Ghassan Kanafani, whose father was a lawyer, was born in 1936 in Acre, Palestine, as a child of a good-class family. He was a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1972, while he was in Beirut, Kanafani was assassinated by Mossad in retaliation for the Lod Airport massacre.
Ghassan continued his education at the school run by French missionaries in Palestine. As an Arab, he could not accept the difficulties of the French education he received, and in the following years, he embarked on a serious study of Arabic.
At the age of 12, Gassan witnessed an atrocity in 1948. In the brutality that took place this year, the people living in the Arab village of Dair Yassin in Palestine were killed by Israel.
Ghassan Kanafani's wife, Anni Kanafani, says that she never celebrated Gassan's birthday again because of this incident.
Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani (8 April 1936 – 8 July 1972) was a Palestinian author and politician. He was a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1972, while he was in Beirut, Kanafani was assassinated by Mossad in retaliation for the Lod Airport massacre.
One month after the Dair Yassin incident, the city of Acre came under Israeli control. The Kanafani family first migrated to a village in Lebanon, then to the mountainous regions of Damascus, and finally lived in a minority neighborhood in Damascus.
The family's lifestyle changes radically and they struggle with poverty. This situation would now turn into a permanent exile for them.
When Ghassan was 16, he worked as a teacher to children in UN refugee camps in order to provide financial support to his family.
During his years as a teacher, his interaction with children, his close observation of families, and the events he encountered were major factors in laying the foundations of his world of thought.
His real adventure would blossom from now on. Gassan would describe Palestine in his life with the tip of his pen and gain strength from this.
A few years later, he entered the Department of Arabic Literature at the University of Damascus. He tells the tragic situation that Palestinians live in front of the eyes of the whole world through the short stories he wrote during these years.
During the years he lived in Kuwait, he was diagnosed with severe diabetes and this added to the difficulties in his life. Even though he constantly feels the effects of the disease, he does not give up his pen, to which he is passionately attached.
Ghassan Kanafani expresses his pessimism about both the disease and the Palestinian cause in his diary:
All we know is that tomorrow will not be better than today and we sit on the riverbank longing for a ship that will never come. We have been decreed to be separated from everything; from everything except our own destruction.
In 1967, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was established. Ghassan Kanafani acts as the spokesperson of the PFLP.
He writes the party program of the PFLP and defines the Marxist-Leninist line of the party with this program. However, before joining the Marxist movement, Ghassan Kanafani was a Nasserist.
During this period, Gassan published many newspapers, wrote articles, and attracted all the attention in a short time. Not only the eyes full of admiration but also the eyes of the enemy are now on him.
This time, when the calendar showed July 8, 1972, the curtain of the dark day had already been drawn for Ghassan Kanafani and the Palestinian cause.
After repairing his son Fayez's toy train, he and his nephew Lamees were heading towards the car, while his little daughter Leyla was eating the chocolate her father had just opened on the stairs.
When Ghassan turns the ignition, the bomb explodes and the car explodes into pieces. Ghassan Kanafani was killed at the age of 36; It is said that the Israeli secret service Mossad carried out the incident as revenge for the attack on Lod Airport.
Mossad presents this as an excuse, but the real purpose is related to Ghassan Kanafani's fame and his power to influence and direct the masses and the political structure to which he is affiliated.
Edward Said's sentence, "The intellectual always stands somewhere between loneliness and taking sides," coincides with the actions drawn by Ghassan Kanafani in his life.
The fact that he was killed right near his home and that his children and wife were at home at that time turns the incident from a tragedy into a great pain that cannot fit the mercy of the world.
Ghassan Kanafani's wife, Anni Kanafani, describes the aftermath of the bomb explosion as follows:
A few meters away we found Lamees, Gassan was not there. I called out to him, then noticed his left foot. Fayez was hitting his head against the wall, and our daughter Leyla was screaming "Daddy, Daddy" over and over again. I froze.