GHASSAN KANAFANI (1936 - 1972)

THE FEARLESS WRITER OF RESISTANCE AND TRUTH

“We were heaped up there, withdrawn from our childhood, away from the land of oranges…‘oranges that died’, an old farmer once told us, ‘if watered by strange hands.’”

Excerpt from The Land of Sad Oranges, 1958

Ghassan Kanafani was a prolific Palestinian journalist and writer, an unapologetic speaker, and a pioneering cultural leader. Decades after his assassination at age 36 by the Israeli Mossad, Kanafani’s writings continue to inspire, reclaiming the right of Palestinians to narrate for themselves their ongoing struggle for liberation.  

Forced into exile by Zionist forces in 1948, Kanafani worked as an art teacher for Palestinian refugee children in Damascus, Syria. There he was inspired to write short stories to help his young students cope with their own dispossession. Among his most well known stories are Men in the Sun (1962) and Returning to Haifa (1969). Kanafani’s writings broke with tradition, employing new literary styles to explore Palestinian statelessness and exile. He wrote everything from short stories to novels, plays to analytical studies, and boasted a massive body of journalistic work. In some ways, Kanafani seemed to live as though he knew his time was limited, writing constantly and publishing without respite.

He fearlessly spoke truth in the face of powerful, hostile governments, emphasizing the liberation of Palestinians as part and parcel of the liberation of all oppressed people across the world. Kanafani was never able to return to his homeland. His obituary in the Lebanon Daily Star called him “A commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ball-point pen, and his arena the newspaper pages.” [1] 

Ancestors of Palestinian Liberation is a collaboration of Anemoia Projects and Palestine Advocacy Project

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