Ghassan Kanafani - Returning to Haifa (Written 1969, Recorded 2023)

Ghassan Kanafani was born in the city of Acre, Occupied Palestine in 1936. Following the Nakba in 1948, he and his family were forced into exile. Ghassan Kanafani became one of the most important Palestinian writers, a marxist, and the spokesperson for the PFLP. On July 8, 1972, Kanafani and his 17 year old niece, Lamees Najim, was murdered by a bomb planted in his car by Israel’s Mossad spy agency in Beirut, where he is buried.

Returning to Haifa: Returning to Haifa tells the story of a Palestinian couple who goes back to Haifa after the 1967 war to look for their baby, whom they were forced to leave behind in the war of 1948.

From the introduction: For nearly a century, politics, violence, and diplomacy have all failed to resolve the complex, mythified, and misunderstood clash that since 1948 has come to be known as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Certainly it is not for lack of study; books on the subject in English alone could fill a small-town library. Perhaps what has been missing - or ignored - throughout is the quotidian human reality underlying the vital history that continues to connect Palestinians everywhere to the land once called Palestine. Often, literature can provide the human dimension that the historian's work alone cannot. The literary works of the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani resonate with precisely that human dimension.

This was read by Stonebluerue

As always, edited by Ian Anderson (@starsalwayslost), with special thanks / credit to Sina Rahmani + The East is a Podcast. Robin Brickner is our social media coordinator. Our Twitter presence is @AntiImpArchive, and if you would like to reach out directly we have an email address at: antiimperialistarchive@gmail.com

We have AIA business cards with QR codes - please email or DM us to have one mailed to you