Selected Political Writings of Ghassan Kanafani is a long overdue edition in English, offering a small glimpse into the non-fiction writings Kanafani produced in his lifetime, a life tragically cut short by a targeted Israeli assassination. While Kanafani’s novels have been translated into English, his non-fiction works are only recently receiving attention in the Anglophone world. Kanafani was a lot of things simultaneously, a novelist, a theoretician, an editor and an ideologue. The book is a compilation of previously unpublished essays in English, each with a specific introduction. The essays themselves span a vast range of topics, with some in the form of media interviews as a spokesperson of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The volume succeeds in highlighting the sharp insights of Kanafani while also offering valuable lessons in Marxist organizing today. Marxism as method and as the organizing principle for revolutionary change was something Kanafani was thoroughly committed to his entire life. In these essays we can see the depth of Kanafani as an eloquent speaker and as a beacon of anti-imperialist thinking. One of the strongest editorial decisions made in the book is to have had academics and activists committed to the Palestinian cause, or Palestinians themselves, to write the introductions to the essays. This ensures Kanafani’s messages are not diluted while at the same time, providing very useful context to the essays themselves. The book appears at a crucial juncture in history, following the events of October 7th and the genocidal war on Palestine carried out by Israel and with the full support of imperial powers. In these difficult times, the book will appeal greatly to anyone who empathizes with the Palestinian cause and stands together with the Palestinians in their struggle for self-determination.
The book has a broad thematic logic and is grouped into separate sections focussing on different facets of Kanafani’s thinking on the Palestinian question, the region as well as global scenarios. The first section offers theoretical insights into questions of socialism in the Arab world while also reflecting on Kanafani’s own life and childhood, spent in exile outside of his homeland as a refugee. The introductions in this section are also valuable in highlighting the politics of translation and the multiple challenges that present itself in translating somebody like Kanafani, who was coincidentally a prolific translator himself. In this section, Kanafani delves into his early days being associated with the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) and his introduction to George Habash (who would then go on to found the PFLP). Kanafani highlights that the motivation for him and a lot of his contemporaries to join the ANM was the anticolonial logic of the organization, and while initially not committed to Marxism ideologically, the ANM later adopted a stance through which socialism formed a core of its ideology. The Palestinian faction of the ANM would then go on to become the PFLP and would place the liberation of Palestine as the main goal of the Arab movement. In explaining his own role within the PFLP and its newspaper al-Hadaf, Kanafani refers to the dynamic nature of the various branches of the PFLP and how they functioned in unison, with mass mobilization as the organizing principle. At the core of the mass mobilization was also political education. Through his interweaving of his personal story with the formative years of the PFLP, Kanafani offers various lessons on organizing in the contemporary context. The other essay in the chapter focuses on the changes occurring in Yemen and Iraq in the 1960s, and this essay demonstrates Kanafani at his analytical sharpest. Rather than attributing the changes that were occurring to coincidences, Kanafani makes use of comparative analysis both as a theoretical tool and method, to draw out unparalleled theoretical insights, arrived at through a concrete analysis.
The second section of the book focuses on three important essays written in the immediate aftermath of the events of 1967, termed as the naksa (the setback) in the history of the Palestinian movement. The first essay, ‘Resistance is the Essence’, sees Kanafani write with an unparalleled clarity. Launching a full-blown Marxist-Leninist attack against other forms of Arab socialism of the time, the essay places Kanafani squarely in the anti-imperialist tradition that drove the Global South agenda in the 1960s. What anti-imperialist articulations shared was the creation of newer forms of relationships which in opposition to humanist ideas of political subjects, actually involved the creation of a revolutionary leadership. For Kanafani, the creation of a state without a revolutionary leadership is a meaningless entity. It is important to tie this point to the fact that after the events of the naksa, imperialism aimed to divide the Palestinians and their land into fragments and factions, and Kanafani’s passionate call reinforces the need for a united front which rejects fragmentation. The second essay reaffirms how contemporary Kanafani’s voice often is and offers useful practical insights on organizing, on the role of revolutionary criticism and the ways in which there is a need to move beyond formalist definitions of democracy into a ‘democratic spirit’ that needs to be imbibed by revolutionaries in their bringing about revolutionary social change.
The third section of the book focuses on the building of the PFLP and the formulation of its programme and agendas. Given that the PFLP is very much an active organization in Palestine, this section is a historical document as much as it is a living political programme for the PFLP. As a core member of the PFLP, Kanafani played a monumental role in the articulation of its agenda. The most important aspect that stands out in this section is how internationalist the PFLP is in its outlook and that its relationship to other movements worldwide which were attempting to build socialism and freeing themselves from colonialism were a guiding light for the agenda of the PFLP. This is further solidified by the fact that multiple members of the PFLP cadres were also individuals from Africa, Asia and Latin America for whom the Palestinian cause was the most important for alignment as anti-imperialist Marxism. Drawing on theoretical insights from both Lenin and Mao, the PFLP programme articulated a revolutionary agenda by laying out the factors that both support and hinder revolutionary programmes at a local, regional and international level. As the introduction to one of the essays succinctly puts it, one of the greatest strengths of the PFLP as an organization lay in its ability to learn from changes and challenges and adapt both its political praxis and theoretical insights to reflect new realities. The primary question faced by the organization after the naksa was the relationship of the national question to the question of class. Kanafani’s rich theoretical insights in this context offer valuable lessons in a debate that has continued to preoccupy Marxists of all shades even today. Making use of various examples from Lenin and Mao, Kanafani reinforces the threefold logic that Marxists must continue to employ in all their analysis, namely theory, practice and method. For Kanafani, any of these employed without the other two can only lead to reactionary tendencies.
The fourth section contains Kanafani’s interactions with the media, including the transcript of his famous interview with ABC media journalist Richard Carleton. In this section, Kanafani remains steadfast in his opinion of not allowing western media to frame the Palestinian question on its own biased terms and instead to recognize the Palestinian struggle for self-determination in its entirety. In the essay on the study of media experience in Denmark, Kanafani identifies and criticizes the double-speak of western media while referring to Israelis and Palestinians and for providing a veneer for the normalization of the settler-colonialism process. Given how much this process has only accelerated in the contemporary context, Kanafani’s study of the media offers a scathing indictment of Western liberal media.
The fifth section of the book contains Kanafani’s thoughts on the future of the Palestinian question and the region as a whole. His visionary thought process and concrete analysis of historical and material conditions coupled with his commitment to Marxist methods allow him to see the ways in which imperial powers are coopting Arab regimes and making them subservient to imperial interests. Nowhere is this clearer than in the essay on the collusion between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Using concrete examples, Kanafani lays bare how the interests of Saudi Arabia and Israel converge. He characterizes the role of Saudi Arabia as not just detrimental to Palestinian interests but because of Saudi’s collusion with the imperial powers, as detrimental to anti-imperial interests globally. In the essay on national unity, Kanafani urges the need for a united front in the fight against settler-colonialism and imperialism. As mentioned in the introduction to this essay, this echoes the sentiment of multiple leaders from the Global South during the time. Kanafani points out two crucial factors in this regard: firstly, he echoes the sentiment of the Black Panthers of the US who stated that ‘an injury to one, is an injury to all’. Kanafani stresses that a setback to any one Palestinian faction is a setback for the movement as a whole. Secondly, Kanafani points out that none of the people who are martyred were so in the name of the organization but in the name of the collective cause. At the same time, Kanafani convincingly emphasizes that national unity is not something that is done on a case-by-case basis or in temporary terms but is a critical organizing principle which in the long run requires deep levels of communication and is ‘based on mutual recognition of existing disagreements that are a natural result of different ideological positions’ (264).
For a long time, the only non-fiction piece that was available in English of Kanafani was his analysis of the revolt in Palestine between 1936-1939. This has changed recently through the publication of Kanafani’s On Zionist Literature. The edited volume deserves a lot of praise for bringing Kanafani’s voice to the fore for an English-speaking audience and for allowing him to speak on his own terms. The introductions to the essays are extremely useful for the reader, while at the same time none of them feel like they are drowning out his voice. The entire volume is testimony to an aura that Kanafani possesses, one which exceeds Palestine. A committed Marxist throughout his life, Kanafani’s internationalism was a core principle in everything that he did and through this internationalism, he is a beacon for anti-imperial movements globally. In his own words, ‘our first friends are the enslaved peoples who are suffering from imperialism and the imperialist exploitation of their efforts and wealth, or who are living in the same danger represented by the USA today in attempting to impose its influence on rising peoples’ (112). Kanafani’s theoretical eloquence coupled with his insistence on political education, mass organizing and ability to concretely analyze historical and material conditions place him on par with the greatest of Marxist thinkers globally. At the same time, the impact Kanafani has had within Palestinian national consciousness can never be described through simple words. In the struggle for Palestinian self-determination, Kanafani will always hold centre stage. While we may choose to remember him as a colossus of a literary figure, as a towering ideologue, a committed practitioner or as a deeply beloved human being, Kanafani remains a Palestinian national icon, second to none.
Reviewed by Vis Raj