Ghassan Kanafani, who was assassinated in Beirut in 1972, was not just a master of Palestinian literature, a pioneering journalist, and a visionary strategist, but was also a diehard internationalist. He comprehensively understood that the struggle against Zionism and imperialism in Palestine intersected with the anti-colonial, Pan-African liberation movements cutting across the African continent.
Kanafani was a foundational theoretician, revolutionary, and iconic martyr of the Palestinian liberation struggle, leaving behind an indelible legacy. 8 July 2022 marked the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination, and on 9 April of this year, we celebrated his 90th birthday.
Ghassan was an indefatigable protagonist for the Palestinian struggle in diverse ways, playing a pivotal role as a novelist, short story writer, journalist and newspaper editor, and militant with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He drafted the PFLP's 1969 platform, in which he made a transition from pan-Arab nationalism to revolutionary Marxism. Imperialism targeted him because his pen was more potent than their swords.
Through powerful works like "Men in the Sun" and "Returning to Haifa", he epitomised the displaced, the exiled, and the unrelenting will of people refusing to be wiped out. The "hero" to whom they left tributes symbolised a "commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ball-point pen, and his arena the newspaper pages".
He was a journalist and editor of Palestinian newspapers and journals, a novelist who encapsulated the essence of Palestinian refugee experience, a historian who chronicled the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936-1939, and an artist who designed poster graphics that continue to appear across Palestine.
On 8 July 1972, he got into his car with his young niece Lamees. When he turned on the ignition, the booby-trapped car exploded, killing them both. The bomb took away a great leader, but the Israelis failed to silence Kanafani, whose works resurrect the spirit of Palestinians across the West Bank, Gaza, and in the diaspora today.
He brilliantly forged a synthesis between national liberation and class struggle, leaving behind revolutionary writings that bloom today amidst the darkest days. Very few writers ever more encapsulated the soul or plight of the Palestinian masses or expressed more optimism in their capacity to emancipate themselves from Israeli tyranny.
Creativity and open mindedness characterised his qualities, symbolising the antithesis of a mechanical approach. Experimentation and spirit of inquiry were concurrent themes in his life. Kanafani's journey evoked the metal that revolutionaries were made of, manifesting their spirit in transcendental realms.
He was born in the port city of Akka (Acre) on 9 April 1936, in the backdrop of al-thawra al-kubra (the Great Revolt) of 1936-39, the most important anti-colonial struggle against British rule in the Middle East in the inter-war era. Ghassan was the third child born into a comfortably well-off family. His father was a lawyer and, like many Palestinian children from his background, Ghassan was sent to a French missionary school where he was taught in French rather than Arabic.
Like all Palestinians, his life underwent a dramatic metamorphosis as a result of the Nakba of 1947-48. During the revolt, Acre prison housed hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and over 100 Arabs were executed by the British. Kanafani's father and relatives were actively involved in the revolt as it spread across the country.
Thus, Kanafani's early years were devoted to the developing Palestinian struggle for freedom. Later, he wrote a history of the Revolt that reflected his distinctive political understanding: "Between 1936 and 1939, the Palestinian revolutionary movement suffered a severe setback at the hands of three separate enemies: the local reactionary leadership; the regimes in the Arab states surrounding Palestine; and the imperialist-Zionist enemy."
In May 1948, the Nakba came to Acre. The city's water supply was poisoned with typhoid germs by Israeli forces, and the Carmeli Brigade attacked with shells and heavy artillery. In the face of the attacks, people were compelled to evacuate.
Twelve-year-old Ghassan took to the road with his family, eventually settling in Damascus. Like most Palestinian refugees, the Kanafanis found this to be a permanent exile: their former comfortable life was replaced with poverty and hardship. The teenage Ghassan started to paint, draw, and write notes about his life and what he saw amongst refugees.
In the mid-1950s, he enrolled at Damascus University to study Arabic literature. University brought him into more active political engagement, and he came into contact with George Habash, leader of the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM). Their political relationship developed during the second half of the 1950s, and Kanafani worked closely with Habash for the rest of his life.
Kanafani projected the problem of weak Palestinian leadership, the role of corrupt Arab states turning their backs on Palestinians, and the impact of imperial intervention and Zionist settlement in much of his writing. He began writing stories when he was a staffer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
After receiving his teaching certificate in 1952, he used his stories to help children in refugee camps understand their predicament. He pioneered the term "resistance literature" (or adab al-muqawama) for the efflorescence of writing in this "heroic" phase of Palestinian resistance, singling out poets Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim.
By age 19, he had joined the editorial board of the ANM's Al-Ra'i, and by 1963, he was editor in chief of both the daily Al-Muharrir and its bimonthly supplement Filastin in Beirut. His work entailed contributing a daily news story, an editorial, and a column, in addition to a short story or novel excerpt.
For Al-Muharrir, Kanafani wrote up his international travels, including trips to India and China in 1965 and 1966 and to the Afro-Asian Writers' Conference in 1966. Later, he would edit Al-Anwar and become, from July 1969 until his assassination, editor in chief of the PFLP's Al-Hadaf. In a June 1971 interview, Kanafani remarked on the difficulty of writing among the constant death toll in the Palestinian struggle.
Pan-Arabist themes appeared in Kanafani's writings. In pieces like Letter from Gaza, Land of Sad Oranges, and Men in the Sun, he illustrated the horror of Palestinian displacement and refugee life. Kanafani remains known as perhaps the preeminent Palestinian novelist, but a recent anthology, Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings (2024), shows he was similar to Aimé Césaire and Roque Dalton, not to mention Vladimir Mayakovsky.
In "Letter from Gaza," Kanafani makes a lyrical testament to the relentless spirit of a people bound to their land by the deepest of roots, intersecting the personal and the political to create a concoction of loss, love, despair, and defiance. The narrative embodies the unyielding spirit of a people and stands as a powerful testament to their refusal to forsake their identity or homeland.
By the mid-1960s, the Palestinian political situation was shifting. In 1964, the Arab League set up the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Kanafani explored other Third World anti-colonial struggles for inspiration. The ideas of Mao gripped some activists, and these debates were published in Filastin. These debates resulted in Kanafani cementing the foundation of the PFLP in 1967. Its inaugural statement declared: "The only language which the enemy understands is that of revolutionary violence ... turning the occupied territories into an inferno whose fires consume the usurpers."
Kanafani emerged as a key leader. The PFLP adopted Marxism, committed itself to armed struggle, and set itself against any solution except the liberation of Palestine. By 1969, Kanafani had moved to Beirut as PFLP media spokesperson, founding and editing al-Hadaf. Under no condition would he accept talks with Israel. Famously, in a 1970 interview, he described peace talks as a "capitulation" akin to a conversation between "a sword and a neck". As an outspoken critic, Kanafani became a target, and on 8 July 1972, the Israelis silenced him. But his works continue to resurrect the spirit of Palestinians today.
Holding a Marxist viewpoint, with Lenin's definition of imperialism as a guide, Kanafani diagnosed Western colonialism as the primary enemy that engineered Palestinian dispossession. His mature writings reflect Marxist influences from Lenin, Mao, Lukács, Giáp, Guevara, and Ho Chí Minh. Aware of the weakness of the Palestinian struggle, he perceived Vietnam as the most coherent model of liberation.
Kanafani and the PFLP dedicated themselves to developing cadres for a unified revolutionary movement, repeating Mao's saying that the party was "the boat that connected the shore of theory to the shore of practice." Marxists view his transition from pan-Arab nationalism to scientific socialism as parallel to liberation movements in China, Vietnam, and Cuba. Today, Kanafani's words burn brighter than ever, reminding us that the pen can outlast any bomb.
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*Freelance journalist
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