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The Mossad is Israel’s intelligence agency, and it operates outside the law. For real. The organization is not subject to the Israeli constitutional laws. There are no laws defining its purpose, powers, or budget. The Mossad director reports only to the Prime Minister. And in 1972 Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said it was okay for the Mossad to assassinate a Palestinian author.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 8, 1972--
This requires some context. In Wild West days of yore you could oftentimes get away with assassinating a man by providing evidence that “He needed killin’.” Did Ghassan Kanafani need killing? I’ll leave that to you to decide. And I’ll be in the comment section with the ban hammer, because the Israeli government is not the Jewish people. Use care in supporting a free Palestine without being antisemitic.
Born in 1936, Kanafani was a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is a primary group that forms part of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The PFLP is designated a terrorist organization by numerous countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, as well as the European Union. In the late 60s and early 70s the organization conducted several armed attacks and airline hijackings, primarily against Israeli targets.
Kanafani authored numerous celebrated novels about life in Palestine, initiating the idea of “resistance literature” in relation to his homeland. His writing lauded the use of armed resistance as the only solution to the Palestinian dilemma. Such writing influenced his personal politics.
Why kill him? Two months previous was the Lod Airport (now Ben Gurion International) massacre in Tel Aviv, resulting in 26 deaths and 79 injuries. The PFLP claimed responsibility for the attack. Kanafani was the spokesperson for the PFLP and said the airport massacre was justified. What’s more, after the massacre a photo was circulated showing Kanafani with one of the terrorists involved in the attack.
In short, Kanafani was the spokesperson and leading member for an organization responsible for the murders of many Israelis, and he knew at least one of the Lod terrorists. So, on July 8, 1972, the Mossad blew him up with a car bomb. His 17-year-old niece, Lamees Najim, also died in the bombing, and that was definitely a crime. His obituary in a Middle Eastern newspaper said, “He was a commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ball-point pen.”
Two months later, a Palestinian terrorist organization called Black September, which recruited from the PFLP, assassinated 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympic Games.
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Image author: Justin McIntosh