palms and Dates, an anthology of Arab folk songs.

[11] At the same time, he made appeals to his "Jewish compatriots", particularly those in the workers' parties to adhere to the universal principles of their progressive movements and to fight against Arab inequality in Israel.

[11] While much of Hussein's writing was in agreement with Mapam's ideology and platform, he diverged significantly with the party through his public support for Egypt's pan-Arabist president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

[12] He asserted that while all of the latter opposed Zionism, only Nasser consistently developed his country, combated imperialism and made strides toward Arab unity.

[14] However, he did not blame this perceived submissiveness and aimlessness solely on the Arab youth themselves, but to the environment in which they grew up, with many having lived through the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight.

[9] In 1965, Hussein moved to Paris,[8] and two years later, he became a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and was stationed at its New York City office,[3] where he worked as a Hebrew-Arabic translator.

[8] In a 1986 poem, Mahmoud Darwish, who had encountered Hussein in Cairo, commemorated his death as a sudden loss of a charismatic figure who could invigorate the Palestinian people,[16] writing: He came to us a blade of wine And left, a prayer's end He flung out poems At Christo's Restaurant And all of Acre would rise from sleep To walk upon the sea — Mahmoud Darwish, On Fifth Avenue he greeted me (1986)[1][16]In 2006, the Palestinian singer and musicologist Reem Kelani set one of Rashid’s poems to music in her song Yearning.

Hussein's poetry was influenced by the 11th-century Arab skeptic al-Ma'arri and the early 20th-century Lebanese American poet Elia Abu Madi.

[2] Marmorstein wrote: The choice of these two mentors is clearly relevant to the experience of those Palestinian Muslims who found themselves reduced from majority to minority status.