On Friday, 8 July — the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Ghassan Kanafani — Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network organized a webinar on Kanafani’s literary and revolutionary life. The webinar featured Louis Allday, historian, writer and publisher of the Liberated Texts series, the publisher with Ebb Books of the new edition of On Zionist Literature, Kanafani’s work now published for the first time in English, and Omar Zahzah, writer, poet, independent scholar, and organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement and its Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Committee.
Allday discusses the process of bringing On Zionist Literature to print in English, working with the Kanafani family and maintaining the political importance and integrity of Kanafani’s commitment to the Palestinian revolutionary struggle. Zahzah’s presentation focuses on the PYM’s process of building on Kanafani’s literary legacy in resistance arts, including the Anthology and Scholarship produced each year by PYM.
Prior to the speakers, attendees heard a video from Suhair Khader, a member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — the Palestinian revolutionary political party co-founded by Kanafani — to international commemorations of Kanafani’s life and struggle, as well as a video about the upcoming launch of Al-Falasteniyeh Media Network, a Palestinian media project to bring the voices of Palestine “from the river to the sea, to the world”.
Following the presentations, Palestinian writer and organizer Khaled Barakat spoke about Kanafani’s revolutionary legacy of commitment in struggle and clear rejection of the path of Oslo and collaboration with Zionism and imperialism, and Rumzy Farooqi, executive director of the Media Network, spoke about the work of Al Falasteniyeh, inviting people to get involved in the project.
Watch the full video above and on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4US2tbpMTXE
