Translating Palestine 4: Ghassan Kanafani, A Revolutionary as a Literary Critic

This BookRising episode celebrates the translation and publication of revolutionary Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani's works of literary criticism. Translated into English by Mahmoud Najib for the first time since publication in 1967, Kanafani's On Zionist Literature analyzes the corpus of literature written in support of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. The book includes a preface by Annie Kanafani as well as an introduction by Steven Salaita who writes that the book shows that "Kanafani was a searing and incisive critic, at once generous in his understanding of emotion and form and unsparing in his assessment of politics and myth.”
In this podcast, the book's publisher and editor Louis Allday speaks about the process of assembling Kanafani's literary criticism and attempts to bring these to life in translation. Suchitra Vijayan asks about the figure of the revolutionary as a critic since the literary critic has a different and potentially less political function in the Western publishing world. Allday and Vijayan also touch upon the challenges of editing and translating a work that primarily addresses Palestinians and they think through the role of prefaces, annotations and introduction in bringing such a complex work to an English readership.
Louis Allday is a writer and historian based in London. He is the founding editor of Liberated Texts.
Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, activist and co-founder of The Radical Books Collective and The Polis Project. She is the author of Midnight's Border: A People's History of India (2021).

[@IbrahimHaddad-pq9zg]

The killer mossad killed this beautiful soul.

[@dvoravithanovsky6902]

Add to this amazing dossier the letter that john berger read

[@yuval1716]

There is no time limit in the definition of colonialism so the British will always be considered colonialists in Australia. And the Palestinians are no exception, the Arabs conquered Palestine by force in the seventh century and brought a different language, a different culture and a different genetics.
The origin of Arab genetics, Arab culture, the Arabic language and the religion of Islam is in the Arabian Peninsula, therefore the Palestinians are not indigenous by definition.
On the other hand, the Jews are considered native to the Levant (Palestine) according to the definition because the Hebrew language, the Jewish religion, and the genetic origin of 40% Jews in Israel originated in the Levant (Palestine). They did not come from outside, they were created in the Levant (Palestine). Hebrew is the only Canaanite language that survived.
Most of the Jews in Israel Today they are not Europeans. Although historically European Jews founded Israel and were the majority in its early days. In addition, Jews lived in Palestine as a minority but continuously before the Arabs before Islam and Christianity.
Jews are considered indigenous by definition because the origin of the Hebrew language, culture and religion of the Jews originates in the Levant.
And the fact that the Arabs were the majority does not make them natives, they will always be colonialists like the British in Australia.
The Palestinians are trying to change the defense of colonialism so that because it happened a long time ago they have become indigenous. There is no time limit to colonialism and they are not considered indigenous by definition.

[@teasquared09]

Yeah because 1000 years means nothing. All citizens of the US should pack up and bounce then, too?

[@rajdeepvijayaraj4243]

Yeah Aryans should leave India then

[@iqxvgnz]

You forgot to mention who the Canaan tribe was, which inhabited Palestine and built more than 200 of its ancient cities. According to the most conservative data, 5000 years ago, many hundreds of years before the Jews came to these lands, the Canaans were Arabs, Arab tribes.