On this day, 50 years ago, Palestinian militant intellectual Ghassan Kanafani, 36, was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad, who planted a bomb in his car in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
Kanafani was a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); he was also a well-known journalist, intellectual and activist. He was one of the most important writers in modern Palestinian literature. He was the first to introduce the concept of Adab al-Muqawama (Resistance Literature).
Ghassan Kanafani was born in 1936 in city of Akka (Acre), in Palestine and his family was forced into exile in 1948, following the Nakba and the subsequent creation of Israel atop the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages.
Kanafani wrote 18 books, which were translated into many languages, published in more than 20 countries. His books include Men in the Sun, Return to Haifa, Death of Bed no. 12, and The Land of Sad Oranges.
He was the posthumous recipient of the Lotus Prize for Literature by the Conference of Afro-Asian writers.
Despite his assassination by Israel 50 years ago, Kanafani remains one of the most influential Palestinian intellectuals to this day.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
