From the PalFest Bookshelf:

Interview with Hazem Jamjoum, Translator of Ghassan Kanafani

The second installment of the PalFest Bookshelf is Ghassan Kanafani’s The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine, newly translated by Hazem Jamjoum, a Palestinian educator and an editor with the recently-established publishing house Safarjal Press.

Below, you can read an exclusive interview with Hazem in which he situates this book within Kanafani’s life and his broader political imagination. With this book, Hazem argues, Kanafani attempts to write a materialist history of the Palestinian liberation struggle that departs from 1936 in order to frame the struggle itself as the protagonist of its own history.

PalFest: This text was first published in 1972, the year Kanafani was assassinated. Why was Kanafani turning to study the 1936 revolt at that time?

Hazem Jamjoum:  My sense is that it has everything to do with the imperialists’ victory over the Arab and internationalist liberation movements in the 1970-1971 war in Jordan. This moment is usually glossed as “Black September” and described as a Jordanian war against Palestinians, but that is extremely misleading. In the few years following the 1967 war, PLO infrastructure in Jordan had become a beacon for anti-colonial revolutionaries all over the world, and most of the Arab population east of the Jordan river (regardless of how their families connected to the territory west of the river) either supported or directly joined in this movement in one way or another. Israel, Imperialist powers like the US and Britain, and US-trained allies of the Hashemites in the Pakistani military that endeavoured to actively help the Jordanian monarchy purge itself of radicals, while actively rearming and training up the Jordanian military. Meanwhile, other Arab reactionary monarchies also chipped in (as did Nasser’s regime in Egypt), whether actively or by not coming to the revolution’s aid. 

After the battles and massacres of September 1970, the head of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, sought a compromise with the regime that ended up trapping what remained of Palestinian liberation forces in the woodlands near Jarash north of Amman. This enabled the newly reconstituted Jordanian air force to commit large scale military operations that decimated these forces in 1971. More importantly, in the wake of the massacres, this right wing leadership of the PLO began floating ideas of a negotiated settlement towards establishing something called a ‘Palestinian state’ that was completely anathema to the return of Palestinian refugees and actual liberation (twenty years later, those initial proposals bore their rotten fruit in the form of the Oslo accords and the collaborationist Palestinian Authority). Kanafani actually predicted this in an essay he published in al-Hadaf around the same time he was writing his essay on the 1936 revolution. 

I think this defeat was comparable, and possibly even more painful, to that of 1967. The defeat of 1967 was a defeat of Arab regimes and their armies, not of the resistance and liberation movements. Those movements had what was a kind of golden era after the victory at the battle of al-Karameh in March 1968, which is really what ushered in that transformation of Jordan into a short-lived beacon of revolutionary activity I mentioned earlier. It was an incitement to give serious attention to the question, “How did this happen? How did we get here?” The techniques of literary analysis, culture critique,  and the artistry of prose (forms and genres he was and continues to be more known for) was not going to lead to substantial answers; this required a turn to history. So, in many ways, what Kanafani set out to do was to take each of the threads of the 1970-71 war, (the Zionist-Imperialist nexus, the reactionary Arab regimes, and the reactionary Palestinian leadership) and try to historicize them, to figure out how and why and when these three threads started to weave into a braid that, as he says in the first line of the essay, “evolved to become the major forces working against the people of Palestine.” That key moment, according to Kanafani, was the 1936 Revolution, and the essay is effectively him demonstrating this, though consistently using it to speak to his lived present. 

What kind of challenges did this text pose for you as a translator? 

The biggest challenge was, I think, that Kanafani is a left-revolutionary equivalent of a saint— sanctified and sacred.

Of course the flipside of this is that it has also been a major honour and privilege that I got the opportunity to do this at all. 

In terms of the nitty gritty of translation, the main challenge is that Kanafani wrote this piece in deceptively simple and straightforward prose. The issue with this is that you can read it and very quickly jump to a conclusion about what you think an appropriate English-language rendering would be . But, if you read more closely, paying attention to his choices of words and their placements, where the emphasis is, you start finding that what was seemingly a strong point was actually more profound than it appears at first. Then, of course, you need to find a way to convey as much of that as you can in another language, trying to keep as much of the multiple registers a reader can interpret available to that reader. 

In the english-speaking world, Palestinian history is often told as if it began in 1948 with the Nakba. What would you say changes when we think of 1936 as a pivotal moment of Palestinian history? 

This isn’t unique to the English speaking world or Palestine. Sadly, many people think of history as a series of dates where things start and happen and end, and it is so conditioned by things like Romantic literature, with a main character that is born then lives then dies, and systems of pedagogy that approach history as a memorizable list of “this happened and then this happened.” That broader issue aside, the importance of Palestine in global politics can’t be separated from literally thousands of years of people moving into, out of, and through that land and its social fabrics, producing meaning about it, developing material interests relating to it, and so on. The importance of this book is not that it points to an alternative starting point, 1936 is not the starting point, nor is it necessarily fruitful to try to pinpoint a moment in time that we can claim as a beginning or origin for some thing. The importance is more in understanding and analysing that thing, in this case, the interplay of imperial and colonial interests, the material and class interests that underlie reactionary politics in the region and in Palestinian society, and the modalities of anti-colonial resistance in how it can build, grow, adapt to changing socio-political terrain, and so on. 

What I will say to the point about beginnings and origins, though, is that when we do point to a moment and call it a beginning, that is crucially significant for how we identify and approach the “thing”--back to Romantic literature as the modality of modern historiography, pointing to a starting point is the equivalent of that moment of the main character. So, starting with the 1897 Basel conference would casts Zionism as the main character, starting with the 1948 Nakba makes the refugees and the state of the Israel the main character, starting with the 1967 war makes the West Bank and Gaza the main character, and so on (and of course I’m being a bit crude here). Starting with 1936 makes the movement and the struggle to liberate Palestine from colonialism and occupation the protagonist, and I think, all the more so since October 7, that is how we need to orient our understanding of Palestine and Palestinian history if liberation is what we are after. And, to do this with a particular emphasis on the class dimensions of this struggle, as Kanafani does in this essay, is the only way to do that justice.

How different is that (the place of 1936 in Palestinian history) in the arabic-speaking world? 

I don’t think the Arab world has any superiority over anywhere else in terms of education around Palestine. If anything, the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world have very little genuine interest in their populations knowing anything more than that their regimes have always been staunch supporters of Palestine (even if they’ve actively worked to undermine Palestinian resistance) because there are legitimacy points to be won there. Think of the Asad regime and how much lip service it paid to Palestine as an abstract cause, then compare that to how it directly or indirectly obliterated Palestinian refugee camps from Tal al-Zaatar to al-Yarmouk. I highly doubt any Arab history textbooks have anything remotely insightful to offer students about the 1936 Revolution, such insight would be subversive, teaching young people that they can take their own futures in their hands and organize for actual liberation. As with everywhere and anywhere else, the language you speak and where you got your education seems to have far less to do with how you relate to the Palestinian liberation struggle than your own courage and curiosity. 

Why do you think people should read this book today?

Readers should keep in mind that this is not the work an academic historian; he doesn’t wonder about the role of culture because he knows it’s a lively scholarly debate and insightful intervention in it works get him citations or tenure, it’s the work of someone who has spent half his life, one cut extremely short by Zionist assassination, in the trenches of a revolutionary movement, with a particular role as a commander I’m the cultural front (not just as writer and artist, but at least as crucially: as an editor). 

The text is also important because it remains one of the best histories we have of this foundational moment in global revolutionary history. I don’t think people realize just how momentous the 1936 Revolution was and how much its events and outcomes structured the 80-90 years that have since followed not just regarding Palestine, but even on counter-insurgency “pacification” doctrine, on cementing the centrality of reactionary regimes to imperial strategies and tactics in the region, and the specificities of settler colonial projects where the settler population is not an extension of the imperial power resourcing and enabling colonialism. 

Most importantly, however, I think people need to read this book for the perspective and understanding it brings to the Palestinian liberation struggle: that it is the struggle that is the main protagonist; that the struggle exists in the context of struggles globally against empire, capital, and the fascism that emerges at their intersection (all the more urgent to recognize now than when the text was written); and that this struggle needs to give as much attention to the reactionary Palestinian and Arab leadership as it does do the nexus of Zionism and imperialism if it is to have any hope of achieving our emancipation, and to restoring the centrality of an analysis of class and power (rather than the flat categories of nationalists that continue to celebrate the worst of our leaders, past and present) to our understanding of how to fight today, and what our freedom could and should look like tomorrow.

Visit the PalFest Bookshelf to learn more about the book and to subscribe.

Virtual Tour: “This Is Not an Exhibition,” 21 May

In a moment of suffocating isolation, as Gaza’s artists are cut off and their studios destroyed, “This Is Not an Exhibition” does not simply mourn what has been lost—it proposes a new way of meeting, one that breaks the silence imposed by force and reconnects what has been severed.

This virtual tour, led by the acclaimed Palestinian artist Amer Shomali, extends artistic practice into a space of resistance. Through the digital realm, we seek to rebuild lines of communication with artists deprived of visibility and space, and to honor their presence—which continues despite attempts at erasure.

These artworks do not substitute reality; they assert it, when reality itself is under threat. “This Is Not an Exhibition” is a call to consider art as a space for speech, a home for memory, and an act of persistence.

Visit The Palestinian Museum for more details and additional programming.

London: Poets Liberation Front, May 25

Join Shubbak Festival, in tandem with Palestine House in London, for Poets Liberation Front, a reading and discussion with lisa luxx, Hazem Jamjoum, Jamal Mehmood, and Riwa Saab on the architectures of transnationalism.

Literature has the means of illuminating transnational structures of resistance. June Jordan wrote of the struggles in Palestine and Lebanon from an America in the throes of the Civil Rights uprising. Meanwhile, Ngugi wa Thiong’o translates his Gikuyu-language books into other marginalised languages of the globe before permitting them into English. In both ways, fragmented revolutions are fortified as international kinships.

These poets all contribute to literature in ways that establish meeting places; small shelters that defy borders, nations and singularity.

Tickets are available here on a sliding scale. You can find out more about the program, as well as other events at the Shubbak Festival, which runs until June 15, at the Shubbak Festival website.

London: Khashabi Theatre Presents MILK مِلْك, May 24-25

Shubbak and Southbank Centre proudly present MILK مِلْك, a visual performance by the Haifa-based company Khashabi Theatre, directed by Bashar Murkus, produced by Khulood Basel.

This performance is concerned with a disaster—not its causes, nor its consequences, but the way it ruptures time itself, splitting it into a stark before and after. It is a fracture that resists healing, where the past becomes an unshakable present, and the future dissolves into endless repetition.

On a stark black stage that first appears safe, a group of women searches for their lost motherhood, caught in the unrelenting echoes of grief and displacement. Young director Bashar Murkus asks: if disaster happens in an instant, how does it end? Does it ever?

Through striking visual language and movement, MILK مِلْك confronts disaster as an unending state—one that reshapes time, memory, and survival itself. A haunting meditation on trauma, endurance, and resilience, this production opens a festival that amplifies stories of resistance, solidarity, and hope.

Find out more and reserve your tickets over at Shubbak Festival.

Book of the Week

This book offers an authentic and powerful Palestinian perspective on the killing fields of Gaza through an impressive fusion of historical analysis intertwined with moving personal anecdotes. In Banging on the Walls of the Tank, the people of Gaza appear as they really are: resilient and incredibly courageous in the face of a genocidal campaign against them. It is clear from this moving collection that one cannot wipe out Gaza as one would not be able to expunge Palestine as a whole as an idea, a nation, and a country.

– Ilan Pappé

Banging on the Walls of the Tank is a newly-published collection of reflections and analysis written over eighteen years in Gaza by Palestinian academic and activist, Haidar Eid.

Providing an insider’s perspective on the blockade of Gaza since 2007, the Israeli attacks in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021, the Great March of Return, and the ongoing genocide committed by the apartheid Israeli state, Eid’s essays examine political alternatives, opportunities for resistance, and prospects for a just peace after more than a century of dispossession.

Haidar Eid was raised in Gaza City after his parents were violently expelled from their home village of Zarnouqa in 1948. In 2023, Haidar, his wife, and their daughters become the second and third generation to be forced from their home as Israel continues its genocidal war in Palestine.

Banging on the Walls of the Tank is out now from BTL Books. BTL will also be marking the book’s publication with an event in Toronto on May 24. Details are available here.

Media Roundup

The Nakba Has Never Ended – Huda Skaik honors the 77th anniversary of the Nakba with an eye toward the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza. “To commemorate the Nakba,” she writes, “is to honor the memory of the past and commit to the liberation of the present.” 

The Nakba: Jaffa's Erasure Is a Warning to Gaza - But History Is Yet to Be Written – Abed Abou Shhadeh compares present-day Gaza to the city of Jaffa in 1948 – once a bustling and densely populated cultural hub in Palestine before it was destroyed in the Nakba – in order to highlight all that is being lost in the genocide.

Lost in a Land That Was Once Ours – In this dispatch from central Gaza, Lujayn encounters people who have been displaced over and over again since 1948: “In the rubble of Gaza, amid all the devastation, we too pine for the country that was once ours.”

Starvation in Gaza – Alex de Waal examines proposals for “surveillance humanitarianism” through which Israel is conditioning the prospect of resumed aid into Gaza.

Settling Shadows: Cartographic Analysis of Settler Colonialism in the West Bank – Zaynab Nemr, Rami Zurayk, Jad Isaac, and Issa Zboun share their new research initiative that maps the occupation’s land use practices, environmental policies, and monoculture farming as technologies of dispossession.

Israel Just Launched Its Offensive to Permanently ‘Conquer’ Gaza as Trump’s Arab Gulf Tour Wraps Up – Qassam Muaddi and Tareq S. Hajjaj report on the escalation of the Israeli-American extermination campaign in Gaza, including new revelations about plans to permanently exile more than a million Gazans to Libya.

How Israel is Artwashing Genocide with Eurovision 2025 – Shahla Omar writes about the many boycott efforts underway by musicians, listeners, and the broader public against Eurovision for its complicity in laundering Israel’s international reputation.

Political Reconstruction: For Gaza and Collective Survival – In this roundtable, Talal Ahmad Abu Rokbeh, Mohammed Al-Hafi, and Alaa Tartir discuss prospects for political unity and the overcoming of fragmentation as Palestinians across historic Palestine are unified by the genocide in Gaza.

“The Encampments” and the American College Student – Reviewing the new documentary The Encampments, Doreen St. Félix wonders how Columbia University will “gradually absorb the student occupation of 2024 into its branding,” exactly as it has done with the legacy of the 1968 occupation.

Husam Maarouf on Launching New ‘Gaza Publications’ – ArabLit interviews publisher Husam Maarouf about a new publishing venture in Gaza, Gaza Publications, about the press’ vision and its first book, Amer Al-Massri’s short story collection The Man Who Turned Back.

‘Happy Birthday’: A Poem for Nakba Day – Basman Eldirawi shares a poem for Nakba Day, translated by M. Lynx Qualey: “I won’t remind you that it’s the Nakba’s 77th anniversary. / Or maybe I will, and we’ll share a biting laugh. / What does life look like in heaven, on the cusp of forty?”

To My Newborn Son: I Am Absent Not out of Apathy, But Conviction – Mahmoud Khalil writes a letter from his prison cell to his newborn son, characterizing the prospect of reuniting with his family as a prelude to the right of return.

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