Ghassan Kanafani was a Palestinian journalist, fiction writer, and a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Kanafani died at the age of 36, assassinated by car bomb in Beirut, By the Israeli Mossad
Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani was born in Acre in Palestine (then under the British mandate) in 1936. His father was a lawyer, and sent Ghassan to a French missionary school in Jaffa. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Kanafani and his family fled to Lebanon, but soon moved on to Damascus, Syria, to live there as Palestinian refugees.
After studying Arabic literature at the University of Damascus, Kanafani became a teacher at the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. There, he began writing short stories, influenced by his contact with young children and their experiences as stateless citizens. In 1960 he moved to Beirut, Lebanon, where he became the editor of several newspapers, all with an Arab nationalist affiliation. In Beirut, he published the novel Men in the Sun (1962). He also published extensively on literature and politics, focusing on the the Palestinian liberation movement and the refugee experience, as well as engaging in scholarly literary criticism, publishing several books about post-1948 Palestinian and Israeli literature.
"If everything is justified for the sake of serving a prior conclusion, what is the standard against which the quality of art may be critiqued?"
I'm so grateful to my friends at Liberated Texts for publishing this. This is a brilliant, systematic dismantling of the myths of Zionism, as seen through the lens of literature. Just as Edward Said would go on to analyze culture and imperialism, so did Ghassan Kanafani analyze literature and zionism. Starting in the pre-Zionist (or pre-political Zionist) era, he offers an incisive critique of the perversion of Jewish stories, culminating in the academic sanctioning of the violent formation of the state of israel and subsequent wars of aggression, as "it is the natural and logical outgrowth of an edifice that was founded on the sanctioning and justification of aggression based on so-called racial and ethnic superiority.鈥�
The final chapter, dealing with the Nobel Prize Committee's decision to award the prize in literature to Agnon, is a great way to show how centuries of lies and distortions have led to a near-universally accepted myth. Kanafani writes, 鈥淎warding Agnon the Nobel Prize represented a fraudulent and illegitimate literary endorsement to humanize what is fundamentally inhuman and to confer a civilizational value to what is reactionary, chauvinistic and racist.鈥�
This would pair great with Fayez Sayegh's "Zionist Colonialism in Palestine," and both should be considered required reading for anyone who believes in the rights of Palestinians to resist settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.
On Zionist Literature is a polemic work of literary criticism in the best sense. it is short, sharp and focused on the political requirements of the moment in which it was published, namely, to the end of an anti-imperialist struggle for the liberation of Palestine. In this way Kanafani sets out to challenge the racism and anti-Arab tropes of Zionist literature, particularly in the West.
Kanafani begins in (early) early modernity, with Hebrew literature, Maimonides and the Psalms, though the bulk of the study concentrates on thirty or forty novels published from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, from Benjamin Disraeli to Arthur Koestler. Kanafani鈥檚 central argument is that these authors repudiated an internationalist or positive vision of Judaism, preferring to lay the foundation for a supremacist and chauvinistic ideology whose moment came in securing a garrison state shaped to the ends of Western imperialism in the years after the second world war. In a manner that corresponds very closely with the stated aim of its publishing house, Liberated Texts, Kanafani also condemns the Western literary critical establishment in elevating works which play a propagandistic role, awarding prizes and places in the canon to self-evidently inferior or didactic works, solely because they can be relied upon to follow a particular political line and denigrate the social customs, political demands and or humanity of the Arab peoples.
The only critique I have of this work is that I wish it were longer, what material is directed towards the early history of Judaic cultural production is fascinating and I would have loved to read more on an argument which is only touched upon here, namely that that particular literary tropes regarding Jewishness pass in and out of fashion according to trends in modern state formation. Critical apparatus, contextual materials, references and footnotes are comprehensive.
Kanafani argues that Zionism is articulated in literature before explicitly political works. The analysis he does on more then a century鈥檚 worth of Zionists texts is excellent. He does not see these books as the invention of an individual alone, rather as products created in particular political and social contexts. On Zionist Literature shows that Zionist articulations in literature in the 19th century were reactions to the social integration of Jewish people in Europe and carried with them a racist and supremacist character. Kanafani illustrates that Zionist books dealing with the conquest of Palestine unanimously abdicate dealing with the principle question, that is the genocide of Palestinian people and the theft of their land. At times i failed to follow every intricacy of Ghassan鈥檚 analysis and how they fit into his overall arguments. I suspect this is more related to my total lack of knowledge of the source material under examination rather then any fault of the author.
鈥淲hy does the Western reader accept the same racist and fascist positions in Zionist novels that are deemed to be contemptible when taken by non-jews?鈥�
An amazing translation and book that gives the reader a very thorough and interesting view on how Zionism has built its way in literature.
"We would do well to focus on his [Kanafani's] argument that Zionism is neither a cultural inclination or a political necessity. It is a material phenomenon rooted in chauvinistic ideas of culture and politics that tried to squash revolutionary and communist Jewish politics in Europe." Steven Salaita from the intro - Kanafani looks at the progression of Zionist thought through the 19th century and into the 20th while carefully showing how Jews themselves were manipulated through equating Zionism with Judaism. The archetype of The Wandering Jew is examined and is one example of how a cultural or religious symbol's identity can be manipulated skillfully to justify new actions or behavior. Kanafani was assassinated, just like Raafat Alareer in December of this past year. Literature obviously threatens power structures or creates them.
This was a very interesting book to read! Its style is very particular to the situation of its writing and I find that super interesting. The way that Kanafani does not necessarily build up concretely to a point, but somewhat cascades around intrigued me. I enjoyed contrasting this with the typical academic books I have read.
This book was very illuminating, and I feel that I have a much better understanding of Zionist literature/politics (a slash instead of an and due to their "lockstep" nature). It can be difficult to understand at times due to the somewhat scattered nature of Kanafani's writing and the assumed previous knowledge which I in some cases lack.
reminds me of why I read in the first place, kanafani is a true measure of the literary critic as revolutionary. brilliant and invigorating readings of 19c novels, myths and religious texts, and discourses around zionism toward a free Palestine
So nice to read something from him. The subject really intrigued me because the analysis is focused on fiction which i found interesting and i have been interested in how zionism is so normalised and practically unchallenged in western media. His analysis about the roles the zionist characters have in novels and the racism against arabs really shows the climate these writers created to justify zionism. The only negative thing is that i sometimes found that he was making an argument which i couldn't really follow. I think it was because of the differences in sentences in Arabic or maybe the translation. Would love to see his other works translated into english as well.
Honestly v dry but packs in a lot of information and in some exciting places the writing is sharp and incisive! I would have preferred to read Kanafani's fiction books but this recent translation is the one my library had available in English.
I鈥檝e always been fascinated by literature鈥檚 role in nation building. I admittedly haven鈥檛 read most of the reference texts so if I read this later in life I could probably get a lot more out of it.
On Zionist Literature deserves more than the common five-star scale review. It is a book of great seriousness that really needs interaction and engagement. The translators and editors did excellent work to bring this book to an English-speaking audience. Lots of books get lost in translation and sometimes get more complex but Mahmoud Najib and Louis Allday really did a great job at retaining Kanafani鈥檚 message, methodology, and research, and with such simplicity (for the reader).
On Zionist Literature is a thorough analytical study encompassed by one of the many revolutionary necessities of any liberation movement: knowing your enemy.
Before embarking on this endeavor, Kanafani reminds his audience, most of whom are already familiar with the fundamentals of the Palestinian call for liberation, that the primary purpose of this study is to 鈥渟hed new light on an essential but yet to be recognized aspect of the infernal machinations of the Zionist movement.鈥� Kanafani does not concern himself with responding or discussing the frivolous, racist, and ahistorical claims that Zionists make. A primary principle frames this study: know your enemy.
A lot could be said about the historical moment in which this book was written, the ongoing achievements of Kanafani鈥檚 political and literary career, as well as the changes in the political atmosphere at the time of the Naksa (the Setback), but the progression of compiled evidence and arguments is what truly makes this book a very compelling study (The East is a Podcast has an episode with Louis Allday that outlines both the former and the latter).
By analyzing thoroughly Zionist literature, or literature employed by Zionists to further their supremacist desires, Kanafani outlines, almost chronologically, a pattern of literary production that leads to the creation, rationalization, and worldwide indoctrination and legitimization of Zionist goals at the expense of Palestinian life. While some are made to believe that trauma brought Zionism to life, On Zionist Literature shows you, evidently, that 鈥渢rauma鈥� is a rationalization and Zionism grew into a racist parasite far before it was coined by Herzl.
Kanafani begins by describing the growing trend of the exploitation of the religiously sacred Hebrew language and of both religious legends and traumatic experiences. Literature, as a means of disseminating views, became a mouthpiece for a negative Judaism and an inverted ideology of Europe鈥檚 fascism and chauvinism. Kanafani explains in great detail how race and religion converged through the politicization of religious Jewish characters and legends in literature such as the reoccurring 鈥淲andering Jew.鈥� Through misinformation or 鈥渢he falsification, exaggeration, erasure of facts and the opportunistic exploitation of history to justify entirely new events,鈥� Zionist literature blurred the lines between facts and delusion. Which came first? The historian or the historic novel? Probably the latter.
But, the phenomenon of Zionist Literature, as Kanafani emphasizes, cannot be explained without pointing to material examples of when this twisted literature made its political impact across the world. In other words, when and how did novels like Exodus or authors like Agnon serve the Zionist movement in it鈥檚 exploitation of Palestinian land and life? In the adaptation of robust Hollywood films or through Zionist apologist literary institutions that claim to champion humanistic principles but instead submit to racist writings, either in agreement or post-guilt? Kanafani lets you in on that answer, and in great detail.
On Zionist Literature is 119 pages but don鈥檛 let that fool you. It鈥檚 not too difficult a read but it requires you to engage with the text, the arguments being made, the historical contexts, and the conclusions drawn. It鈥檚 a study. Treat it as such. Luckily, however, Kanafani doesn鈥檛 complicate it too much. He walks you through it pretty easily, so long as you give him the room and space. The translator鈥檚 notes help as well. It is a must read for all those seeking to enrich their understanding of the Zionist enemy in preparation of the fight for liberation.