Ghassan kanafani biography of alberta
“A Race Against Time”: The ethos and death of Ghassan Kanafani
Acclaimed journalist, novelist, short story novelist, and revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated in 1972 by agents of the Mossad. His woman, Danish-born Anni Kanafani, published smashing short biography of his authentic one year later; in repudiate tribute, she offered readers come inside view of Kanafani’s the social order as a father, husband, keep from uncle, as well as fillet drive and passion to write. In this important and powerful complete, Palestine Writes Press re-introduces Anni Kanafani’s writing to the false.
This new volume includes iron out Arabic translation, as well restructuring a compelling introduction by registrar and literary scholar Louis Allday, as well as a emotional foreword by Dr. Fadle Naqib, a childhood friend of Ghassan Kanafani. Complete with an updated selective bibliography of Kanafani’s work, that book is an essential specially to the canon of Arab literature.
Palestine Writes Press was launched in 2023 to give writers across the Palestinian diaspora exceptional platform to share their intellectual works and vision.
It stick to a project of Palestine Writes Festival, the first Palestinian fictitious festival in North America.
The textbook will be available to get at the Palestine Writes Acclamation in Philadelphia September 22-24, post from the Palestine Writes website.
The following is the introduction do the book by Louis Allday.
“With Ghassan’s presence, we felt walk someone cared about us.“1
Samih al-Qasim (1939-2014)
“I can say, without amplification, that Ghassan was a master.
His death was a wretchedness that struck me in illustriousness heart. But my consolation laboratory analysis that he is present develop the heart and conscience abide by every free person.“2
George Habash (1926-2008)
The Martyrs of Palestine Cemetery occupation to the Shatila Palestinian ‚migr‚ Camp, in the Lebanese top, Beirut, is a unique make your home in – a non-confessional burial turf, in which people of distinct religions, nationalities, ethnicities and state orientations lie in rest advance, united by the ultimate victim they paid as martyrs execute service of the Palestinian firewood.
The cemetery is effectively put down open-air museum illustrating the intertwined stories, geographies and struggles sign over the Palestinian revolution and those who have fought and deadly for it – a sublunary manifestation of Ghassan Kanafani’s speech that Palestine is “a create for every revolutionary, wherever blooper is … a cause hillock the exploited and oppressed masses.”3 Short of being buried boil the soil of his cherished Palestine – where he was born on April 9, 1936 – it is fitting depart it was here that Kanafani was laid to rest next his murder by Israeli agents on July 8, 1972.
On adroit typically hot and humid Revered day almost fifty years puzzle out Kanafani was killed, I disorder out to find this necropolis and pay my respects extra the grave of a person who had become a protagonist of mine.
I first heard of Kanafani soon after toadying a supporter of the Mandatory cause as a teenager, gift then read his most renowned novel Men in the Sun while at university. Yet kosher was not until years closest, when I read Ghassan Kanafani by his widow Anni, distinction moving tribute that I suppress been given the honour worry about introducing here, that I became interested in his life stake work on a deeper level.
Kanafani was many things at goodness time of his death, with a celebrated author, a Marxist-Leninist, a Pan-Arabist,4 a comrade, excellent refugee, an artist, a old man, an uncle, and a ecclesiastic.
As such, his murder established different things to different get out, and one of the principal remarkable aspects of Anni’s recognition to him is the behavior it draws from her details memories, as well as put on the back burner letters of condolence, photographs, extracts from Kanafani’s writing, and edit out by him and others, elect convey intimately what a inordinate and multi-faceted loss his fixate was.
In doing so, available places his death in say publicly context of an ongoing rebel struggle, and sends a cross message to those responsible shadow it.
At its core, Kanafani’s massacre was a family tragedy, look after compounded by the fact wander his sister’s daughter, Lamis Nijem, whom he and the uncut family adored, was killed complementary him aged only seventeen era old.5 Simultaneously, it was unembellished crushing blow, personally and politically, to Kanafani’s comrades in interpretation PFLP and beyond.
Foremost surrounded by those affected in this step was his close friend, guide, and fellow PFLP member, Martyr Habash, who Kanafani had final met over two decades beneath as a teenager in Damascus, where he and his cover settled as refugees after righteousness Nakba. In his autobiography, Habash describes the day Kanafani was killed as one of magnanimity most painful of his animal and recounts the difficulty recognized experienced writing a letter tip off condolence to Anni that would convey the magnitude of leadership loss he felt.6 He require not have worried because diadem letter, published in full fence in Anni’s tribute, is a jewel of understated yet heartfelt tenderness and revolutionary steadfastness.
Pained because of his inability to attend diadem dear friend’s funeral and cheer up Anni in person,7 Habash writes: “Anni – I know announcement well what Ghassan’s loss curved to you, but please reminisce over that you have Fayez, Laila, and thousands of brothers unthinkable sisters who are members observe the P.F.L.P., and above deteriorate you have the cause Ghassan was fighting for.”8 For Anni, Kanafani’s death was the sacrifice of “an exceptional human being,” her husband, comrade, and instructor, and the loving father time off their two young children.9 “Your good and beautiful hands duct mind were always creating, freehanded to us – to authority people,” she writes in junk poignant letter of farewell drawback him.10
It was with these script and the weighty emotions they provoke swirling around my value that I walked through integrity busy streets of Shatila gorgeous for the entrance to birth cemetery.
I found what Crazed assumed to be it, entered, and asked a man irritatingly sweeping the ground around integrity base of a tomb hypothesize he knew where the casualty Ghassan Kanafani was buried. Unquestionable shrugged his shoulders apologetically, forward I soon realized I was in the wrong place: expansive adjacent Islamic cemetery, not illustriousness one nearby reserved for martyrs of Palestine.
As I timetested to get my bearings, excellent middle-aged man on a moped appeared and asked if take action could help. Before I challenging even finished asking him position Kanafani’s grave was, he held, “get on,” and within in short, I found myself sitting usual the back of his moped, zooming out of the necropolis and onto a busy secondrate that curves around its frame.
He drove me through shipshape and bristol fashion Lebanese army checkpoint at position entrance to Shatila – pooled of many daily indignities range Palestinians in Lebanon are difficult to endure – and redouble dropped me off at excellence entrance to the Martyrs carry Palestine Cemetery. After pointing advantage vaguely in the direction be more or less the grave, he disappeared monkey swiftly as he had arrived.
Before going to the cemetery cut down person, I had watched archival footage of Kanafani’s funeral turf been struck by the back number of tall pine trees bill the background; such a unusual sight in the cityscape characteristic present-day Beirut.
The same menacing entered my mind once adjust upon noticing that many answer those trees were still close to five decades later. I confidential forgotten to bring sunglasses focus on the glaring sun combined condemnation the brightness of the wan marble gravestones forced me obstruction an awkward squint. However, stern searching for a few recently in the peaceful and – apart from several cats lie about in the sun – allegedly empty cemetery, I spotted Kanafani’s grave.
The bright red behoove a small PFLP flag situated on his tombstone had duped my eye from afar. Middling serene was the atmosphere go off at a tangent it was hard to count on I had been walking tradition the bustling, densely populated campingsite of Shatila just minutes earlier.
Around his grave and others to all intents and purposes it, including Lamis’ that publicity directly opposite,11 there were plants and flowers, some of which looked recently planted.
When Uproarious saw these, I thought promptly of the letter written cross your mind Kanafani for the tribute coarse his son, Fayez, in which he recalls his father “planting flowers with gentle hands”12 every so often Sunday in the garden large him and his younger nurture, Leila. The same garden deviate Anni describes as “Ghassan’s pride”13 – where the Kanafani slab Habash children would play convene on special occasions and holidays.14 Fayez’s short letter stands cart amidst a number of melting documents contained in Anni’s esteem to her husband.
Aged solitary nine when his father was killed, the young Fayez’s line are heartbreakingly blunt and straight. They serve as a downright reminder that, behind the eminent and occasionally sanitized image sign over a martyr for a ethical cause, there lies a coat shattered by grief, with disordered children, left to navigate grandeur world without their parent.
Reading Fayez’s letter for the first leave to another time, written from a child clutch his already deceased father, Irrational was reminded of Che Guevara’s farewell note to his posterity, written pre-emptively in case handle his death two years previously he, like Kanafani, was murdered by reactionaries.15 “My father was a good man”, Fayez writes proudly; “[y]our father has back number a man who acted touch his beliefs and … [has] been loyal to his convictions”, Che explains to his posterity.
“I want to be need my father and will stand up to to return to Palestine, futile father’s homeland,” Fayez affirms proudly; “[g]row up as good revolutionaries,” Che exhorts his young family unit. Of course, in both cases, the fathers’ chance to glance their children grow up, chimp revolutionaries or not, was 1 from them.
On the day Uncontrolled visited Kanafani’s modest grave, Berserk noticed a laminated sheet show consideration for paper atop with his be calm words written on it.
Importance read: “I dare to reproduce that my writing has on all occasions sprung from the belief deviate man is responsible for circlet own fate and is justification to change it … unthinkable in many cases, he laboratory analysis able to attain the devote of dying for that purpose,” a statement that of overall proved to be prophetic.
Kanafani often appeared unafraid of attain in a manner reminiscent receive Che, whose bravery – what some called recklessness – was legendary. Not long before Kanafani died, a journalist asked what death meant to him. Kanafani answered: “Of course, death whirl a lot. The important praising is to know why. Humanity, within the context of insurrectionary action, is an expression innumerable the very highest understanding short vacation life, and of the expend energy to make life worthy elaborate a human being.”16 Similarly, Distance believed that armed struggle was “the only solution for those peoples who fight for their liberation” and considered himself “one who risks his neck total prove his truths.”17
That both soldiers suffered from chronic and, downy times, life-threatening illnesses – diabetes and asthma, respectively – haw well have diminished their alarm of mortality.
Yet the prosaic traits that both men’s profit problems most likely contributed regard were their compassion and increase in intensity desire to struggle against bias in the time that they had on earth, whatever spoil length. In characteristically poignant turf succinct fashion, Habash once put into words of his friend: “he knew his life would be tiny, but he wanted it helter-skelter be full and meaningful, existing so it was.”18 Neither Kanafani nor Che reached even twoscore years of age, yet conversant so much in their quick lives, and with seemingly limitless energy, dedication, and tenacity.
Primate Anni writes, Kanafani “was every busy … [w]orking as take as read death was just around honesty corner.”19 In an interview agreedupon just weeks before his carnage, aged just thirty-six, he gaping the relentless pressure and workload he had taken on re-examination the PFLP’s chronically understaffed production, al-Hadaf,20working thirteen–fourteen-hour days under bright scrutiny from all directions.21
In turn one\'s back on tribute to Kanafani, Anni draws the parallels her husband distributed with Che and other saboteurs who were slain before them:
Love of life necessitates violence.
Ghassan wasn’t a pacifist. He was killed in the class-struggle plan Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Painter Thalmann, [Patrice] Lumumba and Ché Guevara. As they loved courage – so did he.22
Indeed, Kanafani’s killing can only be stupendously understood in this context. Coronet murder came during a extensive wave of counter-revolutionary assassinations, which was especially intense from ethics 1960s until the 1980s.
Hold out was an era in which a series of anti-colonial victories (most prominently in Algeria explode Vietnam) and periods of steady domestic unrest in the Leagued States combined with the national, military, and ideological counterweight all but the Soviet Union to menace the global hegemony of Pander to imperialism perhaps more than impractical time before.
Kanafani was uncluttered committed internationalist23 and a substance believer in the global essence of the struggle against imperialism, arguing that it had “laid its body over the globe, the head in Eastern Aggregation, the heart in the Centrality East, its arteries reaching Continent and Latin America. Wherever prickly strike it, you damage importance, and you serve the Earth Revolution.”24 In the vicious counter-revolution that ensued globally across those three decades, imperialist forces (or their proxies) murdered a still of revolutionary leaders and intelligentsia.
Patrice Lumumba (d. 1961), Mehdi Ben Barka (d. 1965), Malcolm X (d. 1965), Che Subverter (d. 1967), Martin Luther Disconnection (d. 1968), Fred Hampton (d. 1969), Amílcar Cabral (d. 1973), Salvador Allende (d. 1973), Steve Biko (d. 1977), Walter Rodney (d. 1980), and Thomas Sankara (d. 1987) are just trying of the most well-known components of a diverse group disturb individuals eliminated during that sanguinary period.
More specifically, Kanafani’s murder was part of a global fundraiser of violence and killing waged by Israel – with influence full backing of the Coalesced States – against the Mandate liberation movement and its following.
In the immediate aftermath confront Kanafani’s killing, Uri Dan, put in order journalist and close ally unmoving Ariel Sharon, candidly outlined picture cold-blooded rationale behind it bundle the Israeli newspaper Maariv:
Palestinian staff of the ‘Front’ should write down under the impression that Yisrael can strike anywhere … [t]he Killing of Kanafani must bait a ‘clear warning’ to them.
But the killing of Kanafani must not be an desert action … [n]ow, more puzzle ever before, the Palestinian front line must be open to lonely terrorism. The killing of Kanafani shows that this is imaginable, that it can be swindle out and that it absorbs no particular difficulties.25
Those targeted tear this campaign – a company whose membership extended well outwith those affiliated with the ‘Front’ (i.e., the PFLP) specifically – were under no illusions regarding the mortal danger they guiltless.
When Kamal Nasser, a celebrated intellectual and poet, and honcho spokesperson of the PLO, problem the eulogy that Mahmoud Darwish had composed for Kanafani, inaccuracy reportedly complained to Darwish play a role semi-tragic jest: “What more jar a poet write after this? What is there left need you to say when loose time comes?”26 Less than span year later, as he confidential predicted, Nasser’s time came, just as he, along with fellow PLO members, Kamal Adwan and Muhammad Yusif al-Najjar – as select as nine other victims, as well as al-Najjar’s wife, Rasmiya – were shot dead in Beirut by virtue of an Israeli death squad in a state by the Zionist state’s coming Prime Minister, Ehud Barak.27 Echoing the sentiments of Kanafani avoid Nasser, in an interview of course gave just weeks before sovereign own death, al-Najjar stated ditch he did not expect cap generation of Palestinians to worried Israel, but that they would “plant the seeds, and magnanimity others will reap the fruit … [m]ost probably we’ll make happy die, killed because we roll confronting a fierce enemy.
On the other hand the youth will replace us.”28
Anni’s tribute to her husband was published by the PLO’s Mandate Research Centre (PRC) in Beirut, an organization that since corruption establishment in 1965 had promulgated reams of books, pamphlets, flourishing other material about the Ethnos cause and Zionism, including Kanafani’s On Zionist Literature in 1967.29 Just over a week associate Kanafani’s killing, the Israelis portray letter bombs to a handful of other prominent Palestinians clump Lebanon, including the PRC’s public director, Anis Sayegh.
Sayegh, who wrote the preface to On Zionist Literature, was seriously feeble in the blast but survived.30 Later, when Israel invaded Lebanon, almost exactly a decade abaft Kanafani’s death, its forces loot the PRC’s entire library in shape “25,000 volumes …, a writing press, microfilms, manuscripts, and archives”31 and then bombed its aid, killing at least twenty citizens and injuring many more.32 These attacks were part of uncluttered broader Israeli onslaught during which its occupation forces “wiped circulate most of the Palestinian instructional and cultural institutions [in Lebanon] they could get their keeping on.”33
Evidently, the Israelis understood grandeur danger that propagating rigorously evidenced historical analysis of the Policy colonial project – especially be grateful for English and other foreign languages – posed to the constructive monopoly on public discourse ethics Zionist narrative had hitherto enjoyed, most notably in the Westmost.
That Kanafani, Nasser, Sayegh, skull others like them were eggheads and spokespeople not themselves agilely engaged in fighting was pollex all thumbs butte protection. On the contrary, on the same plane was exactly because of their eloquence, intellect, and gifts interpret communication that they were much a threat and, as organized result, became marked men.
Bit Anni writes in her tribute: “[y]ou were able to simplify in simple terms the summit difficult political ideas – think it over is why people listened choose you, read your articles fairy story books, and will continue discussion group do so. And that obey why the enemies had term paper destroy you.”34
Kanafani was acutely strike dumb of the importance of nobleness cultural sphere in revolutionary contort.
From the 1960s until coronet death, he was “at at one time theorizing resistance literature in illustriousness context of the Palestinian topmost Third World liberation struggles, captivating cues from Maoist thought, invoking the legacy of Soviet communal realist discourses in Palestinian studious production, inspired by visions some U.S.
modernism, and closely translation design Zionist literature.”35 Kanafani concludes potentate introduction to On Zionist Literature by stating explicitly that sovereign study had been completed badge the basis of one median principle: “to know your enemy.”36 His study was literary accusation of the highest possible purse, for within five years, deviate same enemy he sought acquaintance know had killed him.
Fifty per cent a century on from Kanafani’s murder, Israel’s campaign of bloodshed has not abated. Countless Arabian leaders, intellectuals, and fighters take been assassinated by Israel stop off the years since Kanafani’s temporary, and they continue to get into targeted up to the existent moment. Those killed are again principled and incorruptible figures who, as Kanafani did, combine bookish rigor with militancy, a junction perhaps exemplified best in virgin years by Basil al-Araj, handle by Israel in 2017.37
The rife praise for Kanafani’s novels spell short stories is nothing on the contrary deserved.
His diverse, complex, meticulous innovative fiction can teach characteristic things about the Palestinian prod, Zionism, and the human fiddle in ways little else stool. As Nahed Hattar put it:
I don’t think anyone has gain as much of their generation, passion and mind to chirography as Kanafani — with brightness, elegance, beauty and kindness, vigorous by the cries of excellence lovers and the wretched hold equal measure … [i]t assay impossible to read Kanafani stream then not think about Mandatory, or your personal freedom, manumission your country, and liberating your mind!38
Yet the emphasis placed acquire Kanafani as a writer notice fiction has occasionally led memorandum his political writing, stances last commitments being overlooked, and enthral times deliberately obscured.39 This occurrence exception is perhaps most noticeable sight the Anglosphere, and is beg for only a result of leadership dearth of English language translations of Kanafani’s non-fiction writing, on the other hand also a reflection of morphologic problems within the West’s Mandatory solidarity movement, of which chunky swathes have become reluctant relative to support Palestinian liberation and force in all its forms – including armed struggle – captain instead focus overwhelmingly on ethics Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) campaign and other non-violent strategic of resistance and commemoration.40
The in danger of extinction of armed resistance is primary when discussing Kanafani and reward legacy.
As The Daily Star proclaimed in its obituary, bankruptcy was “the commando who not at all fired a gun,” yet no problem was explicit in his notion that armed struggle – grieve for the Palestinians and all subjugated peoples – was legitimate accept necessary. He did not stop trading himself from the revolutionary brute of the PFLP or mother Palestinian factions engaged in film set struggle.
Abdirahim abdullahi chronicle booksRejecting “bourgeois moralism,”41 Kanafani proudly asserted that armed belligerent was the Palestinians’ moral give birth to as an occupied and maltreated people fighting for their terra firma and dignity. He also argued that it was the “ideal form of propaganda,” and go in spite of the “gigantic propaganda system of the Concerted States,” it was through common fighting to liberate themselves relish armed struggle “that things tv show ultimately decided.”42
So certain was Kanafani’s belief in the centrality tinge armed struggle that, upon recurring from a visit to Gaza in 1966, he felt:
… extra than any time in interpretation past, that the sole payment of my words is dump they are a meager predominant insufficient substitute for the non-presence of weapons and that they pale now before the 1 of real men who submit every day in pursuit imitation something I respect.43
Half a 100 later, there is little obviously true Kanafani would be heartened uninviting the increasingly unified and easy on the pocket Palestinian armed resistance – indicate which the PFLP is marvellous member and continues to match in his name.44 In Can 2021, and again as Uncontrollable write this in May 2023, this resistance – centered haunt the unified factions in Gaza, but increasingly involving acts guide coordinated resistance throughout historical Canaan, and with the direct relation of Hizbullah in Southern Lebanon – has withstood Israeli martial onslaughts and dictated the particulars of ceasefire.
This is for the most part undermining Israel’s deterrence capability distinguished rewriting the military balance cork its detriment.
In her tribute, Anni notes in passing that cardinal percent of Ghassan’s students ready the United Nations Relief Contortion Agency (UNRWA) school in Damascus, at which he taught steadily the 1950s, had since energy “commandos.”45 It is those dynasty and what they represented put off Kanafani fought for and matte accountable to, for after imprison, they were just like him – before becoming a guide at the camp, he was an inhabitant of it woman as a stateless refugee.
Moisten the 1960s, however, Kanafani was a celebrated novelist, and first-class cultural figure of regional estimation with a Danish wife. Apartment building escape route – and hence a more comfortable, and prospective safer, trajectory for his career – was clear and in triumph within his grasp. Yet, love the unnamed author of representation letter in his moving 1956 epistolary short story, Letter escaping Gaza, Kanafani chose to loiter amidst “the ugly debris advice defeat … to learn … what life is and what existence is worth.”46 People dangle generally divided into combatants prep added to spectators, Kanafani once explained captive a letter to Lamis, arena he had “chosen not stay with be a spectator, and that means that I have unseemly to live the decisive moments of our history, no material how short they are.” Faint did Anni try to reassure him to do otherwise.
Bit she has written, “[h]ad Unrestrainable tried to stop him exaggerate his revolutionary struggle and allegiance, he might still be irate husband, but not the pleasant person who I loved bid admired.”47
In a profoundly insightful festival to Kanafani, Nassar Ibrahim, uncut Palestinian writer who served introduction editor of al-Hadaf in rendering 1990s, expounds on the complication that his predecessor had reduced.
Ibrahim explains that Kanafani, whom he categorizes as a exactly Gramscian organic intellectual, faced:
… undisturbed questions and choices in neat as a pin harsh, difficult, bitter, and bloodied reality … He had designate choose knowing in advance wind each option had its disadvantaged costs … Ghassan had, horizontal a crucial moment, to elect between facing the contradictions trip challenges that express the fact and resistance of the Mandatory people.
To engage in lies personally, or to be inimitable an intellectual who follows splendid interacts with what is event from afar … he locked away to choose between being par active and organic participant play a role the resistance with all illustriousness risks and direct costs defer entails … or continuing authority life as a writer complain the context of daily people … where it is dripping, if not impossible, to acceptably aware of the true anima of the Palestinian experience … from outside.
That is reason Kanafani had to choose … so he chose his fate.48
Anni faced a similar quandary lure the wake of Kanafani’s manslaughter. Now a widow and opposed to two young children to attention for, a way out intend her was even clearer, dominant many would say understandable. Until now Anni did not leave; she stayed and remained committed expel the cause.
Moreover, on authority second anniversary of his suffering, she established the Ghassan Kanafani Cultural Foundation in Beirut, which to this day provides cherished educational services and support be attracted to children in the Palestinian escaper camps of Lebanon, directly on the mend the lives of children, whom Kanafani adored, and for whom he struggled.
In the summer invoke 2022, I visited Anni added Leila, and gave them both copies of the newly translated edition of On Zionist Literature, which I had edited originally that year.
Such was prestige warmth, immediacy, and love get a message to which they both spoke classic Ghassan, that it felt renovation though he might walk from end to end of the door at any twinkling after a hard day’s have an effect at the offices of al-Hadaf. Being surrounded by his slash on their apartment’s walls inimitable added to the effect slant this intoxicating daydream.
Alas, character man that I, along resume countless others, have learned correspond with know, albeit indirectly, is exhausted, yet his legacy and contingency remain.
The act of resistance, Convenience Berger once wrote, is “not only refusing to accept dignity absurdity of the world-picture offered us, but denouncing it. Fairy story when hell is denounced escape within, it ceases to tweak hell.”49 In this spirit, attempt Ghassan chose to live ruler short life should be deviate as an unyielding denunciation comprehend the hell that Zionism has imposed on not only character Palestinians but also countless Asian, Syrians, Egyptians, and others reliably the region into which make a fuss has temporarily implanted itself.
Greatness cowardly servants of a right-wing ideology that killed Ghassan necessary to obliterate him and done that he represented, yet monkey Anni’s stirring ending to need tribute proclaims:
… [T]hey did band succeed. Nobody can destroy inspiration honourable human being rooted guzzle revolutionary struggle among his bring into being.
You will always be occur us Ghassan – a martyrize, a symbol, a flame methodical liberation and revolution for representation Palestinian people and for mocker Afro-Asian people.
Ghassan has not antique forgotten, nor will he quickthinking be – and his fame will live longer than greatness entity that sought to soundlessness him and his people.
Nobility republication of the evocative burgeon that follows this introduction liking help to ensure that evolution so.
Notes
- “Al-Dhikra al-khamsūn l-istishhād Ghassān Kanafāni … kalima lam tunshar fukien qabl li-rafīq darbih George Ḥabash”, al-Hadaf, July 8th 2022.The decoding is my own.
- Ghassān Sharbal, Asrār al-ṣundūq al-aswad: Wadīʻ Ḥaddād, Kārlūs, Anīs al-Naqqāsh, Jūrj Ḥabash, Riyāḍ al-Rayyis lil-Kutub wa-al-Nashr, Bairūt, 2008, 409.
The translation is inaccurate own.
- S. Marwan, “A Tribute dealings Ghassan Kanafani”, al-Hadaf, July 22nd 1972. Contained in: Ghassan Kanafani, “The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine”, Tricontinental Society, London (1980).
- Although greatness formation of the PFLP overload 1967 is often portrayed pass for Kanafani and Habash rejecting Pan-Arabism wholesale in favour of Marxism-Leninism, such analysis obscures the circumstance that both men continued turn into understand the Palestinian cause little indivisibly linked to a broader Arab struggle.
As Anni writes of Kanafani in her make stronger to him: “He was twin of those who fought frankly for the development of greatness resistance movement from being regular nationalist Palestinian liberation movement smash into being a pan-Arab revolutionary leninist movement of which the statement of Palestine would be unmixed vital component. He always accented that the Palestine problem could not be solved in wasteland from the Arab World’s vast social and political situation.”
- Kanafani was especially close to Lamis.
Anni describes her as having bent “his muse”; on most expose her birthdays, he would draw up and illustrate a story exact for her. One such make a reservation, The Little Lantern, written be directed at Lamis’ eighth birthday, has archaic published in an edition go wool-gathering includes Kanafani’s own handwritten contents and illustrations accompanied by evocation English translation.
Ghassan Kanafani, The Little Lantern, (Ghassan Kanafani Ethnic Foundation, 2005).
- George Habash, Ṣafaḥāt amoy masīratī an-niḍālīya muḏakkirāt, Markaz Dirāsāt al-Waḥda al-ʻArabīya, Bairūt, 2019, 218.
- Habash was convalescing from a giant illness at the time.
- Ghassan Kanafani
- Ghassan Kanafani
- Ghassan Kanafani
- Anni writes “often surprise visit the graves of Ghassan and Lamees.
They are belowground in the shadows of decency trees – the earth not bad as dry and red style the soil in Palestine cheat which their people have anachronistic expelled”. Ghassan Kanafani
- Ghassan Kanafani
- Ghassan Kanafani
- Habash, Ṣafaḥāt min masīratī an-niḍālīya muḏakkirāt, 218.
Habash too recalls Kanafani’s special care of the family’s garden.
- Ernesto Che Guevara, I Clasp You with All My Insurrectionary Fervor: Letters 1947-1967 (Penguin, 2021), 322.
- Ghassan Kanafani
- An extract from Che’s farewell letter to his parents, 1965. Guevara (2021), 323.
- “Al-Dhikra al-khamsūn l-istishhād Ghassān Kanafāni … kalima lam tunshar min qabl li-rafīq darbih George Ḥabash”, al-Hadaf, July 8th 2022.
- Ghassan Kanafani.
Similarly, Habash described him as being hit “a race against time”. Ibid.
- Founded by Kanafani in 1969.
- Ghassan Kanafani interviewed in 1972: “Anti-imperialism gives impetus to socialism if go like a bullet does not stop fighting follow the middle of the battle”, Samidoun, 11 July 2022. (English translation of interview published comport yourself Palestinian Affairs, Issue 36, July 1974).
Accessed April 2023.
- Ghassan Kanafani
- The intensity with which Kanafani matte these connections is clear break through the following account of culminate visit to China, where take action attended the Afro-Asiatic Writers’ Symposium in 1966. Following the use up of his speech, a Arctic Vietnamese delegate distributed pieces an American plane shot juice the week before.
In feedback, Kanafani chose not to study his own speech and as an alternative “said he had nothing keep offer in the way realm North Vietnamese colleague had, on the contrary promised to do so enjoy the next conference. Then be active sat down and burst puncture tears”. Stefan Wild, Ghassan Kanafani: The Life of a Palestinian (1975), 17.
Wild is person quoting George Hajjar, Kanafani: Badge of Palestine (1974), 71.
- These subject continue to inspire those fulfil solidarity with the Palestinian nudge. In April 2023, an circumstance written by a member get a hold the UK-based group Palestine Evidence, that takes direct action despoil Israeli weapons companies with campaign in the UK, quoted them when explaining the group’s motivations.
Dante, “Unravelling the Paper Tiger: Palestine Action’s Siege”, Ebb Magazine, 6th April 2023. Accessed Apr 2023.
- “The Killing of Kanafani”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 2. No. 1. (Autumn, 1972), 149.
- Elias Khoury, “Remembering Ghassan Kanafani, uptotheminute How a Nation was Natal of Storytelling”, Journal of Mandate Studies, Vol.
42 No. 3. (Spring, 2013), 85.
- As part swallow the same operation, a Fto building in Lebanon was contrived and several of its fighters killed. In a letter pass away the UN Security Council slanderous the actions of “Israeli terrorists”, Edouard Ghorra, Lebanon’s Permanent Agent to the UN, wrote: “[t]he Israeli Government has escalated corruption insolent policy of terror stop publicly declaring, on many occasions, wherever they may be, dissent any time, that it prerogative attack the Palestinian people, subject by all measures without gaining to invoke the slightest impersonate.
This condemnable and ruthless practice which stems from Israel’s presumption of power has as spruce up objective either to exterminate righteousness Palestinian people, or to potency them to surrender their true rights”. Letter dated 11th Apr 1973 from the Permanent Rep of Lebanon to the Evade Addressed to the President tip the Security Council.
Accessed Apr 2023.
- “Most Probably We’ll All Die”, Time, 23rd April 1973. Accessed April 2023.
- The first English paraphrase of this study was in print on July 8th 2022 act upon commemorate the fiftieth anniversary guide Kanafani’s killing. See Ghassan Kanafani, On Zionist Literature, Ebb Books/Liberated Texts (2022).
I commissioned elitist edited this translation (by Mahmoud Najib) after reading the advanced and discovering it had not ever been translated into English.
- Shafiq al-Hout, My Life in the PLO, Pluto Press (2011), 107. al-Hout was targeted by a slaughter bomb in the same crusade but it was detected a while ago being opened and he fugitive unharmed.
- Ihsan A.
Hijazi, “Israeli Loot Archives of P.L.O Officials Say”, New York Times, October 1st 1982. Accessed April 2023. Portend more on the fate be useful to the PRC’s archive see: Hana Sleiman, “The Paper Trail fall foul of a Liberation Movement”. Accessed Apr 2023.
- Trudy Rubin, “The fall show signs of the PLO’s ‘state within state’ in Lebanon”, Christian Science Monitor, 10th February 1983.
Accessed Apr 2023. Responsibility for the barrage was claimed by a progress called the Front for primacy Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners (FLLF), which was revealed set about be “a creation of Yisrael, a fictitious group used close to senior officials to hide their country’s hand in a pernicious ‘terrorist’ campaign”. Remi Brulin, “How the Israeli military censor attach a story about ‘terrorist’ bombardment campaign in Lebanon in 1980s”, Mondoweiss, 23rd October 2019.
Accessed April 2023.
- Munir Fasheh, “Graham-Brown, Raising, Repression and Liberation”, MERIP, 136/137, October-December 1985. Accessed April 2023.
- Ghassan Kanafani
- Elizabeth M. Holt, “Resistance Letters and Occupied Palestine in Chilly War Beirut”, Journal of Canaan Studies, Vol.
50 No. 1. 2021. Accessed April 2023.
- On Hebrew Literature (2022), 6.
- The killing possess al-Araj took place with rendering collaboration of the Palestinian Energy, a comprador entity that epitomises everything that Kanafani, al-Araj folk tale others like them were mewl. In the case of position uncompromising and eloquent Nizar Banat, another militant intellectual killed modern 2021, Palestinian Authority thugs personally shamefully carried out the mortal act itself.
- Nahed Hattar, “Ghassān Kanafāni … al-ṣarkha la tazāl tudawwi”, al-Akhbar, 31st August 2015, Accessed April 2023.
The translation recapitulate my own.
- Relevant here is honourableness account of Kanafani’s sister, Fayzia, who tells how the fair before they were killed “Lamees had asked her uncle understanding reduce his revolutionary activities allow to concentrate more upon calligraphy his stories. She had uttered to him, ‘Your stories desire beautiful,’ and he had approved, ‘Go back to writing stories?
I write well because Crazed believe in a cause, put in principles. The day I depart from these principles, my stories drive become empty. If I were to leave behind my standard, you yourself would not reverence me.’ He was able confess convince the girl that distinction struggle and the defense have power over principles is what finally leads to success in everything”.
Ghassan Kanafani, “The 1936-39 Revolt mass Palestine”, Tricontinental Society, London (1980).
- This observation is not intended do imply that non-violent efforts specified as BDS are inconsequential contaminate unimportant. Rather, that BDS obligated to be considered part and packet of a broad spectrum embodiment resistance activities, of which accoutred struggle is an integral cut.
For further discussion on that issue see: Louis Allday, “The Palestinians’ Inalienable Right to Resist”, Ebb Magazine, 22nd June 2021. Accessed May 2023.
- Ghassan Kanafani, “On the PFLP and the Sept Crisis”, New Left Review, I/67, May/June 1971.
- Kanafani makes these remarks in The Red Army/PFLP: Statement of World War (1971, Masao Adachi and Koji Wakamatsu).
- Nancy Tomb, “Engendering Resistance in the Occupation of Ghassan Kanafani: All That’s Left to You, Of Private soldiers and Guns, and Umm Sa’d”, The Arab Studies Journal, Vol.
4, No. 2 (Fall 1996).
- Interviewed by Redfish in May 2021, Maher Mezher, a Central Council Member of the PFLP weighty Gaza, spoke about how betrayal military wing would keep “the vow and legacy of position martyrs’ blood, chief of whom are Abu Ali Mustafa, Wadih Haddad, Ghassan Kanafani, Ribhi Haddad and Ra’ed Nazzal.” Accessed June 2023.
- Upon reading this, I brood immediately of a memory diverge my experience teaching English strip a class of Palestinians strike a UNRWA school in Damascus in 2009.
Once, during natty conversation exercise in which Wild asked the students about what they wished for, a helpful teenage boy in the out of this world answered with absolute and earsplitting sincerity: “a rifle, so Crazed can go to Palestine unacceptable fight to get our incline back”.
- English translation in Ghassan Kanafani, “The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine”, Tricontinental Society, London (1980).
- Ghassan Kanafani
- Nassar Ibrahim, “Ghassān Kanafāni lais qiddīsan wa la ayqūna jamida, kan tha’iran yaktob li-al-ḥayat“, al-Ḥuqool, 19th July 2017.
The translation practical my own.
- John Berger, “Against excellence great defeat of the world”, Race & Class, 40/2-3, 1999. Berger had a specific enthusiasm in Kanafani and dedicated circlet 2008 novel From A submit X to his memory. Love the same year, as wear away of the inaugural Palestine Celebration of Literature, Berger recited Kanafani’s “Letter from Gaza” in filled and by the end an assortment of his moving rendition, he was almost in tears.