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Ghassan Kanafani (غسان كنفاني, born April 9, 1936 in Akka, Palestine - died July 8, 1972 in Beirut, Lebanon) was a Palestinian writer and a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was assassinated by car bomb in Beirut, for which the Mossad later claimed responsibility[1].
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Early years
Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani was born in Acre in Palestine (then under the British mandate) in 1936. His father was a lawyer, and sent Ghassan to French missionary school in Jaffa. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Kanafani and his family were forced into exile. They fled to Lebanon, but soon moved on to Damascus, Syria, to live there as Palestinian refugees. Kanafani completed his secondary education in Damascus and received a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) teaching certificate in 1952.
Political background
The same year he enrolled in the Department of Arabic Literature at the University of Damascus but was expelled in 1955 as a result of his involvement in the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), a left-wing pan-Arab organization to which he had been recruited by Dr. George Habash when the two met in 1953. Some biographers, however, do not believe Kanafani was ever expelled. He moved to Kuwait, where he worked as a teacher and became more politically active. In Kuwait he edited al-Ra'i (The Opinion), which was an ANM-affiliated newspaper, and also became interested in Marxist philosophy and politics.
In 1960, he relocated once again to Beirut, where he began editing the ANM mouthpiece al-Hurriya. In 1961, he met Anni Høver, a Danish children's rights activist, with whom he had two children. In 1962, Kanafani briefly had to go underground, since he, as a stateless person, lacked proper identification papers. He reappeared in Beirut later the same year, and took up editingship of the Nasserist newspaper al-Muharrir (The Liberator). He went on to become an editor of another Nasserist newspaper, al-Anwar (The Illumination), in 1967.
Involvement in PFLP
The Palestinian membership of the ANM evolved in 1967 into the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), of which Kanafani became a spokesman. In 1969, he drafted a PFLP program in which the movement officially took up Marxism-Leninism. He also edited the movements newspaper, al-Hadaf (The Target), which he had founded in 1969, writing political, cultural and historical essays and articles.
Assassination
Several days after the Lod airport massacre, a picture of Kanafani together with one of the Japanese terrorists was published. As Eitan Haber told Yediot Aharonot, Following the newly-established policy of taking retribution for terror attacks, Kanafani was selected as a target. On July 8, 1972, Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated by a bomb planted in his car in Beirut by the Israeli Mossad; incidentally, his niece was also killed in his assassination. The New York Times reported the following day, "Beirut Blast Kills Guerrilla Leader".
Literary production
Ghassan Kanafani is considered a major modernizing influence on Arab literature, and remains a major figure in Palestinian literature. He was an early proponent of complex narrative structures, using flashback effects and a chorus of narrator voices for effect.
His writings focused mainly on the themes of Palestinian liberation and struggle, and often touched upon his own experiences as a refugee. He was, as was the PFLP, a Marxist, and believed that the class struggle within Palestinian and Arab society was intrinsically linked to the struggle against Zionism and for a Palestinian state.
He wrote both short stories and novels (the most famous is probably Men in the Sun), and scholarly work on literature and politics. His thesis, Race and Religion in Zionist Literature, formed the basis for his 1967 study On Zionist Literature.
He was also an active literary critic. His seminal work, Palestinian Literature Under Occupation, 1948-1968, introduced Palestinian writers and poets to the Arab world. He also wrote a major critical work on Zionist and Israeli literature. In the spirit of Jean-Paul Sartre, he called for an engaged literature which would be committed to change.
Bibliography, in English
- Kanafani, Ghassan (Translated by Hilary Kilpatrick): Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories ISBN 0-89410-857-3 1998.
- Kanafani, Ghassan and Barbara Harlow, Karen E. Riley: Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories. ISBN 0-89410-890-5 2000.
- Kanafani, Ghassan, with Roger Allen, May Jayyusi, Jeremy Reed: All That's Left to You ISBN 1-56656-548-0 Interlink World Fiction, 2004
Books
- Note: Some Names are roughly Translated
- mawt sarir raqam 12, 1961 (Death of Bed No. 12)
- ard al-burtuqal al-hazin, 1963 (The Land of Sad Oranges)
- rijal fi-sh-shams, 1963 (Men in the Sun)
- al-bab, 1964 (The Door)
- 'aalam laysa lana, 1965 (A World that is Not Ours)
- 'adab al-muqawamah fi filastin al-muhtalla 1948-1966, 1966 (Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine)
- ma tabaqqa lakum, 1966 (All That's Left to You)
- fi al-adab al-sahyuni, 1967 (On Zionist Literature)
- al-adab al-filastini al-muqawim taht al-ihtilal: 1948-1968, 1968 (Palestinian Resistance Literature under the Occupation)
- 'an ar-rijal wa-l-banadiq, 1968 (On Men and Rifles)
- umm sa'd, 1969 (Umm Sa'd)
- a'id ila Hayfa, 1970 (Return to Haifa)
- al-a'ma wa-al-atrash, 1972 (The Blind and the Deaf)
- Barquq Naysan, 1972 (The Apricots of April)
- al-qubba'ah wa-l-nabi, 1973 (The Hat and the Prophet) incomplete
- thawra 1936-39 fi filastin, 1974 (The Revolution of 1936-39 in Palestine))
- jisr ila-al-abad, 1978 (A Bridge to Eternity)
- al-qamis al-masruq wa-qisas ukhra, 1982 (The Stolen Shirt and Other Stories)
- 'The Slave Fort' in Arabic Short Stories, 1983 (transl. by Denys Johnson-Davies)
External links
- Jaffa, Land of Oranges Kanafani on becoming a refugee.
- New Jersey Solidarity - page on Kanafani with translated writings
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- Tribute to Ghassan Kanafani - by S. Marwan, published in al-Hadaf on July 22, 1972. (From NJS)
- Letter to Gaza - short story by Ghassan Kanafani (From NJS).
- The 1936-39 Revolt - by Ghassan Kanafani (From NJS).
References
- ^ http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0164-2472%28198624%2F21%290%3A13%2F14%3C3%3ARTH%22TB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R Harlow, Barbara, Return to Haifa: "Opening the Borders" in Palestinian Literature, Social Text, No. 13/14. (Winter - Spring, 1986), pp. 3-23.]