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Pen Power or Power of the Pen Day honors those throughout history who have chosen to wield a pen, camera, paintbrush, or music rather than a sword in fighting for human rights, equality, and causes. The date marks the assassination anniversary of one of the Arab world's most respected writers and journalists of the mid-twentieth century, Ghassan Kanafani.
Kanafani was born in British Mandate Palestine in 1936. At the age of twelve, he saw the creation of the state of Israel. His family fled the fighting to Lebanon, ultimately settling in Syria as refugees.
He began working with the liberation movement during his teen years, advocating for human rights under the new Israeli government. The organization was known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which would later become infamous for plane hijackings. Kanafani was not part of that wing.
A prolific writer, he told the story of the Palestinian experience as a journalist, as the editor of Jordan's newspaper Al Ra'i and later as the editor of Lebanon's Al-Hurriya.
Like many journalists, he was also a novelist. His 1962 novel "Men in the Sun" continues to be one of the most famous and quoted works of modern Arab literature. In 1966, a year before the Six-Day War, he published a novel on life in a Gaza refugee camp entitled "All That's Left for You." Additional titles include "Umm Sa'ad" (1969) and "Return to Haifa" (1970).
Kanafani believed ideas and stories were more powerful than any other form of resistance. He became one of the most respected political thinkers of the Palestinian diaspora and the Arab world. He tirelessly advocated for Palestinian rights, fighting only with the pen, never with arms.
On July 8, 1972, he and his seventeen-year-old niece got into his car outside his home. As he turned the ignition, the vehicle erupted into a fireball, killing both instantly. He was thirty-six.
Years later, the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad admitted they planted the bomb.
History is replete with people who have risked their lives to report, draw, photograph, and write hard truths and injustices. They are novelists, journalists, photographers, filmmakers, cartoonists, musicians, and artists who use their talent to communicate ideas and facts. Even today, in the Philippines, Mexico, Egypt, Palestine, China, Russia, Turkey, and other nations, writers, reporters, and activists are jailed, assassinated, and attacked for refusing to remain quiet. Power of the Pen Day celebrates the brave man and woman choosing the pen, camera, paintbrush, or instrument as their weapon in fighting for a cause, freedom, and independence.
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