GHASSAN KANAFANI ON PALESTINIAN LIBERATION

Lena Bloch
3 min readNov 2, 2023
A drawing of Ghassan Kanafani

Ghassan Kanafani, the intellectual/ideological leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Palestinian thinker.
In 1972, Kanafani and his niece were killed in a car bomb set by the Mossad. Assassinated at the age of 36, Kanafani is remembered as one of Palestine’s most influential intellectuals.

Here is a fragment of his interview, done by a British host.

Richard Carleton interview of Ghassan Kanafani — Beirut, 1970.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRXPImNyMXM

R.C. “Your organization is being one side of the fight. What has it achieved?”

G.K. — One thing — that we have a case to fight for. That is very much. The Palestinian people prefer to die standing, rather than to lose the case. We achieved proving that this nation is going to continue fighting till victory. We achieved that our people can never be defeated. We achieved teaching every single person in this world that we are a small brave nation who is going to fight to the last drop of blood to put justice for ourselves, after the world failed giving it to us.

R.C. “It does seem that this war, the civil war, has been quite fruitless”.

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Lena Bloch

Background in psychology of learning, literature, philosophy, math.