Kanafani was born on April 8, 1936 in Acre, Palestine. He lived with his family in Jaffa until they were forced to leave during the Nakba ("catastrophe") of 1948 and finally settled in Damascus. After living in a refugee camp, he later began working as a teacher in a refugee camp for the UNRWA to help support his family and continue his studies. His experience in the refugee camps is reflected in much of his works.
While studying Arabic literature at the University of Damascus he became interested in politics and met the then leader of the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) George Habash, with whom he began to work. After teaching several years in Kuwait, where he was diagnosed with acute diabetes, Kanafani moved to Beirut to work on al-Hurriyya ("Independence") magazine at the invitation of Habash.
In 1961 he married Danish professor Anni Hoover, who had come to Beirut to study the refugee situation and in 1962 he published his first major book, Men in the Sun *, immediately acclaimed throughout the Arab world. Both as a journalist and as a writer, Kanafani was very prolific in the 1960s when Palestinian resistance and armed struggle increased (the PLO was founded in 1965).
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was founded in 1967 to replace the Movement of Arab Nationalists and Kanafani became director of al-Hadaf, the party's organ. With a clear Marxist orientation, the PFLP pledged to resist the occupation of Palestine and establish in Palestine a single state with a new secular society based on social justice. The period between 1970 and 1972 was rich in political and armed activity, and at that time Kanafani was a member of the PFLP politburo in addition to being its spokesperson.
The PFLP considered the fight against the Israeli occupation to be anti-colonial resistance. After the defeats of 1948 and, especially, 1967, the struggle in the cultural sphere was fundamental to recover a daily Palestinian national identity that was in danger due to dispersion and ethnic and cultural cleansing. It was the first step to recover his country.
He was assassinated along with his 17-year-old niece Lamees on July 8, 1972 in Beirut by a car bomb planned by Mossad and very possibly with the collusion of the Lebanese authorities.
-- PFLP Ghassan Kanafani, Richard Carleton interview COMPLETE
-- The Dupes, 1973 Syrian Film based on the book by Kanafani "Men in the Sun"
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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
- β€οΈFoundations of Leninism
- β€οΈAnarchism and Other Essays
marx - head in the clouds idealist in the colloquial sense
lenin - good ideas bad execution
stalin - literally hitler
ulbricht - basically putin
edit: oh how also Liebknecht&Luxemburg but more as a footnote, unfortunate killings during a tumultuous time,
That's shocking tbh, even through university the entirety of the USSR was painted as cartoonishly evil in my experience
i think may depend on where in the west? perhaps its different in usamerica but here in
in high school we were pretty much taught that the USSR was a nice idea but the leftist infighting that left stalin in charge doomed everything
but then again my teacher was chill with us openly siding with the soviets, so maybe she was just particularly cool
Yeah pretty much this. Its the old "communism only works in theory" trope. Marx&Lenin -> the theory Stalin&Ulbricht -> the praxis.
It's no wonder we got the "China is capitalist because it works" school of thought
oh absolutely they would sooner cut their own tongue out than admit to a failure of capitalism. The runaway success of China can only be because they do capitalism better, the only thing left to solve is how we can do capitalism as good as china without becoming
AUTHORITARIAAAAAN
Who tf is Ulbricht ?
I think they are referring to Walter Ulbricht, a Weimar era German Communist.
first secretary of the socialist unity party the communist party of the GDR aka east germany. the guy behind the berlin wall
The thing is you cant look at tsarist russia and not think "wow thats really fucked up". Plus liberals hate monarchies as well and thats why the "good ideas" we are taught essentially boil down to "monarchy bad". Revolution is good if its against monarchies after all but then he just had to go One Step Too Far. In essence the narrative I got taught is february revolution good, but by october revolution things had gotten out of control, the unwashed masses were in control and open riot and poor war-torn russia (how did get this bad
) couldnt deal with the rabble in a Civilized Manner. Thats also how Stalin rose to power by feeding the mob-justice impulse of the stupid farmworkers.
I keep encountering liberals who are fine with monarchies >.>
What country are you from habibi ?
germany