Time Bombs

Bibliographic Data

ID2933941
AuthorsGreg Burris (corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume43
Issue2
Pages75-95
Publication date2025-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Text (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0164-2472 • E-ISSN: 1527-1951
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/01642472-11670044
OpenAlexW4411477268
LanguageEN
References cited11

Born in Palestine in 1936 and exiled at the age of twelve, Ghassan Kanafani eventually became one of the leading lights of Palestinian resistance - novelist, editor, playwright, sculptor, painter, political party spokesperson, revolutionary theorist, and, finally, martyr. In 1972, he was assassinated in Beirut by Israeli agents who placed a time bomb in his car. While Kanafani's life was cut short at the age of thirty-six, he has since become famous in Palestinian circles for his short stories and novels. Kanafani's fiction is often quite dark and focused on death, but it nevertheless contains a clear utopian element, a revolutionary optimism. Where did this dimension come from? In this essay, Kanafani's work is placed in the context of his childhood - the violent era of Zionist time bomb terror. Tracing the tactics and campaigns of three Zionist militias - the Haganah, the Irgun, and the Lehi - this essay shows how time bomb terrorism pervaded Palestine during the years of Kanafani's childhood and thereby influenced his fiction. But even more, this essay argues that Kanafani - and for that matter, the movement for Palestinian liberation more broadly - also escaped Zionism. As terrible as colonialism's wounds might be, they are not all-encompassing. In Kanafani's work, one can find traces of other calendars and clocks: other pasts that the Zionists cannot erase, other presents that they cannot dominate, and other futures that they cannot comprehend. As the example of Kanafani demonstrates, Zionism's colonization of time did not fully capture him, not even in death

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Literature · Martyr · Painting · Palestine · Political science · Politics · Terrorism · Zionism · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society

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