The International Expansion of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship & the 50th Commemoration of Ghassan Kanafani’s Assassination and Ongoing Legacy

Today, July 8th 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Ghassan Kanafani, a political and cultural icon of the Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian people. On the 8th of July 1972, Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian revolutionary writer, was assassinated by a car bomb placed by the Israeli Mossad outside his home in Beirut, together with his niece, Lamees Najm. 

Today, we affirm that the legacy of Kanafani is alive and well, and that our people will never give up the struggle until total liberation and return. Earlier this year, the Palestinian Youth Movement and the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urged all Palestinians, Arabs and internationalist supporters of the Palestinian cause to commemorate the anniversary and mark it through organizing efforts and community events throughout the world. We are proud to note that more than 20 different events will take place over the span of the next two weeks, uplifting Kanafani’s ongoing legacy and the power of collective resistance and determination in the face of almost 75 years of struggle for Palestinian liberation. We encourage all members of our global community to be part of these local events and commemorations of Kanafani’s life.

We pause to give honorable mention to the new English translation edition of Kanafani’s “On Zionist Literature”, a critical bastion of Kanafani’s analysis, published 50 years after his death. The Palestinian Youth Movement has copies available for distribution at our local events (visit @palestinianyouthmovement social media for more information) and on our website. We are grateful for the work of Ebb Books and Liberated Texts for curating this new edition and making Kanafani’s contributions accessible to a wider base of supporters.

This year also marks the 7th Anniversary of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship in North America, a truly grassroots initiative which has grown into a platform for political discussion and engagement with resistance arts for young Palestinian creatives in Diaspora in so-called Canada and the so-called US. We reaffirm that Palestinian youth have the power and the responsibility to make critical contributions to defining who we are as a People and what our struggle means and looks like today. We honor Kanafani’s legacy, as a Palestinian revolutionary leader, organizer and writer who himself weaved the individual stories of Nakba and dispossession into a collective memory and fabric that helps us as a People build our pathway of liberation and return. He also helped to build many important Palestinian institutions, including Alhadaf Magazine (the Target), which developed and distributed revolutionary ideas and analysis, which continue to inspire resistance in service of national liberation, and against Zionism and imperialism. Kanafani also took up questions of organizing strategy, identifying how the arguments and mythmaking of Zionist literature underpinned Zionist political domination and developed a narrative for support of political Zionism by the Global North. He lived into the principle that knowing our own history and unmasking the methods and narratives of our oppressors and adversaries alike helps us develop a grounded, informed, and visionary movement that can build a real alternative to the injustice of the systems we live in.

The 2022 Theme is titled WHEREVER WE ARE: REVIVING IDENTITY ON THE NEW FRONTLINES. It tackles the era after the هبة القدس or Unity Uprising of 2021 and asks us/you, Palestinian Youth, to engage in the imagination, proposal and creation of where we go from here as youth on the front lines of our struggle in Diaspora.

We are honored to continue the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship for the year 2022 in North America and we are proud to announce that the Scholarship itself is expanding into Britain, Sweden, and Italy. We honor Kanafani’s legacy and our commitment to our youth around the world. 

The Scholarship is the first of its kind and we deeply hope that it has contributed to the awareness of Kanafani’s work and contributions to our struggle amongst our generation of Palestinians. We too hope that the Scholarship has facilitated contributors' connections with one another, provided a forum for discourse and development, and become a hub of investment in their skills and imaginations as creatives who are part of an active National Liberation Struggle. 

In the words of Ghassan Kanafani, you have something in this world, so fight for it.

The North America Scholarship is now open! You can apply here, circulate news of the Scholarship and give what you can to sustain it. You can acquire copies of previous years anthologies and the new English edition of On Zionist Literature by visiting our website. For those in Italy, Britain and Sweden, please stay tuned for the submission deadline in your region and for upcoming events in your area. 

50 years after Ghassan Kanafani’s assassination, his legacy lives on. 

Kanafani Lives! Palestine Lives!

Until Return & Liberation

The Palestinian Youth Movement

“I’m looking for the true Palestine, the Palestine that’s more than memories, more than peacock feathers, more than a son, more than scars written by bullets on the stairs.” - Ghassan Kanafani, Return to Haifa

“Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative obscurity.” -Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth